Rapper Azealia Banks has announced that she is done with Australia. Earlier this week, while on tour in the country, she cancelled her Brisbane show only a matter of hours before she was meant to perform. Her reasons behind the last minute decision was a past show in the city, that she has described as “the most racist, most demoralising experience of my fucking life”.
For context, this is not the first time that Banks has clashed with the land down under. Back in 2015, when after performing at Splendour In The Grass, she described it as a “waste of my fucking time”. Not long after the show, when an Australian radio DJ tweeted to congratulate her for finishing her set, she labelled the country’s audiences as “terrible crowds to play for” and “violent and belligerent”. Then in Melbourne in 2016, Banks left the stage after only 90 seconds when a beer can was thrown at her.
Banks was due to perform in Melbourne last Saturday, the 10th, but due to “visa issues”, it was postponed until this coming Saturday. She did however, play a show the following day in Sydney, and apart from the slight logistical hiccup, everything seemed to be running smoothly.
However, this Tuesday, the day of the Brisbane show, Banks took to her Instagram to share the news that it is cancelled, and that she would not be returning, citing her past experience of a show there. It was here that she alleged that the crowd had been “racist” and “demoralising”.
“I’m so sorry you guys – actually I’m not sorry – but listen: last time I was in Brisbane and y’all threw shit on the stage and damn near almost fucking hit me in the face with a fucking bottle of soda or whatever that shit was,” she said in a video. “That was the most racist, most demoralising experience of my fucking life and right now I’m on a really good track.”
“Sydney and Melbourne are the only cities I really want to play,” she continued. “Y’all got a whole different culture around here. I am too far away from home … I am a beautiful black woman and I am not going to get in front of some audience of white people for them to be throwing shit at me. I am so not sorry. I am not sorry at all. Brisbane, y’all are just going to have to take the L and smoke it.”
Only a matter of hours later, she then said the performance would go ahead, but with more stringent security. Banks said: “Any and everything that can be considered a [projectile] must be checked in at coat check. No keys, no coins, no hair brushes, no vape pens, no lighters. No drinks on the dancefloor. The minute something stupid happens I’m leaving.”
Banks proceeded to dub the Australian run “her farewell tour”, claiming that the country makes her “utterly miserable”, before taking a stab at the strength of its currency.
“After this run this will be my very last time touring Australia,” she said. “This place makes me utterly miserable and I’m too black and beautiful to have a bunch of white people in my face playing with me over their WEAK ASS CURRENCY.”
However, things did not go to plan. Point Productions, the production company responsible for Banks’ tour, contacted ticket holders with the news that the Brisbane show was definitely cancelled “due to unforeseen circumstances” and that automatic refunds were being issued.
“Point Productions would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused, this has been well out of our control,” they said.
This is a developing story.
