Kanye “Ye” West’s rep says an unannounced performance at the 2022 Grammy Awards has been canceled due to “online behavior.”
A rep for the rapper confirmed the details to The Hollywood Reporter in a report released Friday by The Blast, alleging that West received a call on Friday night telling him he was cut from this year’s Grammy line-up. Although West is up for five nominations this year, he was not among the first artists announced by the Recording Academy ahead of the April 3 ceremony.
A rep for West, whose official name is Ye, declined to confirm if he is still attending or invited to the show, which is taking place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. THR has reached out to the Recording Academy for comment, but has yet to receive a response.
The news follows Ye’s suspension from Instagram on Wednesday, March 16, after he posted insults directed at The Daily Show host Trevor Noah. During the 24-hour suspension, the Grammy-winning musician was unable to post, comment, or send DMs.
In Ye’s post, which has since been deleted from Instagram, the words “Kumbaya” were replaced with a variation on a racial epithet based on the nature of the minstrel. West used the insult in response to a segment on The Daily Show on Tuesday in which Noah addressed the rapper’s online obsession with his ex-wife Kim Kardashian and her current boyfriend, SNL actor Pete Davidson, and called it “terrifying.” look.”
Before West’s post was deleted, Noah, host of the 2022 Grammys, responded by telling the rapper that his behavior “broke” the host’s heart and that Ye should “know the difference between that and fighting his family.”
“If you’re just joking about all this, and I’m an idiot that I care about it, so be it. But I’d rather be the idiot who spoke up,” Noah concluded his comment.
West’s public response to Noah is just the latest chapter in his ongoing public response to his divorce from Kardashian, who was officially declared single on March 2. Kardashian filed for divorce from West in February 2021 after six years of marriage, and during the trial, she said he caused her “emotional distress” with his social media posts.
West has since made numerous public comments on social media about their split. In February, Ye apologized for at least some of these messages, especially those in which he posted private messages with the Kardashians on his public account.
Addressing his growing social media backlash to their divorce, he wrote: “I know sharing screen shots was annoying and felt like a mockery of Kim. I take responsibility.” He went on to say that he is “still learning in real time” and that he can “benefit from a team of creative professionals, organisers, mobilizers and community leaders”.
But after a public apology, Ye, among other things, depicted beheading a plasticine version of Davidson in his video for “Eazy,” a track that includes the lyrics, “God saved me from that crash / Just so I could beat Pete Davidson’s ass.”