Entertainment
Kanye West leaned into antisemitism. Now he's headlining L.A.'s Rolling Loud Festival
R.C. Hogue grew up with Kanye West’s music. The rapper was “a top-three artist for me and a big part of my upbringing,” said Hogue, a 30-year-old from Los Angeles. Even after West supported Donald Trump, Hogue tried to “separate the art from the artist, because a lot of artists have done messed up things.” But he couldn’t forgive West for saying, in 2022, that he’d go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” and praised Adolf Hitler.
Hogue was looking forward to this weekend’s 10-year anniversary tour of the Rolling Loud hip-hop festival in Inglewood — until he saw West’s name, now just Ye, added to Thursday’s bill. Hogue is likely staying home, at least for the night West will perform.
“Time heals a lot of wounds, but with Kanye, it’s a little too soon to start listening to him again,” Hogue said. “He’s shown no remorse, no sign of admitting he’s wrong, and there’s no excuse for antisemitism. It would feel weird to be there.”
West’s unexpected return to Rolling Loud — the biggest rap festival brand in the world — alongside his collaborator Ty Dolla Sign suggests the music industry may be tentatively welcoming him back.
Some rap fans see West as a roguish outlaw who beat cancel culture. Local Jewish communities worry that booking him adds a sense of impunity around hate speech. Experts wonder why an acclaimed and successful festival would risk booking an artist famous for both antisemitism and ongoing struggles with mental health.
“A lot of music festivals will drop artists to protect their reputation,” Hogue said. “But Rolling Loud is doing the opposite.”
Representatives for Rolling Loud declined an interview request to discuss West’s booking. West’s new booking agent, Cara Lewis, did not respond to an interview request.
In the years after West acknowledged his bipolar disorder and grief following the death of his mother, fans and the industry tried to put his erratic behavior in the context of his mental health challenges. West’s music meant a lot to fans like Hogue, and they didn’t want to cast him out.
Ty Dolla Sign, left, and Ye will headline Thursday night’s Rolling Loud bill in Ye’s first live performance in L.A. since 2012.
(Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP; Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Yet in 2022, his shocking outbursts led to the dissolution of his multibillion-dollar apparel deal with Adidas; he was banned from social media sites and dropped by his talent and booking agents, and left with no record label. West’s career — one of music’s most influential and lucrative — seemed in shambles.
In December, at a small Las Vegas listening party, West falsely cited “60 million of us in America, 60 million Jews in the world,” and shouted “Jesus Christ, Hitler, Ye, third party, sponsor that.” In January, West wore a shirt from the Norwegian metal band Burzum, whose founder Varg Vikernes was convicted of murder and inciting racial hatred.
Yet some corners of the music industry may be ready to get back in business with him.
“I was surprised when I first heard that Kanye was headlining Rolling Loud because it seemed unnecessarily risky for the festival,” said Dave Brooks, Billboard’s senior director of live music and touring. “Ticket sales seemed to be doing well, and the risk that Kanye would say something offensive, have a meltdown or refuse to complete his performance poses a real threat to Rolling Loud’s brand.”
But after a few other listening events went off without incident, “I think the decision makes more sense,” Brooks added. “Kanye and Ty have successfully completed five listening party events. The Rolling Loud guys are definitely using the performance to drive ticket sales and are positioning themselves to look very smart if the show goes off without any major disruptions.”
West’s performance, booked as a collaboration with Ty Dolla Sign under the aegis of ¥$, is still shrouded in mystery, but it will be his first live performance in L.A. since his co-headlining set with Drake at a benefit show in 2021. He was booked to perform at Coachella in 2022, but dropped out weeks before showtime.
The duo’s new album, “Vultures 1,” topped the Billboard album charts for two weeks in February. It was West’s first album to spend multiple weeks atop the charts since 2011, and yielded a number-one single “Carnival.” The album is packed with guest stars like Travis Scott, Playboi Carti and Chris Brown. (West been teasing a “Vultures 2” release soon)
If West felt chastened by his recent blowback, it didn’t show on the album’s title track, where he alluded to his recent career immolation. “How am I anti-semitic?” West raps on “Vultures.” “I just f-ed a Jewish b-.”
Danya Ruttenberg, a feminist rabbi and author of “On Repentance And Repair,” said she was “absolutely grossed out” when she first heard that lyric. “It’s as vile as any sexualization of a people.”
