Albania\u2019s prime minister on Wednesday defended a \u200bdecision to spend \u20ac4 million ($4.56 million) on a concert by U.S. rapper Kanye West, as he sought to defuse anger over the event that has added \u2060heat to public protests and demands for his resignation.<\/p>\n
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Kanye West<\/a>, who is also known as Ye, has been banned from performing in several European countries this summer following remarks that have \u2060included praise of Adolf Hitler<\/a> \u200band content featuring Nazi imagery. He has since apologized for some of those remarks.<\/p>\n The concert, scheduled for July 11 just outside Tirana, will take place in a \u2060makeshift stadium constructed specifically for the event.<\/p>\n \u201cWe allocated \u20ac4 million at \u200bthe \u2060last minute to avoid embarrassing \u200cAlbania in the eyes of nearly 25,000 foreign visitors from 80 countries who had already purchased tickets to see \u200cKanye West, while many others were \u200cwary that the concert might be cancelled,\u201d Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Facebook.<\/p>\n Rama said the event was expected to generate \u2060at least \u20ac100 million in revenue for the country after a surge in accommodation bookings around the time of the concert.<\/p>\n Rama\u2019s announcement attracted a flow of negative comments on his Facebook page.<\/p>\n \u201cAlbania is disgraced when it welcomes a singer who admires Hitler,\u201d one commenter said. \u201cShame, not with my money!\u201d \u200csaid another. Daily protests have taken place in Tirana for \u200bmore than a month. They were sparked by \u200cplans for a luxury \u2060resort by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law<\/a>, Jared Kushner.<\/p>\n The \u2060protesters later denounced other coastal development projects near protected areas and have \u200calso demanded \u200bthe resignation of Rama, accusing his \u200cgovernment of corruption, a claim Rama \u200bdenies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Albania\u2019s prime minister on Wednesday defended a \u200bdecision to spend \u20ac4 million ($4.56 million) on a concert by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-532113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Edi](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/260708-Edi-Rama-ch-1254-873803.jpg\")
Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama in Ankara, Turkey on July 8.Altan Gocher \/ Hans Lucas \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n