How Kanye West caused crowd crushes in the streets of New York City
Kanye West, for good and for ill, has been a cultural phenomenon for a long time now, but in 2016 the feverish pitch of his popularity almost led to disaster on the streets of New York.
This was during the Life of Pablo era, and Ye was still at the height of his career. Lots of people wanted a piece of him, which, in this instance, is what led to such chaos.
After one of his gigs scheduled for New York was cancelled due to adverse weather conditions, a consolation prize was offered to a small few. A performance of The Life of Pablo was arranged in a smaller venue, but, given the place’s limited capacity, it proved wholly inadequate for the task.
News of this gig began spreading online, and a lot of interest was generated. That wasn’t helped by claims online that artists such as Big Sean, Pusha T and Travis Scott were also going to show up to perform. Fans began to descend upon the venue.
What this amounted to was a very long queue. Within half an hour, a line stretched across a couple of blocks, with far too many people present and desperate to make it inside the low-capacity venue. There were thousands of people involved.
Things quickly became dangerous. As people sought to gain entry, a crowd crush ensued. People were squashed against vehicles and each other, with some panicking and resorting to climbing up on cars to escape. People sought to scale walls and fences and signs, too, desperate to escape the crush.
“The whole street was full,” one person who was there told The Guardian. “I jumped up on top of the mailbox.”
This situation played out long into the night, with Kanye, at one o’clock in the morning, tweeting to announce that the show had been “sold out.” But fifteen minutes later, the police tried to clear the streets of fans. They informed the mass of people that nobody was going to be permitted inside the venue, but they nonetheless stayed where they were.
Both the cops and the workers at the venue tried to tell the crowd to leave, but people wouldn’t listen. Chants of “Kanye” sounded, with some reciting his lyrics. It was no good. The closest they got to a Ye performance that night was when he drove nearby in a car, standing out of the sunroof. Given the size of the crowd, not everyone realised he was there until later, when they saw it on social media.
The cops eventually managed to start clearing out the streets, and the crowd, slowly, dispersed. The gig never happened, meaning all the chaos had been for nothing.