Rapper cancels headline slot at Snowbombing hours before he was due to go on stage

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Stormzy has pulled out of his headline slot at Snowbombing festival just hours before he was due to perform, after accusing its staff of racially profiling his manager.

The Brit award-winning rapper, 25, said his friends had been targeted by security at the event in Mayrhofen, Austria, on Thursday looking for someone carrying a weapon, “despite no one [in their party] fitting the description”.

Stormzy apologised to his fans but said he took the “drastic steps” to make a point about racism and racial profiling.

“My sincerest apologies to anyone who travelled all that way to watch me perform. I’m genuinely upset that you’ve wasted your time and money and that burns me more than you’d know,” he wrote on Instagram.

“The last ever thing I wanna do is let down anyone who’s taken time out to support me. So please hear me out, I too would be fuming if I travelled 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.”

He said his manager and friends who had travelled to the festival were “racially profiled, targeted and aggressively handled because they (security) had ‘reason to believe someone was carrying a weapon’”.

He added: “The security targeted them (despite no one fitting the description), were physically aggressive when handling them and there’s been no effort from the festival to actually deal and address the problem.”

A spokesperson for the festival said they were “deeply saddened” by Stormzy’s decision but their staff had acted “in accordance with protocol”.

The spokesperson said: “Snowbombing’s security were alerted to the possibility that an individual at the festival was allegedly carrying a weapon. In accordance with protocol, a small number of attendees, including Stormzy’s manager, were escorted to the nearest exit, searched and no weapon was found.

“Stormzy’s management were unhappy with the manner by which this took place and as a result Stormzy will no longer be performing.”

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The festival, which combines snow sports with a mix of musical styles, features Fatboy Slim and Chase & Status on its line-up this year.

It is not the first time the artist, who is one of the headliners at this year’s Glastonbury festival, has spoken out against instances of racism. In August 2017, he attacked the Met police for publicly linking a drugs bust in south-east London to that year’s Notting Hill Carnival. The raid took place shortly before the event, although about 10 miles away.

“How many drugs did you lot seize in the run-up to Glastonbury or we only doing tweets like this for black events?” he wrote on Twitter, in response to Scotland Yard’s tweet.

That January, Stormzy complained that police officers had broken down the door of his Chelsea flat after receiving reports of a suspected burglary, only to find him sleeping in his own home.

And, in an interview that March, he said he had regularly been stopped by police officers near his south London family home. “[It stopped] when I stopped walking around on the streets. But now I have a nice car, so I get pulled over instead,” he told Hunger.