KANYE WEST is back in a BIG WAY and his RISE back to the top after ‘cancellation’ needs to be STUDIED!
Kanye West made history, after being ‘blackballed’ by the entire industry.
Ye had 80k people singing “Heartless” with him at SoFi Stadium Ye: “That’s what 80,000 people sound like ladies and gentlemen… they said I’d never be back in the states. Two sold-out concerts.”
West raked in $33 million as he waged a major comeback after his career was sidelined by his passion for Nazis, according to a new report.
Bloomberg says Ye snagged more than $18 million in ticket sales during his Friday concert alone, making it one of the highest-grossing single shows in the history of live music.
Also, Ye’s “Bully” enters the chart at No. 2, becoming his 14th album to hit the top 10. It debuts with 152,000 equivalent album units, with album sales making up for 56,000 of that total. It’s a surprisingly strong performance considering his hate speech over the past few years. Still, it does end his nearly career-long string of No. 1 solo albums as his 2004 debut, “The College Dropout,” peaked at No. 2. (“Donda 2,” his last solo album, was deemed ineligible to chart in accordance with Billboard’s bundling guidelines.)
If you REMEMBER, Ye is now INDEPENDENT, so all these sales go to HIM! Now these are the WINS!
But there has been some LOSSES too.
Pepsi, Diageo, PayPal, and Rockstar Energy have all cut ties with Wireless Festival following the announcement of Kanye West as a headliner.
Actor David Schwimmer took to social media Monday to thank several corporate sponsors who have pulled their support from the U.K.’s Wireless Festival, where Ye, formerly Kanye West, is set to headline for three nights in June. He is asking the remaining sponsors to do the same, insisting that the hip-hop superstar still has not offered a convincing apology for several years’ worth of antisemitic statements.
“It’s great to see companies with moral clarity,” Schwimmer wrote of Pepsi, PayPal and Diageo, three sponsors that have moved to sever ties with Wireless over Ye’s booking. (He did not specifically mention a fourth sponsor that also split from the festival Monday, Rockstar Energy Drinks.) “Unlike Wireless and Festival Republic, they decided not to platform an artist who became one of the most recognizable hate-mongering bigots in the world…”
The managing director of Wireless Festival has defended the decision to choose Kanye West as a headliner, encouraging people to offer the rapper “forgiveness”.
It follows a backlash over West’s scheduled appearance in July, which has seen sponsors pull out of the London event and criticism from politicians. The star released a song called Heil Hitler and sold swastika T-shirts last year. He later apologised and blamed his bipolar disorder.
Melvin Benn, managing director at Festival Republic, said: “Forgiveness and giving people a second chance are becoming a lost virtue in this ever-increasing divisive world.”
But Jewish groups have criticised Benn’s support for the star.
Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said that the Wireless boss’s statement “will not reassure many within the Jewish or other communities”.
The government is reviewing if West, 48, should be allowed to enter the UK.
Benn, who leads Wireless Festival’s parent company Festival Republic, said he is a “deeply committed anti-fascist” and lived on a kibbutz, a community in Israel, for many months in the 1970s.
In a statement, he said: “What Ye has said in the past about Jews and Hitler is as abhorrent to me as it is to the Jewish community, the prime minister and others that have commented and – taking him at his word – to Ye now also.”
Benn also said he has had someone in his life for the past 15 years who suffers from mental illness and has “witnessed many episodes of despicable behaviour” that he had to forgive.
“If I wasn’t before, I have become a person of forgiveness and hope in all aspects of my life, including work,” he said.
Wireless Festival is not giving West a platform to “extol opinion of whatever nature”, Benn said, only to perform songs that are currently played on radio and streaming platforms and “listened to and enjoyed by millions”.
“I would ask people to reflect on their instant comments of disgust at the likelihood of him performing (as was mine) and offer some forgiveness and hope to him as I have decided to do,” Benn said.
He added that West has a “legal right to come into the country and to perform in this country”.
The Gamutt Blog 