The Top 10 Everything of 2009

"I'm not crazy, y'all. I'm just real." Such was rapper Kanye West's explanation for his bizarre upstaging of country singer Taylor Swift after she won Best Female Video at September's MTV Video Music Awards. In a move that immediately entered the annals of award-show infamy, West interrupted Swift's earnest acceptance speech by climbing onto the stage, taking her microphone and suggesting that the award should rightfully have gone to Beyoncé, and in the process, he introduced the ubiquitous "Imma let you finish" catchphrase. Perhaps taking a hint from the chorus of boos filling New York City's Radio City Music Hall, West soon posted a meandering, all-caps apology to Swift on his website and continued his apology tour on NBC's Tonight Show, saying contritely that "it was someone's emotions that I stepped on, and it was rude, period." Few TV viewers would quarrel with him — or with President Obama, for that matter, who in an unguarded moment referred to West as a "jackass."