With Coachella less than a month away, the California festival has been in the headlines a lot for the last couple of months. In December, Travis Scott was dropped from the festival’s lineup after previously being a headliner for the show. Last month, the festival also dropped all COVID-19 restrictions so everyone with or without a vaccine will be able to go. But, the number one reason why Coachella has been in the news is because of one Mr. Kanye West.
In February, West said that would not perform at the festival unless Billie Eilish apologized to Travis Scott.
Now, there is a petition that has been signed over 37,000 times to have Kanye removed from the Coachella lineup. This comes just days after West’s Grammy performance was canceled, despite him having five nominations.
The petition on Change.com states, “We have watched Kanye harass, manipulate, and hurt Kim, Pete, and others for over a year now. No one seems to want to stand up to him, and the ones that do, he puts under fire as well. Most recently, he has been threatening actual bodily harm on others. This is ridiculous that he is allowed to freely do this. Coachella (along with other brand names that are still working with him) should be ashamed of themselves and should not be giving him any more of a platform.”
It seems that West’s almost months-long social media saga, (which he religiously posted about his children, Kim Kardashian and her new boyfriend, Pete Davidson) has led to some frustration among music listeners.
It even led to West being suspended from Instagram last week.
But, despite all the news that West has made and the negative press that he’s gotten, there is one person that is standing in his corner, Torey Lanez. The same guy who allegedly assaulted Megan Thee Stallion by shooting her in the foot.
The rapper/singer created a Change.com petition of his own called, “KEEP OUR BLACK MEN ON COACHELLA AND ALL OTHER FESTIVAL.”
Lanez petition states, “We are watching the industry and fake cancel culture remove all of our legendary black men , black celebrities and black moguls .....from festivals , from our culture and from our lives ... and it starts with us .... we must make a change .. so we can keep our black men thriving.”
As if Lanez standing up for West of all people was weird, this man also brought George Floyd into his cause.
Lanez continued in the petition, “we stood for equal rights of black men 2 years ago with GEORGE FLOYD .. what changed from “then to now” in regards of the protection of BLACK MEN.”
Lanez wrote more but I don’t feel like wasting any words.
So far, his petition has over 600 signatures with a goal of getting to 1,000.
Last week, West gave Lanez his props for giving him life advice in a video shared on social media. West said, “So I called different people I knew and the best advice I got right now was from Tory Lanez. He said to pray and ask for God to speak through me.”
We’ll see if that method actually works.
Despite all this, Coachella has not made any announcements of West being pulled from the Coachella lineup.
Along with Billie Eilish and Harry Styles, West is one of the headlining acts during the festival that is set to take place across two weekends in April (April 15-17 and 22-24 to be exact).