Macklemore is speaking out against several U.S. arenas for allegedly refusing to host his Free Palestine Tour.
On Friday (Nov. 6), the Seattle rapper took to Instagram to criticize nine U.S. arenas, claiming they rejected his requests to host the Free Palestine Tour. Macklemore kicked off his three-city tour overseas on Oct. 26 at Dublin, Ireland’s 3Arena, where he performed to a sold-out audience. The tour aims to raise money for organizations offering medical assistance, educational support, advocacy, and humanitarian aid to Palestinians.
“A lot of you have been asking about U.S. dates for The Free Palestine benefit tour and I wanted to give you an update,” he wrote in part. “From the beginning, our plan was to bring this tour home to the U.S. But after weeks of reaching out, nine major American arenas have turned us down.”
Macklemore also named the venues he had contacted: Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center, and UBS Arena in New York; Prudential Center in New Jersey; Intuit Dome, Kia Forum, and Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles; Chase Center in San Francisco; and Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.
According to the Grammy-winning rapper, he initially contacted the venues weeks earlier and was offered available dates. “But once they found out these were my benefit shows for Palestine, those dates were suddenly off the table,” he wrote. “The doors were closed. The conversations were all different, but the result was the same. The shows were not going to be allowed to happen in these venues.”
“In over twenty years of touring, I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he added.
Macklemore sees the alleged rejections as an attempt to intimidate and manipulate entertainers into silence. “But at this point, I’m three years past giving any s\*\*ts about maintaining any relationships, business or personal, with anyone that isn’t riding for a Free Palestine,” he wrote.
Despite the setback, Macklemore says he remains committed to the Free Palestine Tour, although it may take a different form.
“The people have spoken. We want an end to the genocide and we want a Free Palestine,” he wrote. “The arenas have made their decision. Now we’ll make ours. If they think the threat of never playing another arena in America will make me retreat into silence, they got me f\*\*ked up.”
“There will be more shows for Palestine. We’ll keep working with other artists and organizers, continuing where we left off in Europe,” he continued. “We’ll probably just take that s\*\*t outside where it belonged in the first place.”
“There comes a point when the world changes, not because those in power give us permission, but because the people stop asking for it. We will build our own stages,” he added.
“They may own the arenas. But they do not own the people who fill them. And they never will,” he concluded.
Responding to Macklemore’s allegations, an MSG Entertainment spokesperson told Rolling Stone, “We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability, and he’s not an arena-level act.”
Check out Macklemore’s statement about bringing his Free Palestine Tour to the U.S. below.
