Lupe Fiasco Escorted Off the Stage at Inauguration Concert
Lupe Fiasco created something of a, well, fiasco before being asked to leave the stage during a performance at an Obama inauguration party on Sunday, January 20.
Fiasco played the StartUp RockOn inauguration bash at the Hamilton Live theater in Washington, D.C., performing his track “Words I Never Said.”
“Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist,” Fiasco rapped from the stage. “Gaza Strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say sh*t. That’s why I ain’t vote for him, next one either.”
It is reported that Fiasco played an anti-war song for 30 minutes and was told to move on to the next song. When he refused, he was escorted off the stage by security. StartUpRockOn organizers say that his removal from the stage was not prompted by what he said.
“Lupe Fiasco performed at this private event, and as you may have read, he left the stage earlier than we had planned,” said organizers in a statement posted on HyperVocal.com. “But Lupe Fiasco was not ‘kicked off stage’ for an ‘anti-Obama rant.’ We are staunch supporters of free speech and free political speech. This was not about his opinions. Instead, after a bizarrely repetitive, jarring performance that left the crowd vocally dissatisfied, organizers decided to move on to the next act.”
Fiasco’s comments at the event aren’t the first time he’s publicly criticized Obama. In 2011, he said that, “To me, the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America” during an appearance on CBS’s “What’s Trending.” He also said in the same interview that he was not going to vote in the 2012 election because, “I don’t get involved in politics. It’s meaningless.”
After that interview he appeared on an episode of “The O’Reilly Factor” to further discuss his views on the president and why he feels the war in Afghanistan is unjust.