But she’s more worried that this weekend, tens of thousands of young rap fans will sing along, just a few miles from where a white supremacist group, in 2022, hung a banner over the 405 freeway saying “Kanye was right about the Jews.”
“Anyone feeling validated by Kanye will feel more comfortable perpetuating literally medieval hate speech after this,” Ruttenberg said, of his booking at Rolling Loud. “This performance makes Jews less safe.”
From left: Tariq Cherif and Matt Zingler, who are co-founders of the Rolling Loud Hip-hop music festival.
(Gabriella Angotti-Jones/Los Angeles Times)
Ruttenberg also noted the apology that West wrote on Instagram after his Las Vegas tirade – a mea culpa written in Hebrew. (“I sincerely apologize to the Jewish community for any unintended outburst caused by my words or actions. It was not my intention to offend or demean, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused.”)
“Most American Jews don’t read Hebrew,” Ruttenberg said. “The idea that we’re this other people with a mysterious other language, or that our real home is Israel, that we’re a global enterprise connected via language instead of citizens of this country, is all part of same trope.”
Given the backdrop of the Gaza conflict, which has led to antisemitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S., some worry about making an artist with a history of bigoted statements seem acceptable – even edgy and alluring.
“Kanye has done horrific damage as far as contributing to the never-ending tsunami of antisemitism in this country,” said rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights group. “The struggle is to keep bigotry out of the mainstream, and there’s nothing more mainstream than a concert with 100,000 people. Putting him front and center is a signal to others that maybe they can sign on too.”
Cooper met with the TV personality Nick Cannon in 2020 after Cannon made antisemitic remarks, and said he was impressed by Cannon’s willingness to examine his prejudice and apologize. West, however, has done little to change, Cooper said.
“If someone wants to make amends, take them seriously,” Cooper said. “I’m not a censor of anything in the arts, but when people like Kanye have taken hate and made it cool, it projects hate into the mainstream of culture at exactly the worst time for our community.”
Festival goers attend Rolling Loud at NOS Events Center on December 12, 2021 in San Bernardino, California.
(Timothy Norris/WireImage via Getty Images)
West has burned many bridges in music since 2016, when after a troubling rant onstage at a Sacramento concert, he was hospitalized for mental health reasons and canceled his tour. Most fans and industry figures sympathized with his mental health challenges and were ready to support him again, even as he later met Donald Trump in the White House.
Some promoters took a chance on him, and got burned.
In 2022, the production company Phantom Labs, which helped build the Coliseum concert with Drake, sued West, claiming they were owed “$7 million by Kanye in outstanding fees for work on various projects over the past year.” West’s last-minute Coachella cancellation in April of 2022 left the fest scrambling for a replacement headliner (they ended up booking Swedish House Mafia and The Weeknd). West was slated to headline Rolling Loud’s flagship Miami festival in July 2022, but reneged five days before showtime. He was replaced by Kid Cudi, who was heckled offstage by fans angry West wasn’t performing.
At the time, Rolling Loud’s Tariq Cherif told the Times that “we’d never had a headliner pull out until Kanye did, and we don’t take that lightly. The platform we built deserves respect, and we didn’t like it.”
West’s conduct grew more troubling. He wore a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt at Paris Fashion Week, and dined with Trump and the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who worked on Ye’s ill-fated presidential campaign. That rattled his business partners, concert bookers and talent agencies, who cut ties under public pressure.
Rolling Loud’s gamble that West can still draw crowds will be a test of his viability as a touring act. The fest-opening set will be open to Rolling Loud fans who already purchased passes to see Nicki Minaj, Post Malone and Future, with a limited number of single-day passes just for West and Ty Dolla Sign’s set.
“If Kanye impresses fans with his performance at Rolling Loud, then he has a real shot at booking future festival dates and one-off concerts this summer,” Brooks said. “That’s what I would expect coming out of a really strong showing at Hollywood Park – five to eight festival dates through the end of the year, but I don’t think a tour in 2024 is realistic at this point.”
Kanye West performs during Puff Daddy and Bad Boy Family Reunion Tour at Madison Square Garden on September 4, 2016 in New York City.
(Dimitrios Kambouris)
West previously complained in a February Instagram post that “when I call, people say there’s no [open dates] for me, and you know why that is.” His booker, Cara Lewis, was West’s agent at WME and CAA during the peak of his commercial career, when he was one of the most ambitious live performers in the world. His listening events for “Vultures 1,” like one last month at Chicago’s United Center, still pulled big crowds. Billboard estimated that his five listening party events for “Vultures 1” grossed $12 million.
