Pressure was mounting Sunday on the American rapper Kanye West to be pulled from his headline role at a London music festival this summer, after criticism from U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Pepsi already has withdrawn its lead sponsorship role of the Wireless Festival at Finsbury Park in north London between July 10-12. Other sponsors of the event, including Budweiser and PayPal, are being urged to follow suit.
Pepsi didn’t provide an explicit reason for its decision to pull out of the event, even though publicity for the festival promoted the event under the branding “Pepsi presents Wireless.”
“Pepsi has decided to withdraw its sponsorship of Wireless Festival,” the company said in a statement Sunday.
Kanye West was booked perform in front of around 150,000 revellers over the course of the festival’s three nights.
He changed his name to Ye in 2021, and he has drawn widespread controversy in recent years for a series of antisemitic remarks, and has voiced admiration for Adolf Hitler. Last year, he released a song called “Heil Hitler” — a few months after advertising a swastika T-shirt for sale on his website.
The 48-year-old musician apologized in January for his antisemitic remarks in a letter published as a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal. He said his bipolar disorder led him to fall into “a four-month long, manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life.”
Fans of his at a sold-out concert Friday at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, his first major U.S. performance in nearly five years, appeared to separate his personal beliefs and public statements from his music — and were ready to forgive after his January apology letter.
However, Starmer said it was “deeply concerning” that the rapper was booked to perform at the long-established festival,
“Antisemitism in any form is abhorrent and must be confronted clearly and firmly wherever it appears,” he said in remarks published by The Sun on Sunday newspaper. “Everyone has a responsibility to ensure Britain is a place where Jewish people feel safe and secure.”
Kanye West’s scheduled appearance follows signs of growing antisemitism in the U.K.
Two men and a 17-year-old boy were ordered to remain in custody on Saturday on charges of torching four ambulances run by a Jewish community-service in northwest London. And last October, two men died in an attack on a Manchester synagogue.
Phil Rosenberg, president of the board of deputies of British Jews, said it was “absolutely the wrong decision” to allow Kanye West to play.
Wireless Festival didn’t immediately comment when contacted.
