Kanye West is playing a small music festival in Slovakia next week – a career climb-down that’s almost his only option left after becoming a ‘global pariah’.
I can reveal he has been told to ‘stay away’ from Germany, France, the UK, Spain, Italy, Scandinavia and Australia due to his pro-Nazi views.
Both Wembley Stadium and the London Stadium in the UK told him that he wasn’t welcome even before the release of his appalling Heil Hitler single on May 8.
Sources indicate that he’s been touting for concerts across the globe but can’t get booked because of his constant vocal support for Fascism.
One said: ‘He’s getting his team to phone around desperately asking for gigs and he is said to be asking for $7 million a night. No one will touch him with a barge pole.
‘Wembley and London Stadium both said: “No chance, we don’t need the protests” – and that was before the single came out.’
(Just for context, $7million is more than either Adele or Coldplay get for a gig.)
The source adds: ‘It’s the same story everywhere they have asked. He is banned pretty much everywhere in Europe – either the venues won’t touch him or he isn’t able to travel there as he cannot get a visa.’
Kanye has been told to ‘stay away’ from Germany, France, the UK, Spain, Italy, Scandinavia and Australia due to his pro-Nazi views
Kanye West is playing a small music festival in Bratislava (pictured) in Slovakia next week
On July 20, Kanye will perform at the Rubicon festival in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. With a capacity of 26,000 people, frankly it’s the kind of venue he once wouldn’t have picked up the phone to.
And with a seat price of around $200 (£147), it’s very hard to see how the gig can possibly pay the outrageous $7million (£5.1million) appearance fee Ye is said to be demanding.
Music industry insiders tell me that ‘the economics make no sense’ as the venue cannot possibly recoup its costs, unless it is getting a slice of higher-value resale tickets.
But now I can reveal that his crisis is worse than anyone suspects. He has lost his most trusted lieutenants and is under huge financial pressure as well.
And according to an insider, he lost more than $3 million overnight in May.
His other sources of income are being closed off one by one. First Adidas cancelled its huge clothing deal with Kanye’s Yeezy brand, causing him to be unceremoniously kicked off the Forbes billionaire list as the site downgraded his wealth from $2billion to more like $400million.
Then Shopify pulled his Yeezy website, and brands including Balenciaga and The Gap severed ties.
My source says he’s still living like a billionaire but the money has stopped rolling in. ‘He was badly hurt by the end of the Adidas deal.’
Oh, and his team is falling apart, too. His publicist Milo Yiannopoulos has dropped him, and I can reveal his long-time manager John Monopoly has walked.
He has lost millions of dollars in bad real estate deals, most notably a reported $36 million hit on a house in Malibu last year. He also spends heavily on hotels, with he and his wife Bianca Censori living in five-star hotels both together and apart, even though they have a house in Beverly Hills.
And it’s said that West gives Bianca hundreds of thousands of dollars every time she walks out in stunt clothing he has chosen.
Meanwhile, he is facing as many as a dozen potentially costly lawsuits, including from former employees.
As a result, Kanye has been touting directly for business on social media. Even since deleting his X account recently, he still has 19million Instagram followers.
I’m also told he’s asking concert promoters to put money directly in his account, which is a music business no-no as they will find it hard to recover the cash if West decides for any reason not to perform.
What’s more, a source claims one of his (few) paying gigs – a concert that’s just been announced in Shanghai, China – has HALVED the money it is giving him, because he violated a ‘good behaviour’ clause.
After the Heil Hitler single came out they are said to have notified him that it had cost him $3.5million.
That concert will be at the 80,000 capacity Shanghai Stadium on July 12.
And yet somehow, the Rubicon festival has scraped together his full fee – despite a storm of protest over his planned appearance.
It’s said that West gives Bianca, pictured with the rapper in New York last month, hundreds of thousands of dollars every time she walks out in stunt clothing he has chosen
The rappers wife wears a low-cut bodysuit and knee high furry boots in Beverly Hills
A petition has been launched calling on the mayor of Bratislava to prevent West from performing, calling it ‘an insult to historic memory, a glorification of wartime violence and debasement of all victims of the Nazi regime’.
More than 3,500 people have signed the petition, which is endorsed by representatives from organisations such as Peace for Ukraine and Cities for Democracy. It accuses West of ‘repeatedly and openly adhering to symbols and [an] ideology connected with the darkest period of modern global history’.
The petition calls West ‘one of the world’s most famous antisemites’ and says it is ‘unacceptable that Bratislava should be the only city in Europe’ to host a performance by West.
It stressed that the performance could attract ‘radical and extremist groups from Slovakia and abroad’.
During the Second World War, more than 70,000 Slovak Jews were put in concentration camps, turned over to German authorities and murdered – and across Europe, six million Jews and millions of other innocent people were killed.
It’s impossible to understand how anyone could hold the kind of views Kanye now expresses. And yet it seems his depraved behaviour has no end.
On May 8, the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, the 48-year-old musician released a song called Heil Hitler. It ends with a sample of a speech given by Adolf Hitler in 1935, in which the Nazi leader calls for supporters to ‘stand up for me like I have stood up for you’.
The song was banned in Germany on the grounds of laws against hate speech and removed from most mainstream streaming platforms, apart from Elon Musk’s X.
Australia’s home affairs minister Tony Burke said last week that the rapper is now banned from Australia due to his offensive views.
Australia’s home affairs minister Tony Burke said last week his visa would be revoked due to his offensive views.
West – whose wife Bianca is Australian – has made a number of visits to Australia. Burke said: ‘He’s made a lot of offensive comments. But my officials looked at it again once he released the Heil Hitler song and he no longer has a valid visa in Australia.’
Burke said the rapper’s cancelled visa was, in any case, not intended for holding concerts. Asked if it was sustainable to bar such a popular figure, the minister added: ‘I think what’s not sustainable is to import hatred.’
Soon, a man who once had the world at his feet may be left with literally nowhere to go.
