Pepsi and Diageo withdrew their sponsorship of the festival after West was announced as the headline act<\/a>. His permission to enter the UK is currently being reviewed by ministers.<\/p>\nWest, also known as Ye, has offered to meet with the British Jewish community ahead of his shows this summer.<\/p>\n
In an addition to his apology for previous antisemitic comments issued in the Wall Street Journal in January, West said: “I\u2019ve been following the conversation around Wireless and want to address it directly.<\/p>\n
“My only goal is to come to London and present a show of change, bringing unity, peace, and love through my music.<\/p>\n
“I would be grateful for the opportunity to meet with members of the Jewish community in the UK in person, to listen. I know words aren\u2019t enough \u2013 I\u2019ll have to show change through my actions. If you\u2019re open, I\u2019m here.”<\/p>\n
President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Phil Rosenberg, has said the body is “willing” to meet West, but only if he agrees not to play the festival.<\/p>\n
Members of the British government including Prime Minister Keir Starmer have raised concerns about the rapper\u2019s performance at the event, while Melvin Benn, managing director at Festival Republic, which promotes Wireless Festival, has defended the decision to put West on the bill.<\/p>\n
The musician, who has not performed in the UK since he headlined Glastonbury in 2015, has drawn widespread criticism in recent years after he began voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler, and he has made a series of antisemitic remarks.<\/p>\n
Last year, he released a song called Heil Hitler, a few months after advertising a swastika T-shirt for sale on his website.<\/p>\n
Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kanye West has responded to the backlash over his headline slot at Wireless Festival, saying: “My only goal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-386064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}