After spending more than 30 years in the music industry as an etiquette coach to the stars and the head of Double XXposure Media Relations, Angelo Ellerbee has little patience for badly behaved celebrities. So, you can imagine how he felt after witnessing Kanye West disrespect Taylor Swift at the MTV Music Video Awards on Sunday night.
As Swift was accepting the award for best female artist, West jumped on stage and snatched the microphone from her hand to express his disappointment that Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video had lost, leaving the young country singer stunned and on the verge of tears. Later, following her win for video of the year, Beyoncé forfeited the spotlight so that Swift could finally give her acceptance speech.
We caught up with Ellerbee -- who has worked with Michael Jackson, DMX, Alicia Keys, and Mary J. Blige, among others -- to find out his reaction to the brouhaha, what Kanye needs to do to survive this potentially career-killing move, and what everyone can learn from this distressing situation.
Out: How is teaching etiquette to hip-hop stars different than teaching it to non-celebrities?
Angelo Ellerbee: There is absolutely no difference. It is manners. It is respect. It’s just an extension of what their mothers and fathers should have taught them -- the difference between right and wrong and how to sit at a table. Many years ago they called it cornering. Today they call it success. Today they call it cornering the market. Today they call it being bright and brilliant in order to position themselves in the marketplace across the board. We’re no longer in the hip-hop community wearing our pants hanging down. We’re wearing Cartier and [Yves] Saint Laurent because we understand the importance of manners and diction and speech and how to be 100% a man or a woman.
What do you think would have been an appropriate way for Kanye to express his dismay?
We all have opinions and I think that the mighty sword is the pen and the paper that allows one to communicate his wishes. [The award winner was chosen] by a poll of people -- not by a selected board of judges. This was by a poll of people! So how then do you get up and talk about what your opinion is? Who cares? You sell records -- that’s what your opinion is. Talk about the beats on your records. Talk about the lyrical content. That’s what you do. You’re not a politician and no one cares about opinion. You’ve done this show [the VMAs] too many times and this was a stale performance.
How did you feel about Taylor Swift’s response to him?
How do you respond to being embarrassed in front of the world? What do you say? What do you do? Do you really respond -- or did she just react? I thought she was a trooper. I’m gay and have been all my life and I’m in a homophobic community called the hip-hop community. People say, “How do you survive?” Because I know who I am. I know what I am. And I give respect to it. When you give respect, you get respect. If you don’t give respect, you don’t get respect. This whole thing sets hip-hop back 30 years. People are now afraid to allow their children to engage -- is this what happens in the entertainment industry? Disrespect? This is what they fought about 30 years ago, when I fought with Dionne Warwick and C. DeLores Tucker about the parental advisory sticker. And then we move forward and [Kanye’s] big mouth sets us back 30 years. It’s not about the culture, it’s the individual. That’s what I want people to know: it’s not the culture of hip-hop.
You must have been pleased with Beyoncé’s actions.
I was so pleased to know that all of what [Motown Records founder] Berry Gordy did 40 years ago did not go to waste. That her mother and father taught her delivery, respect -- she was charismatic, she was elegant, she was timely. She pulled that one off and I take my hat off to her, because that’s a lady. It blew me away. And she did it right there -- she didn’t do it to the cameras. She did it right there where it all took place. This is what I’m talking about -- the development of an artist. We have our independence, in terms of independent record labels, but we have mothers and fathers as we’re being raised and we have mother and fathers in this music industry. We cannot just let our kids go astray and think they know the difference between right and wrong -- because they don’t. And I don’t necessarily blame Kanye, I blame the industry. I blame those executives who run these multimillion dollar companies who find it’s not important to continue to raise and stimulate and motivate to the awareness of longevity. We talk about Gladys Knight and Smokey Robinson and Dionne Warwick -- we talk about all these great people. Why are they still here? Someone had an extension of raising them. This is how you have to get along in America. Because I have never seen "Black America" on a map anywhere. So we have to be able to adjust to our environments in order to fit in. It takes someone teaching us. We cannot just erase the history. There’s a history of the development of an artist. And that was not the case with what took place this weekend.
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