“Many people – both fans and executives inside of the music industry – are struggling to make sense of Kanye’s return in light of all the antisemitic and terrible things he has said or written on social media,” Brooks said. “But there is clearly still a big market for Kanye and people willing to work with him. Some members of Kanye’s own inner circle are Jewish, and I assume that those individuals aren’t just motivated by money, but care about him and want to help. “
That troubles Ruttenberg. “This fest’s organizers can count themselves as responsible for giving him this platform,” she said. “It’s extremely unhelpful to say the least. This fest has basically said Jews, which include Jews of color, are not welcome. The other performers have some hard questions to contend with now.”
The Times reached out to several top artists at Rolling Loud, including the Jewish rapper BLP Kosher and Nicki Minaj, who denied West clearance of a 2020 verse for use on “Vultures 1,” about sharing a bill with West. All declined to comment or did not respond.
One could draw some parallels to West’s frequent collaborator Travis Scott. After 2021’s Astroworld disaster, where ten fans were crushed to death as Scott performed, Scott took a year off from performing and donated to affected families. He was not criminally charged, though many lawsuits remain. He later returned to headlining stadiums and major festivals without incident.
To judge by comments on Rolling Loud’s social media, many fans seem excited – or at least neutral – about West’s comeback performance, which will be a major event in hip-hop no matter what happens onstage. “As for the fans who support him, I assume they have either forgiven Kanye for his past comments,” Brooks said, “or they simply don’t care or in some cases, sadly, agree with Kanye.”
Longtime fans like Hogue are mulling those hard questions too, as they decide whether or not to attend Rolling Loud.
“Rolling Loud probably wanted to add value to their lineup and their number one priority is selling tickets, but it does make me raise an eyebrow,” Hogue said. “If you have a platform like this, you do have some duty to be moral.”
Mr. Reset and The Society of Turnbuckle and Bone is a gripping sci fi horror/comedy featuring Vinny Pacifico, who is an ex-Ring of Honor Wrestler. What’s it about? What did we think about it? Read on for our spoiler free review!
But first? Take a look at the trailer!
Synopsis
Former Ring of Honor talent Vinny Pacifico stars as a rising indie wrestler lured by the promise of fame and fortune into a dark world of intense trials and sacrifice.
Rob Ryzin (ex-AEW), Bobby Fish (ex-NXT), Nick “Percy Watson” McNeil (ex-NXT), and Nick “Jamie Stanley” Stuible also star alongside writer-director Jedi Koszewski.
From The Press Release
The spectacle of professional wrestling grapples with psychological dread in Mr. Reset and The Society of Turnbuckle & Bone.
Full of gauzy, gorgeous imagery, a kaleidoscope palette, and themes that blend science fiction, body horror, and dark comedy, the surreal horror film explores a secret society that manipulates the wrestling industry from behind the scenes under the enigmatic Mr. Reset’s watchful eye.
Produced by Audacity Complex Studios, the film strips away the glitz of sports entertainment to reveal its psychological toll, while never shying away from the darkly comic moments that lurk in the industry’s shadows.
“This project holds special meaning for me because it brings together two of my greatest passions: horror and professional wrestling,” Pacifico commented. “Through this story, I’ve had the privilege of exploring authentic experiences within a fictional framework and shedding light on growing up in the entertainment industry.”
Here’s a look at the poster art!
My Thoughts
If you like movies that have a horror/conspiracy feel to them with a hint of creepy, this is the movie for you. The cast did a phenomenal job, and the storytelling was spot on. It also had a touch of breaking the 4th wall in there. This is a great film with a lot of drama, horror, and bad decisions. I will give a PSA to anyone who is sensitive to lights as it switches back and forth a lot. I like the news element to the movie and how it goes from 1st person to 4th person.
Final Thoughts
I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone under 13 because of the nature of the film and the tricks it can play on your mind. Also, it has body horror which younger viewers might not be able to handle. The gore and the trauma in the movie play on your mind and is not for the faint of heart. Excellent storytelling and the director did a phenomenal job. I highly recommend this B-list movie with a 9/10 for me based on the bizarreness of it and the great storytelling. Sometimes you need a reset.
