Macklemore says nine US arenas refused his Free Palestine tour
The rapper claims nine major American venues turned down his fundraising tour, alleging intimidation, manipulation and suppression behind the refusals.
Rapper Macklemore says nine major arenas in the United States have refused to host his Free Palestine tour, a fundraising run he had hoped to bring to American audiences. He made the claim in an Instagram post, in which he alleged that "intimidation, manipulation and suppression" lay behind the decisions. The account comes entirely from the musician himself, and the reporting available does not include independent confirmation of the refusals.
Among the venues he named are Madison Square Garden in New York, Arena in Los Angeles and Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The tour is a fundraising tour, which means the refusals, as Macklemore describes them, would limit the number of audiences and the amount of money it could raise in the country. He has not said in the sources available how many dates were requested at each venue or at what stage the discussions ended, and the reporting does not give a figure for any money the tour was expected to generate.
The venues' own reasons for declining have not been reported. No statement from Madison Square Garden, Arena, Barclays Center or the other six unnamed venues appears in the sources, so the allegations of intimidation, manipulation and suppression remain Macklemore's claims. Readers should weigh them as his account rather than as established findings about how the decisions were made.
The post arrives against the backdrop of a separate dispute in his recent career. Macklemore was dropped from Ed Sheeran's Loop tour, a removal that reports link to comments he made about Gaza. A second outlet, the Standard, corroborates the Sheeran tour removal, but the available sources do not set out the full details of that decision, the date it was made, or the exact wording of the remarks that preceded it.
Taken together, the two episodes put the rapper's stance on Gaza at the centre of his dealings with the live music industry. His post suggests that the venue refusals are part of a wider pattern of pressure, yet the sources do not show whether the Sheeran removal and the arena decisions were connected by the same people or the same reasons. Whether the venues' decisions were shaped by his political statements, as his post implies, is not something the available reporting has established.
For now, the claim stands as Macklemore's own assessment of the rejections he has faced. The reporting makes clear what he has alleged, what can be confirmed about the Sheeran tour, and what remains unexplained, namely the reasons the nine arenas gave, if they gave any, for turning down the Free Palestine tour.
Source: theguardian.com
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