Azealia Banks Tells Fans She’ll Cancel An Australian Show Because Fans Are Racist

Since this article was published Azealia Banks posted another story saying that she will come to Brisbane under precautions that “everything that can be considered a projectile must be checked in at coat check. No keys, no coins, no hair brushes, no vape pens, no lighters.’ She also took aim at Australian promoters for crafting “slave like contracts”. “After this run, this will be my very last time touring Australia…You can count this a farewell tour.”

Azealia Banks is not the first artist to denounce fan behaviour, whether that be globally or on Australian shores – in fact, the dialogue around bad crowds has made its way into the reporting of various media outlets and also onto social media. But on her burner account today, Banks took to Instagram to let fans know why she would be cancelling her Brisbane show: she was over the humiliation of bottle throwing, and racist, fans.

This is the first time in six years that Azaelia Banks has been on Australian Shores for a national tour, and so far its beginnings can only be described as rocky.

In Melbourne, she cancelled her show hours before she was set to perform. Her show in Brisbane was then postponed from the 8th of December until the 13th. Sydney has been the only city to receive a performance where Banks made it onto the Enmore Theatre stage a few nights ago. 

While her Brisbane and Melbourne shows were reportedly cancelled due to Visa issues, she has since posted numerous videos on her Instagram story shedding light on why she cancelled shows in the Queensland capital.

“I’m so sorry you guys – actually I’m not sorry – but listen: last time I was in Brisbane and ya’ll threw shit on the stage and damn near almost fucking hit me in the face with a fucking bottle of soda or whatever that shit was,” Banks voice said over a black screen.

“That was the most racist, most demoralising experience of my fucking life and right now I’m on a really good track.”

Banks went on to say that she was sure that the Australian media would turn it around and “make it [her] fault”; that there was “a whole different kind of culture around here”, and that she’s in “a place in her womanhood where [she has] enough emotional intelligence to erase room for error before it happens”. 

According to Point Blank Group, the touring company responsible for bringing Banks out to Australia, the Brisbane show “hasn’t been confirmed cancelled”, but ticket holders have already been offered a prompt to apply for refunds via their website. 

While many fans across the country will be disappointed in Banks’ cancellations, the artist is not alone in her resentment of Australian crowds – or crowds in general. Over the last few months, artists and commentators have come out to denounce various bouts of unacceptable fan behaviour. 

VICE recently wrote about it in “Why Do Live Music Audiences Suck Right Now?” citing moments in culture like Steve Lacy’s various controversies where, at one point, he threw a fan’s camera at the ground when moments before they had thrown it at his chest. In Australia, specifically, Purple Sneakers, a Sydney music publication, detailed the overwrought chant of the “shoey” on international acts like Jack Harlow, even though he announced to the audience that he was sober.

In Azealia Banks’ case, crowd moments like these in Australia were commonplace throughout her tour in 2016, with bottles thrown by the crowd in both Melbourne and, according to her, Brisbane.  

Especially on Australian shores, where the majority population is white, Black artists have an added layer of precarity when it comes to their performances. 

At both Tyler the Creator's Splendour in The Grass and Sydney shows, he’d intermittently stop to ask “Where all the n——— at? There’s one, there’s another,” before exclaiming how white the audience was. In a TikTok at a show in Perth he can be heard saying “Brisbane feels racist as fuck.”

At Kendrick Lamar’s recent Australian shows, the n-word was muted from several of his songs. The intent was clear: to stop the majority white audience from singing along. 

While Banks’ controversies haven’t shed the most positive light on her career – and I’d be remiss to not mention that she has had a contentious history with fans including being accused of transphobia and at numerous times storming off stage – we now live in an era where musicians are restructuring the narrative of the fan/musician relationship. There is no longer an obligation to fulfil the needs of the audience in favour of their own personal wellbeing, as exemplified by the flurry of cancelled shows in the last few years as artists set their own mental health and wellbeing as priority.

“I’ve had enough humiliation, I’ve had enough with the fucking media lying on me and all this other shit and I’m not taking the risk and I’m not sorry about it. I’m a beautiful Black woman and I’m not about to get in front of some audience of white people for them to be throwing shit at me,” Banks said in her Instagram post.

“I’m too far away from home. I’m already a little stressed out and I’m not trying to get in trouble in a foreign country. Brisbane, ya’ll just going to have to take the L and smoke it.”

Follow Julie Fenwick on Twitter and Instagram.

Read more from VICE Australia and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, This Week Online.