As we’ve covered here at Tone Deaf, Kanye West’s headlining set at the most recent Glastonbury festival rifled a few feathers. While some fans were delighted to see the superstar rapper do his thing on the Pyramid stage, others responded with a petition to have him dropped from the bill.
There was even reportedly a campaign for punters to throw bottles of urine at West during his set and things got personal when one punter attended the festival flying perhaps the single most offensive flag in the festival’s history, featuring a still from Kim Kardashian’s sex tape.
Despite the backlash, West performed a well-received two-hour set with few hiccups besides an unfortunate stage-crashing incident and a rather ill-advised cover of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. There was also the little matter of just what BBC’s subtitle department was thinking when transcribing his set.
Still, there were a few fans who weren’t very pleased with West’s presence at the UK’s flagship music festival and they wanted to express it. Thankfully, most did not go the nasty route of attacking West’s family and instead stuck to flying flags with slogans like “Fuck Off Kanye”.
While West was too busy declaring himself the world’s “greatest rock star” to bother with the detractors, UK pop star Lily Allen felt different and decided to fulfil her civic duty by, uh, stealing someone else’s property and then burning it in a semi-ritualistic fashion.
“The flag said ‘FUCK OFF KANYE’, so I burned it till it said just KANYE. Don’t go for dinner at someone’s house and tell them their food sucks. I should be clear that this picture was taken BEFORE Kanye played on Saturday,” Allen wrote on Instagram, explaining a photo of her burning a white flag in a campsite bonfire.
So outraged was Allen at the flag, apparently, that she decided to cut the flag down from its post on one of the campsite barricades, before fleeing with flag in tow and burning it. The entire theft and wanton destruction of property was filmed and posted to Allen’s Instagram page (see below).
The alleged owner of the flag isn’t happy, either. Speaking to NME, a festival-goer known simply as Aoibheann said she and her friends were “gutted” to discover their flag had been stolen and claimed that its removal made finding their tent far more difficult late at night.
“It gave us a fright too because we didn’t know if they had robbed anything else so we searched our tents but it was all good,” she added. “I thought it was hilarious until I saw that she’d burned it and gotten all self righteous about it.”
“I don’t care who you are, you have no right to steal my stuff and vandalise it. Get off your high horse and stop nicking things.” Explaining the motivations behind the flag, Aoibheann said she and her fellow punters had no intention of taking the flag to West’s performance.
“We had no intention of taking it to his gig or of even going to his gig. We, along with many others, didn’t feel he represented what Glastonbury is about. And if I want to make a flag saying ‘fuck off kanye’ then I have every right to.”
[include_post id=”452638″]
“Glastonbury is all about peace, love, good vibes and possitivity. The guy [Kanye West] is an egotistical narcissistic and self-deluded idiot who’s still basking in the light of his one good album,” she added.
“His stand out attribute is his commercialism and self-promotion which completeley contradicts the socialist ethos of Glastonbury festival. So I reckoned he could just fuck off.” However, Allen had a word or two to say about this issue as well.
Taking to Twitter to respond to criticisms of her actions, Allen said “maybe [Kanye West] *comes across* that way because the press can’t help being racist… and the idea that a black man could be so confident and self-assured just too much for them to take.”
When one follower reiterated that the rapper’s perceived arrogance and the “way he generally comes across” is what riles up his detractors, Allen responded, “I can’t imagine people being as outraged at [Liam Gallagher] for saying the same things.”
@LewisBedford @DarylRWhite @NoiseyMusic maybe he *comes across* that way because the press can't help being racist
— lily (@lilyallen) July 1, 2015
@LewisBedford @DarylRWhite @NoiseyMusic and the idea that a black man could be so confident And self assured just too much for them to take
— lily (@lilyallen) July 1, 2015
@LewisBedford @DarylRWhite @NoiseyMusic I can't imagine people being as outraged at Liqm @liamgallagher for saying the same things.
— lily (@lilyallen) July 1, 2015
@NoiseyMusic @clairelouise001 well Glastonbury booked him so i guess it would disagree.
— lily (@lilyallen) July 1, 2015