Mr. Reset and The Society of Turnbuckle and Bone on VOD now!
Paul Avery, a journeyman actor best known for his role on “All My Children,” and his wife, Sheila, have died following a house fire. He was 81 and she was 77.
The couple’s death was confirmed by their daughters Parker Sanchez and Kyle Avery, who said the fire broke out in their home in Blairstown, N.J., early last Tuesday morning. While firefighters were able to reach Paul and Sheila inside the Mohican Road home, the couple succumbed to smoke inhalation.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
Paul had a recurring role playing Hughie the bartender at Foxy’s on the ABC daytime soap “All My Children” for 12 years. He also acted in the 1978 film “Superman,” “Three’s Company,” “Soap,” and appeared in more than 300 commercials. He also acted in theater productions and produced plays in both New York and Los Angeles.
According to his daughters, the actor joked that his “elastic face” landed him multiple national commercials that ran concurrently. Casting directors looking for a “Paul Avery type” would turn the actor away because he was in too many commercials.
“He had a teeny tiny part — one line in Superman — but boy did he make a meal out of that,” Sanchez joked.
Kyle Avery added that at the Oscars, they played a clip from “Superman” that featured Paul reciting his line.
“His good friend ran into the kitchen and made him an Oscar out of tinfoil and handed it to him,” she said. “But I think the thing that he was proudest of was that he could make a living as an actor.”
Paul Avery was born Oct. 8, 1941; and Sheila Avery was born May 22, 1949. Paul was raised in Indianapolis, served in the Vietnam War in his 20s and moved to Los Angeles and then New York by his late 20s to try to make it as an actor. Sheila was raised in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to New York where she worked as a registered nurse but also had a background in theater.
She studied the craft in college, performed on a USO tour in Vietnam and worked as a costume mistress.
According to the couple’s daughters, the two brought their Midwest charm and sensibilities to the East Coast.
The couple met while living in an apartment building filled with other journeymen actors in the late 1970s.
“They were all part of this theater community, people who would go from regional theater to regional theater with the season,” Kyle Avery said. “They were a whole troupe of people who’d be in New York for part of the year, but then they’d go and be in Lakewood, Ohio, or Kansas City or Chicago, just following the theater.”
Sheila was previously married to John Quincy Bruce Jr., also an actor in the New York theater community and the father of Sanchez. Sheila and Paul got together in 1982 and married in 1984. They celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary in April.
Paul was a jack-of-all-trades and master of many. He was a small plane pilot who often flew into a tiny airport in Blairstown, N.J., which is how the couple discovered the town they’d call home. There, they opened a bookstore, Cabbages and Kings. Paul also launched a magazine: the Warren County Companion. According to the couple’s daughters, Paul was the first internet service provider in town. He also penned film reviews for the New Jersey Herald and some for the New York Times as well.
Sheila found what her daughters called the “perfect job,” which brought together her work as a registered nurse and background in theater: speaking in schools about domestic violence and sexual assault. She also became a counselor who worked with survivors, and a trainer who worked with volunteers, teaching them how to interact with victims.
“People who took her training 20 years ago have been contacting us and saying, ‘Your mother changed the way I thought about the world, she is the basis for my feminism,’” Sanchez said. “It’s been so fascinating to hear the ripple effects of young women who took that training from her, and who are now middle-aged women who are still thinking about her.”
The daughters said that their parents were community icons who were dedicated to service. “They had a sense of duty to the people around them,” Kyle Avery said.
“They loved to throw parties,” Sanchez said. “They hosted an annual event called Faux Giving and they would have these insane traditions, like we would have a head-measuring contest and measure the circumference of people’s heads, and then a winner gets to eat their pie first, and a badge.
“Whoever had the smallest head, everyone there would shout, ‘Pin head! Pin head!’ at this person, and it was the silliest thing in the world, but everyone who attended that event, even if they came one time, would talk about it forever.”
Kyle Avery added, “They were incredibly memorable.”
“They were community builders, they were people who wanted to nourish you in every way, and they were so good at it.”
They are survived by their children: Kyle Avery; Parker Sanchez and her husband, Pablo; Paul Avery’s son from a previous relationship, Stuart Sutherland; and their grandchildren, Avery, Duncan and Liana.
The Get Out, 2026.
Directed by Derek Borte.
