PHILADELPHIA — Macklemore has been removed as the opening act on Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour, days before Saturday’s Sept. 19 stop at Lincoln Financial Field.
The Seattle rapper called out “Free Palestine” at both MetLife Stadium shows in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sept. 4 and 5, with eight more U.S. dates booked.
“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,” U.S. promoter Messina Touring Group said in a statement carried by The Associated Press.
Lincoln Financial Field was among the venues named in reports and did not respond to requests for comment, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The show is expected to go on with Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe opening.
Macklemore points to Kraft
“Ed Sheeran and his team have made the decision to remove me from The Loop tour,” Macklemore wrote Monday in a 12-slide Instagram post.
Sheeran told him a week earlier that Patriots owner Robert Kraft, whose company owns Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., had called, he said.
“Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium,” Macklemore wrote. “Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.”
He said Sheeran told him, “The words ‘Free Palestine’ and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with.”
“What I said at MetLife I have been saying on stages around the world for almost three years,” Macklemore wrote.
“Antisemitism is real,” he wrote. “When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism or saying ‘Free Palestine’ gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn’t protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability.”
“I hope this isn’t the end of my relationship with Ed,” he wrote. “Thirteen years of friendship doesn’t disappear because of one painful disagreement.”
“I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2. Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say the words that somehow became too dangerous to say,” he wrote. “But if those words cost me the stage, while turning the conversation back to Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I’ve ever been on.”
Kraft responds
“Based on Macklemore’s recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran’s shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community, we determined that his participation in the September 25th and 26th concerts at Gillette Stadium would cross that line,” Kraft said, CBS Boston reported.
Kraft said he would welcome a sit-down with Macklemore.
The Anti-Defamation League called the rapper’s comments “hateful.” Sheeran’s representatives did not respond.