Stormzy Pulled Out of the Snowbombing Festival Because of Alleged Racial Profiling
The rapper cancelled his appearance just hours before he was due to perform.
Yesterday, Stormzy was set to perform at the Austrian Snowbombing Festival but cancelled his performance a few hours prior to taking to the stage according to IOL. The reason for this, the rapper cited, was because his manager and friends were searched by security who said they believed that one of the people in Stormy's entourage had a weapon.
Stormzy took to social media to explain why he had pulled out of the festival. He said, "My manager and all my friends who were at the festival were racially profiled, targeted, and aggressively handled because they had "reason to believe someone was carrying a weapon."
He went on to express his sincere apologies for his fans who had spent their money on tickets and traveled all the way to support him.
The rapper added that, "So please hear me out, I too would be fuming if I traveled and spent money to go and watch an artist and they pull out last minute. However if these are the drastic steps that I need to take to make a point against racism and racial profiling then trust me I'm taking it."
Stormzy also accused of the festival organizers of not attending to the matter urgently. However, they later released a statement saying:
"Snowbombing would like to wholeheartedly apologize to Stormzy's team. We are doing everything we can to understand the full situation and are treating this with the utmost seriousness to ensure this does not happen again."
What is ambiguous, however, is what the festival organizers mean by ensuring that "this does not happen again". Are they referring to the way in which they searched Stormzy's team (despite none of his entourage fitting the description of the alleged "weapon carrier") or that they won't be so blatant in their racial profiling the next time?
