What will Kanye do with four minutes of 'free rein' at VMAs?

The annual MTV Video Music Awards are happening this Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City, and aside from the usual anticipation for the performances and the various award winners, the big story going into the show is, of course, Kanye West. Back on Thursday, MTV announced that the musical megastar would be making an appearance at the show. As if that wasn't already a big enough deal, there are now rumors that MTV has given him four minutes of the show to do whatever he pleases.

Now, the MTV Video Music Awards already have a reputation for being the type of award show where anything can happen. All you have to do is take a cursory glance at the history of the various performances and memorable moments throughout the 30-plus-year history of the award show and you'll have all of the evidence you need. Combine that with Kanye West's own personal history of stealing the show at extremely public events, and you have a recipe for, well, something. It could be disastrous, it could be amazing, or it could be a combination of both. Either way, there's plenty of anticipation for whatever Kanye's got in store for Sunday night.

One thing that probably won't be happening is some sort of interaction with Taylor Swift. The rapper and singer have had a tumultuous relationship ever since the 2009 VMAs, which is when West infamously crashed the stage in protest of Swift winning the award for Best Female Video. The "feud" between the two artists came to a head earlier this year when Swift expressed concern about a line in Kanye's song "Famous" -- the video for which is nominated for both Best Male Video and Video of the Year -- that was directed at her. Kanye claimed that she knew about the line before the song was released, but Swift denied it, and then she was revealed to be less-than-honest about the whole thing when Kim Kardashian West released a video that showed her husband having a phone conversation with Taylor about the line before the song came out. While some sort of "reunion" on this grand stage would be an interesting way to spend some of the four minutes of free rein that Kanye will have on Sunday, that probably won't happen because Taylor Swift won't be going to the show. So much for that.

There's also the possibility that Kanye West could use this time as a platform to just speak his mind on anything and everything that he desires. He's done this on multiple occasions during his concerts, so it wouldn't be a huge surprise to see him take the mic and just talk for a few minutes. It's currently an election year, and the Chicago-based star used his acceptance speech for his VMA Video Vanguard award at last year's VMAs to announce that he'd be running for President of the United States in 2020. Could he use this time to expand on his political platform? Will this be the official/unofficial start of Kanye getting on the campaign trail -- regardless of what happens in the current election that's going to take place in November? Personally, I doubt that we're going to see any sort of follow up on that statement, but again, it's Kanye West, so anything is really on the table as far as that is concerned, so I would be shocked but not surprised to see the enigma just spend time going on about the politics of Kanye West on the stage at the Garden.

There is another thing that Kanye West could do with his time: Just be completely silent. For all of the criticism that the man has received for being loud and blustery at times, there have been times where the mercurial artist has stunned the crowd with his lack of noise. He made headlines earlier this year for a surprise appearance at Coachella after he took to the stage during an A$AP Rocky concert and began rapping. However, his silence wasn't by design -- his mic was cut off due to the A$AP Rocky concert running late, so nobody could hear him speak. Still, would you really be shocked if Kanye just decided to spend the four minutes he's been allotted at the VMAs to engage in silent reflection while a raucous live crowd and an anxious viewing audience at home wonders exactly what's going on? Yeah, me neither.

Ideally, we'll probably just see Kanye perform on an extremely extravagant stage. He did just kick off his Saint Pablo Tour on Thursday night in Indianapolis, so it's possible that he'll find a way to import the visually-stunning stage that he's performing on for the tour into Madison Square Garden, and we'll all be tuning in to witness what could very well end up being remembered as the most lavish hip-hop performance in the history of the MTV Video Music Awards. Again, we're talking about Kanye West here, and anytime Kanye is involved, that means that anything and everything will happen. Even the producers for the show are reportedly still in the dark.

When it comes down to it, only Kanye West knows what Kanye West is going to do on Sunday. He and MTV have given us all an entire weekend to speculate on what could possibly happen, and it's possible that everybody on the planet could be clueless as to what happens until the man himself actually takes the stage on Sunday evening. Meanwhile, it's a safe bet to believe that Kanye is quite content with being the only man to have all of that power.