Rapper Macklemore is claiming that New York City’s Madison Square Garden and eight other arenas banned his current “Free Palestine” world tour.
Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, recently began the tour in Europe on Oct. 26, with stops in Dublin, Paris and London.
On Friday, the rapper wrote on Instagram that, along with MSG, he was prevented from performing at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center; Long Island’s UBS Arena; Los Angeles’ Intuit Dome, Kia Forum, and Crypto.com Arena; New Jersey’s Prudential Center; San Francisco’s Chase Center; and Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena.
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“By mid-September, we received available dates at these arenas through the end of the year,” he wrote. “But once they found out these were my benefit shows for Palestine, those dates were suddenly off the table. 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.”
Macklemore said that in over 20 years of performing, he had “never experienced anything like this.”
“We live in a country that prides itself on freedom of speech,” he continued. “Yet we’ve 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. Today it’s Palestine. What will it be tomorrow?”
MSG responded Friday with a dig at the rapper, writing, “We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability and he’s not an arena level act.”
Macklemore was kicked off singer Ed Sheeran’s tour after he made pro-Palestine comments onstage at MetLife Stadium on Sept. 4.
Following Macklemore’s exit, all of Mr. Sheeran’s openers left the tour in solidarity.
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