If Only There Were A Word That Meant Something Goes Horribly Awry To Describe This Lupe Fiasco Inaugural Concert

Here is pretty much all we got from this Buzzfeed story about Lupe Fiasco getting kicked offstage at the Start Up Rock On inauguration for calling Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck racist and saying he didn't vote for Barack Obama and won't next time neither: we had no idea Lupe Fiasco was black! All his songs about skateboarding must have made us racist, because we thought he was just a white suburban punk like us!

Buzzfeed also has the organizers' statement:

Lupe Fiasco performed at this private event, and as you may have read, he left the stage earlier than we had planned. 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.

Sure, they decided to move on to the next act by sending onstage two 20-foot-tall men, weighing 785 pounds each, to physically move Lupe Fiasco on to the next act. Happens all the time!

Update: Roll Call was there!

“I really think the War on Terror is a bunch of bullshit/Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets/How much money does it take to really make a full clip/9/11, building seven, did they really pull it?/Uh, and a bunch of cover ups /Your child’s future was the first to go with budget cuts/If you think that hurts, then wait, here comes the upper cut/The school was garbage in the first place, that’s on the up and up/Keep you at the bottom and then tease you with the upper crust/You get it, then they move it, so you never keeping up enough/If you turn on the TV, all you see’s a buncha ‘What the f—-?’/Dude is dating so and so, blabbering ’bout such and such/And that ain’t the Jersey Shore, homey, that’s the news/And these same people supposedly telling us the truth/Limbaugh’s a racist, Glenn Beck’s a racist/Gaza Strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit/That’s why I ain’t vote for him, next one either/I’m part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful/And I believe in the people”

[...]

This is what happened: Fiasco repeated “Words I Never Said” on a loop and the band rocked out with him. After 20 minutes, people began muttering that the superstar was repeating himself. After a half-hour, they started leaving the venue. People began shouting and booing the singer saying his protest was disrespectful during President Barack Obama’s inaugural weekend.

Eventually, one event planner went up on stage to ask the artist to sing another track. Fiasco, presumably, demurred. His microphone was cut. Then someone killed the lights. Then security showed Fiasco off the stage.

A quick glance at the VIP section — where event sponsors insurance giant AFLAC, Heineken Corporation, Microsoft and Consumer Electronics Association were sitting — showed that this group was shocked and angry.

“They should have let him play. This event is about creativity and free speech,” one CEA employee said. [...]

“Fiasco dogged Obama the whole time,” said Fred Humphries, Microsoft’s vice president of government relations.

At that point, a StartUp RockOn spokesman said after the artist had left the stage: “We’re sorry Lupe Fiasco couldn’t be with us tonight.”

According to sources, StartUp RockOn has stopped payments on Fiasco’s check.

[ Buzzfeed / RollCall ]