Starring Russell Crowe, Luke Evans, Aaron Paul, Teresa Palmer, Nina Dobrev, Daniel Zovatto, Kartiah Vergara, Josh McConville, Yasmin Kassim, Benedict Hardie, Christian Perez, Cameron Leonard, Cory Beeston, and Ever Love Hope.
SYNOPSIS:
A nightclub owner is on the verge of leaving his dangerous past behind for retirement. After masked gunmen rob him and he finds himself squeezed by ruthless cartels, a mysterious newcomer arrives with an interest in buying the business.
Before even getting into what co-writer/director Derek Borte’s The Get Out is about, it must be said that if Russell Crowe is in a movie, he is putting on a European accent. Simply put, this is what he does now, and how his fascination with playing Albanians and other nationalities would be more interesting than almost anything in this mostly generic, certainly overcrowded Los Angeles crime tale of fighting one’s way out of that dangerous life to live peacefully alongside a loved one.
To be fair, The Get Out is based on a novel called Strip by Thomas Perry (with screenwriters Derek Borte and Daniel Forte adapting), so it’s possible that the character in that book just happened to be Albanian and that this is actually inspired casting; go get the kooky guy who can’t help himself from playing quirky, offbeat, and violent Europeans (this is essentially the Russell Crowe from Kraven the Hunter). The reality is that, whatever the reasoning behind the decision, it mostly amounts to an otherwise legendary actor (at least he knows Gladiator II sucked and isn’t afraid to voice it) delivering another campy performance that unsurprisingly works even less once the film bizarrely shifts from crime comedy to more grounded action with mostly meaningless stakes (since whatever makes this novel a complex and breathtaking piece of crime fiction isn’t to be found here).
Manco Kapak (Russell Crowe) is a nightclub owner (it was once a strip club but changed to reflect politically correct times, which mostly sounds like a change from the novel and an acknowledgment of that) connected to the cartel (Daniel Zavatto) with a rigid system in place to keep operations functional. It turns out that the only threat to that falling apart is his own physical health, as he suffers a cardiac incident while sexually intimate with his much younger girlfriend, Sunny (Teresa Palmer). This is also what prompts him and her to consider selling the nightclub to an interested buyer, Joe Carver (Luke Evans), leaving that life behind, fleeing the country, and living out the rest of their days in solitude, with no one hunting them down.
Not only do Manco and Joe struggle to come to a financial agreement that feels respectful to the former, but a crooked police detective (Josh McConville) discreetly tasks miserable adjunct professor Jeff (Aaron Paul), who already breaks the law in what he believes to be victimless crimes in writing academic papers to help undeserving youngsters receive a free ticket into prestigious colleges. to mug the nightclub owner and steal the cash that he is carrying to bring to the cartel. The gist is that Jeff failed to get the detective’s son into the college of his choosing, and that, for some reason, the answer is to keep stealing the money necessary from Manco.
Since Manco never takes his gun out of his car’s glove compartment (even after his girlfriend and confidants suggest he start holstering it), getting the jump on him is simple time and again (Jeff is forced to do this on more than one occasion). However, a wrinkle is thrown into all of this when Point Break-obsessed bank teller Carrie (Nina Dobrev) astutely catches on that something is up with his deposits, pushing her way into the con. It also turns out that Carrie is a risk-taker, excited and turned on by crime, which mostly causes Jeff to freak out as he just wants his part in all of this to be over, but is, of course, more than happy to pull over to a motel at Carrie’s request when robbing Manco has made her horny.
The adventures of this mismatched, dopey Bonnie and Clyde are the most fun there is to be had here, with the clashing personalities of Aaron Paul and Nina Dobrev playing off each other well. Their journey takes them in a direction that has less and less to do with Manco and more to do with Carrie getting it over her head, which is amusing and makes for a far more engaging movie than everything else here. She even gets her own blooper reel that might have more laughs in it than the previous 90 minutes.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has seen a movie before that all of these characters are on a collision course to face a reckoning with one another and the reckless and questionable choices they have made to hopefully enrich their lives. However, there is far too much happening in The Get Out, coupled with poor characterization and a gradual shift in tone from a comedic playfulness that already doesn’t work, to violence that also doesn’t work because there isn’t much to care about. Again, there is a much more interesting movie in the oddball-comedic Bonnie and Clyde duo. Put Aaron Paul and Nina Dobrev in a Point Break remake, and you have a better movie than that actual remake and The Get Out.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
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