Laneway Festival has revealed that Atlanta rapper Young Thug didn’t pull out of this year’s event on his own accord. It was festival organisers who took him off the lineup.
During a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) session today, the first question Laneway co-founder Danny Rogers fielded from Redditors was this very timely one: “Did you really expect Young Thug to show up?”
Rogers gave an insightful answer to the slightly comedic question, saying:
“Yes we did, because his management worked very hard to get all of the visa process together. Unfortunately as most of us know and saw over the past month Thugger worked to his own timelines even though we had all indications that this was a goer, when it came to the absolute finish line and us pushing back on deadlines on various things til the 11th hour that we started to realise that we might be working with an artist that might be somewhat unreliable.
“We made the decision ourselves to call Thug so that we didn’t get into a situation right on top of the festival that we couldn’t manage the situation.”
When Thug’s removal from the 2017 Laneway Festival lineup was announced earlier this month, organisers said the rapper was “not able to play” due to “recent complications with the visa process”.
In Laneway’s Reddit AMA today, Rogers went on to say that the removal of Young Thug was the first time Laneway Festival has pulled an artist in its 13 year history. In 2016, New Zealand musician Silicon told Music Feeds he was kicked from the remaining Laneway dates after he kissed a police officer’s gun at the Adelaide leg of the festival.
Speaking about Young Thug, Rogers said the situation “wasn’t treated lightly”, and organisers think they achieved “the most practical outcome” by offering refunds to punters who bought tickets to the festival after Thug was added to its lineup back in December.
Rogers’ comments are also backed up by public evidence of Thug’s unreliability, especially given the story behind his new music video for ‘Wyclef Jean’, which you can check out below if you haven’t already.
Elsewhere in their Reddit AMA, Laneway Festival’s Danny Rogers and Dom O’Connor said they’d love to book acts like A Tribe Called Quest, Lykke Li, Slaves, InHeaven and The Replacements in the future; discussed the time Mac DeMarco “asked for four large Fillet O Fish meals… as well as three pinball machines”; and showed their support for introducing pill testing at Aussie festivals.
The Australian leg of this year’s Laneway Festival kicks off in Brisbane tomorrow, 26th January, before heading to Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Fremantle.
Watch: Young Thug – ‘Wyclef Jean’
