Macklemore performs at Alcatraz Milan on May 3, 2023 in Milan, Italy. Photo: Roberto Finizio via Reuters Connect

Organizers of an inaugural music, art, and culinary festival that will take place in downtown Las Vegas in November said on Tuesday that Grammy-winning rapper Macklemore will no longer be one of the event’s headliners “due to unforeseen circumstances.”

Organizers of the Neon City Festival made the announcement in an Instagram post after Macklemore, whose real name is Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, shouted “F—k America!” during his performance at the Palestine Will Love Forever Festival in Seattle on Sunday. His comment garnered massive applause from the audience, and the Seattle-based rapper also told the crowd gathered in Seward Park Amphitheater that Israel has been committing “a genocide since 1948,” a reference to the year the state of Israel was established.

All proceeds from the pro-Palestinian event will be given to various groups, including the controversial United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which faced allegations that several of its employees participated in the Oct. 7 deadly Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel.

The Neon City Festival will run free for all ages from Nov. 22-24. Macklemore was one of the festival’s headlining acts when they were first announced by organizers on Friday. They include the rock band Neon Trees, Australian DJ Alison Wonderland, DJ Seven Lions, and country artist Russell Dickerson. The festival’s full lineup will be announced this week.

Organizers of the festival made the announcement about the cancellation of Macklemore’s performance a day after two Seattle-based sports teams issued a joint statement distancing themselves from the rapper. Macklemore is a part owner of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken and MLS’s Seattle Sounders FC. Both teams released a joint statement on Monday about Macklemore’s comments over the weekend.

“We believe that sports bring people together and unite us. We are aware of Macklemore’s increasingly divisive comments, and they do not reflect the values of our respective ownership groups, leagues, or organizations. We are currently evaluating our collective options on this matter,” the teams said.

In May, Macklemore released a song called “Hind’s Hall,” which praises college students in the US for participating in anti-Israel protests on university campuses amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. In the song he also accuses Israel of genocide and occupation, and implies that the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks were an act of “resistance.” The track’s title is a reference to Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, the building that anti-Israel student protesters broke into and occupied in April and renamed “Hind’s Hall” in honor of Hind Rajab — a child killed in Gaza during the ongoing war. All proceeds from the song went to UNRWA.

Macklemore released on Friday “Hind’s Hall 2” and the track features Palestinian-American artists Anees and Amer Zahr, Gaza-born rapper MC Abdul, and the Los Angeles Palestinian Kids Choir. The featured performers sing on the track “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that is widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of Israel, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and for it to replaced with “Palestine.”

In “Hind’s Hall 2,” Macklemore raps: “Long live the resistance if there’s something to resist/Had enough of you motherf—ers murdering little kids/PC for a minute I was trying to be a bridge/But there’ll never be freedom by pleading with Zionists/World screaming, ‘Free Palestine’/We seen the manual we know how you colonized.”

Macklemore also criticizes US support for Israel in the track. At one point he directs attention to US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and raps: “Hey Kamala, I don’t know if you’re listening/But stop sending money and weapons or you ain’t winning … When will Congress decide a Palestinian’s life/Is just as precious as an Israeli’s.”