A Wall Street Journal apology won’t wash away the past.
The Fourth of July is shaping up to be an interesting time for American entertainment.
The World Cup continues to bring people from every corner of the Earth. Freedom250 will see Flo Rida, Vanilla Ice and Trump take the stage. America250 will see The Smashing Pumpkins deliver melancholic bangers.
And Ye West will undoubtedly perform his decade-spanning classics, along with a lacklustre string of tracks from Bully, when he takes the stage at the Alamodome in San Antonio.
Despite continuing to play sold-out shows, a vast portion of the world has not forgotten the antisemitic insanity Kanye unleashed back in 2022.
Gina Ortiz Jones, San Antonio’s mayor, is one of those people who will not forgive and forget, taking to X to condemn the rap icon and his upcoming Fourth of July show, which coincides with celebrations marking America’s 250th anniversary.
“I support canceling the @kanyewest concert…[San Antonio] should not host someone with a record of hate speech and antisemitic comments…certainly not on July 4th, our Nation’s 250th birthday.”
The city’s mayor isn’t the first, and she certainly won’t be the last. Florida Senator Rick Scott has also strongly urged organisers to cancel Kanye’s Tampa show.
Even the hip-hop star’s attempts to perform outside America have been met with cancellations in places like London and Poland.
Regardless, Kanye has still managed to stage a successful run of shows in support of Bully. On June 12, 70,000 tickets were sold for his performance at the Boris Paichadze Dinamo Arena in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital.
It seems releasing new music and issuing a public apology was all it took for many fans to continue their support.
Back in January, Kanye issued an apology through The Wall Street Journal, addressing his previous antisemitic remarks and suggesting they were tied to his mental health and bipolar disorder.
The Reddit-fuelled public accountability may have been a genuine attempt at renewal, or simply an effort to get more people on board ahead of the album’s release.
Regardless, American mayors aren’t having a bar of it, even if some audiences elsewhere are.
