Kanye West's speech in the Oval Office was not crazy. It was an audition.

Kanye West has spent the last 14 years filling our world with indelible air vibrations. Thursday afternoon, we heard a new one: the sound of a pop star both juicer sucking President Trump at the Oval Office.

West had been summoned to Trump's office to discuss prison reform and gun violence, but really to help silence the empty-calorie cable television smoothie that seems to provide that administration with its only source of power. Proudly dressed in his custom MAGA hat, West spoke of criminal justice, mental health, hydrogen powered aircraft and an "alternative universe" in a profane whirlwind of malformed ideas while managing to transmit his basic intention at the beginning of the speech.

[Here’s what happened at Kanye West’s incredibly bizarre meeting with Donald Trump]

"I love Hillary," said West. "I love everyone, right? But the "I'm with her" campaign just did not make me feel – as a guy who did not see my dad all the time – as a guy who could play tied with his son. It was something about putting on that hat that made me feel like Superman. . . . You made me a Superman cape.

And that's why he was there. West had not come to the White House to discuss issues. He had come to audition for a regular rotation in Trump's orbit.

We listened enough to West's speech to know it was a different blbl-blah-blitz. "Trump is on his way to his hero now," said West, praising the president with the same flattering tone that we usually hear from Vice President Pence, Sean Hannity and the cast of "Fox & Friends."

If you've spent years listening to West's music, you know he's usually only talking that way. But on Thursday, West spoke the language of Trump's love, expressing his obsequiousness in a particular type of macho boaster that the president admires. Between two breaths, two narcissists smiled at each other across the desk as if looking at each other in a mirror.

This pivot still seems to be a bad dream for those keen fans of Kanye West who have always been able to hear streaks of altruism in the rapper's most volatile speech. West's televised response to the government's mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 – "George Bush does not worry about blacks" – remains one of the most surprising moments in the history of pop. And when West interrupted a MTV TV show in 2009 to suggest that a prize won by Taylor Swift should have been awarded to Beyoncé, he stood up against the institutionalized racism that permeates every corner of American life , even the musical shows.

[Read the entirety of Kanye West’s uninterrupted Oval Office monologue, annotated]

The problem was that West's big mouth was something bigger than him. But that began to change in 2013, when West began to derail his performance by giving sinuous speeches that felt deeply hurt and completely scriptless.

Yet he seemed to be on some kind of White House scenario, punctuating his noisy thoughts with right-wing topics. He doubled his proposal to abolish the 13th amendment. He suggested that the black community support the Democratic party solely because of welfare dependency. He blamed the gun violence on "illegal guns" and said he was defending the second amendment. At the end of the day, the National Rifle Association had tweeted that its "members are happy to see a celebrity who gets it".

Did West believe what he was saying? Does he know how much his new policy is going to cancel his old words? Does he understand that his opposing attitudes towards the left have allowed him to be exploited by the right?

Everything felt next to the point. West just wanted a hug from the rich man to the red tie. He wants to be the guy from Trump. You know, the kind of guy who feels less like a guy when he sees a woman running for president – a guy willing to align with the vision of the world without conviction and the little heart of every guy who has already shouted: "Lock her up. "

At the end of West 's remarks, Trump looked a little dizzy, but pleased. "He can speak for me anytime," the president told the swarm of reporters around his desk. And that was it. Do business. When you are a global superstar aspiring to become the tool of an aspiring autocrat, hearing is easy to succeed.