As every University student who reads The Onion knows, major news outlets like CNN have been putting Miley Cyrus’ uncomfortable twerk performance at the top of the nation’s priorities, overshadowing Syria and the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The Argus thought it would be fitting to put some VMAs coverage in the Opinion section, where you can usually find articulate and informed opinions on global affairs and the most important social issues facing America.

It seems to me that the typical negative responses to the performance fall into one of two categories: either the VMAs always try to be scandalous and this is nothing special, or it’s racist cultural appropriation that needs to be critiqued. Since I don’t really have much to contribute to either of those discussions, I thought that instead I’d talk about one of the night’s more under-buzzed moments: Kanye West’s incredible performance of “Blood On The Leaves.”

Maybe an assumed default state of Kanye fatigue is the cause for the general oversight of West’s performance. Mentions of it in the mainstream media have mostly fallen along the lines of E!’s observation that he looked like he was “having a seizure.” Critics are overlooking West’s shockingly tasteful and humble rendition of the brutal, bleak, and heartbreaking song off his most recent album, Yeezus. Although West is one of our biggest pop stars, he has ostensibly rejected the bubblegum extravagance of the last few decades of pop music with his most recent output. “Blood On The Leaves,” a melancholy rumination on alimony and past personal failures, seems completely out of place in a VMAs playlist of N*Sync and Lady Gaga, and his performance went out of its way to reflect that.

The minimalism of his show—no strobe lights, no foam fingers, just Kanye jumping around blacked out against a single image—is a huge step forward for a man whose prior VMA appearances have been clouded by the same kind of outrageous nonsense that Cyrus is now using to claim the spotlight. “Blood On The Leaves” shared the best aspects of West’s performances of “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” on SNL, stripping down their aesthetic even further to make the massive Barclays Center feel like a tiny venue, suffocated by West’s angst and regret.

That West pulled this off, and Bruno Mars’s performance of “Gorilla,” an ode to coked-out rough sex that was decorated with video-gamey projections and an assaulting neon-green light show, has been called the best of the night isn’t surprising, but it is kind of sad. However, if Kanye is being honest in his recently stated goals of becoming more of an artist with a capital “A,” this is a fine place to start. He doesn’t need to conquer the pop media circus anymore, but he needs to one-up whatever is on the radio on his own terms. If the VMAs are any indication, these terms are more mature than they have been at any other point in his career.

Say what you will about West’s relationship with Kim Kardashian—it’s an obvious ploy from both of them for gossip column buzz, almost insultingly transparent in its cloying grasp for attention. Maybe that’s a good thing. With a certain level of scrutiny on him at all times due to the Kimye pairing, Kanye doesn’t need to throw any tantrums to capture the public eye. Maybe his current radical minimalism is just a phase. Maybe he’s still putting crass lyrics in his songs purely for shock value. But in a time when other artists need to surround themselves with twerking teddy bears to get people to look up from their phones, Kanye has the freedom and audacity to make art that adults could conceivably watch without feeling embarrassed.