Macklemore Dropped from Festival Lineup After ‘F*ck America’ Chant

Macklemore has been dropped from performing at the inaugural Neon City Festival in Las Vegas, just days after leading a “Fuck America” chant at a recent show.

Neon City Festival announced its 2024 headliners​​ via an Instagram post yesterday, adding a note in the caption: “Macklemore will no longer be performing due to unforeseen circumstances.” While the festival didn’t specify its reasoning for cutting Macklemore out of the event, many assume it has something to do with the recent viral chant.

Earlier this month, Macklemore released his second song in support of the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees. Then, he performed the song at the Palestine Will Live Forever Festival in Seattle, where he led the crowd in the “Fuck America” chant—which caught the attention of a few prominent right-wing trolls on X.

“Hind’s Hall 2” is a sequel to his previous song of the same name, and it features Gaza-born rapper MC Abdul, Palestinian-American singer Anees, and the L.A. Palestinian Kids Choir. Both tracks are named after a building at Columbia University that students occupied and renamed after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza.

At the concert, he said the current war in Palestine is “a genocide and it has been since 1948,” the year Israel was established. 

The song’s lyrics are just as pointed: “Long live the resistance if there’s something to resist/ Had enough of you motherfuckers murdering little kids,” Macklemore raps. “But there’ll never be freedom by pleading with Zionists/ World screaming Free Palestine/ We see the manual, we know how you colonized.”

He also called out presidential candidate Kamala Harris, rapping, “Hey Kamala, I don’t know if you’re listening/ But stop sending money and weapons, or you ain’t winning in Michigan/ We uncommitted, and hell no we ain’t switching positions/ Because the whole world turned Palestinian.”

This isn’t the first time the rapper has stood his ground on this issue—and odds are, it won’t be the last. Back in August, he went as far as canceling his October Dubai show due to the United Arab Emirates’ role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis.”