Azealia Banks has vowed she will never return to Australia while on tour in the country, and cancelled her show in Brisbane hours before she was due to go on stage, citing a past concert in the city as “the most racist, most demoralising experience of my fucking life”.
The US rapper was due to perform in Brisbane and Melbourne earlier this week, but both gigs were postponed due to “visa issues”. She performed in Sydney on Sunday night and her Melbourne show, which was cancelled hours before she was set to perform on 10 December, has been rescheduled for this Saturday.
But on Tuesday, Banks took to Instagram to announce her performance in Brisbane that night would be cancelled, detailing her past experiences in the city.
“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,” Banks 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 added. “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.”
Hours later, she said the performance would happen but with extra security measures: “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.”
She called this Australian tour her “farewell tour”.
“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.”
But soon after, Point Productions, the production company that brought Banks out to Australia, contacted ticket holders to let them know the Brisbane concert was definitively cancelled “due to unforeseen circumstances” and that they would receive automatic refunds.
“Point Productions would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused, this has been well out of our control,” they said.
Point Productions has been contacted for comment.
In 2015, Banks called performing at Splendour In The Grass festival a “waste of my fucking time”. When an Australian radio host sent her a tweet congratulating her for finishing a performance, she called Australian audiences “terrible crowds to play for” and “violent and belligerent”. While performing in Melbourne in 2016, she had a beer can thrown at her that led to her leaving the stage after only 90 seconds.
