"Certain things are hard for me to talk about and I'm sorry VH1... certain things are too serious," said Kanye West near the top of his episode of "Storytellers". Then he proceeded to talk openly about his mother's passing, his failed engagement, and his increasingly tedious persecution complex. (Alas, the Thom Yorke bashing and Chris Brown repping were cut from the broadcast.) In between the synthetic chamber-goth of 808s & Heartbreak and Graduation's epiphany jams, he didn't tell stories as much as he preached, sometimes sounding like a cut-rate Cornel West. The diatribes leaned too heavily on woe-is-me-isms, though the artist's odd mix of prepared melodrama and spontaneousness was strangely compelling.Everything else-- the set, the music, the suit-- was spectacular. West paid tribute to bowtied Michael Jackson as he performed within what looked to be an over-sized tanning bed while his band turned even the sparest 808s tracks into a stadium-ready behemoths. "My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see me perform," he divulged with a grin. And, after watching this, it does seem a little more fun to watch Kanye West than be Kanye West.Video:> Kanye West on VH1's "Storytellers"