Rapper Macklemore, 43, whose legal name is Benjamin Haggerty, has been removed from the remaining U.S. dates of Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour after venues objected to his onstage statements supporting Palestinians in Gaza.
The cancellations affect stops in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Texas and Florida, according to tour promoters.
At recent shows, Macklemore wore a keffiyeh and told audiences, “I wanted to stand up here on stages across America and say two words that are near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine.”
Messina Touring Group, which promotes the U.S. leg of the tour, told Rolling Stone that venues had refused to allow Macklemore to remain on the bill. “We have been notified by venues on the upcoming U.S. tour dates that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans,” the promoters said. “After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates.”
Macklemore responded with a lengthy statement posted to Instagram in which he said Sheeran told him that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft had personally intervened regarding an upcoming show at Gillette Stadium, which is owned by the Kraft Group.
“Ed told me Robert Kraft called him,” Macklemore wrote. “We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium.”
Macklemore also said Sheeran relayed that the phrase “Free Palestine” and the sight of a Palestinian flag onstage “were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with.” Macklemore wrote that he responded to Sheeran by saying, “if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood.”
In the same statement, Macklemore said the people he considers the real victims of the conflict are “the Palestinian people” — “the men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today, and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don’t lose sight of that.”
Neither Kraft nor representatives for the Gillette Stadium ownership group have issued a public statement responding to Macklemore’s account. Sheeran has not publicly commented beyond what Macklemore described secondhand.
Macklemore had a string of chart hits beginning with 2012’s “Thrift Shop” but has not had a U.S. hit single in several years.
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