One of the upcoming dates for the “Move the Crowd” tour featuring Rakim, KRS-1, and Slick Rick has recently been canceled by the promoter. After receiving pushback from the fans, he revealed that he shut the show down because the venue requires people to be vaccinated to enter.
According to Metro Times, he contends that the Hip-Hop “demographic aren’t vaccinated.”
Detroit’s Masonic Temple, the venue where the show was supposed to happen at, has a strict vaccination mandate enacted to help curb the spread of the deadly coronavirus, a disease that paralyzed the entire world in 2020.
AEG Presents, the company that runs the venue, posted its new vaccination policy over the summer. Without discrimination, the venue has to require proof of vaccination for guests, staff, and talent. The century-old venue is beautiful.
Jay Marciano, the COO of AEG and chairman and CEO of AEG Presents says, “We have come to the conclusion that, as a market leader, it was up to us to take a real stand on vaccination status.”
The concert promoter Derrick Kearney of 2D Productions & Entertainment says that despite the Nov. 7th date being pushed back, he is working to find a different location to accommodate the large number of fans that want to see these kings of rap music, but don’t want to get stuck with the needle.
“We’ve received 100’s and 100’s of texts, voicemail’s and comments on social media about the Masonic temple’s vaccination mandate,” Kearney said in a statement. “We have also found out that the majority of concert-goers in that HipHop (sic) demographic aren’t vaccinated. So the vaccination mandate with the Masonic Temple is the reason.”