Macklemore blames some of America’s most iconic scenes for interrupting his ‘Free Palestine’ tour.
The rapper, who recently had dates in Dublin, Paris and London in late October, said on Instagram on November 6 that he had been turned down by US venues including New York’s Madison Square Garden, New Jersey’s Prudential Center, Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, Long Island’s UBS Arena, Los Angeles’ Intuit Dome, the Kia Forum and Crypto.com Arena, San Francisco’s Chase Center and Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena.
“In mid-September we received the available dates in these arenas through the end of the year,” he said in the Instagram post. “But once they found out that these were my benefit shows for Palestine, those dates were suddenly pushed aside. The doors were closed. The conversations were all different, but the outcome was the same. The shows were not going to be allowed to take place in those venues.”
“In over 20 years of touring, I have never experienced anything like this,” he also wrote. “I would rather lose every opportunity in this industry than spend another day protecting people who value their business relationship with Israel more than Palestinian human life. »
“We live in a country that prides itself on freedom of speech. Yet we have reached a point where a handful of billionaires can decide which causes are acceptable, which voices are welcome and which human lives are worth defending,” he later wrote. “Today is Palestine. What will it be tomorrow?”
Macklemore ended his message with: “They may own the arenas. But they don’t own the people who fill them. And they never will. FREE PALESTINE!”
An MSG Entertainment spokesperson responded to Macklemore’s claims in a statement to Variety: “We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability and this is not an arena level performer.”
In September, Macklemore was fired from Ed Sheeran’s “Loop” tour due to pro-Palestinian comments he made during his first set at MetLife Stadium. All of the other opening acts on the tour and Sheeran’s backing band ended up leaving the tour in solidarity with Macklemore and Palestine.
Variety has contacted the nine arenas mentioned by Macklemore for comment.
See Macklemore’s full post on Instagram below.
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