The much-rumoured comeback concert of controversial musician Kanye West has been put to bed overnight with reports that the venue proposed for the show, the RCF Arena in Reggio Emilia, has been cancelled. Though the owners of the largest outdoor music venue in Europe stated it was ‘security and organisational’ issues’ that led to the cancellation, reports suggest that it may not be as simple as that.

‘We had no option but to cancel the event. These things take a lot of organising, you have to have a health plan, traffic plan and some idea of how tickets are being sold and numbers,” Local prefect Maria Rita Cocciufa revealed. “You have to have all these things in place because you have to guarantee the safety and security of the people attending and as a city, we were ready but we just hadn’t heard anything from the organisers so for safety reasons it had to be cancelled – the concert was due to take place Friday and on Monday we had still heard nothing.”

But that runs in contrast to an exclusive report from the MailOnline that suggests that it was the idea of Kanye West performing at the venue full stop that led to locals in the area voicing their concerns and complaints about such an event taking place. In particular, umbrage was taken to West performing after his catalogue of anti-Semitic comments, including the praise towards Adolf Hitler during his fateful appearance on Alex Jones’ ‘InfoWars’ programme in December 2022

Veterans groups and also women’s rights organisations had blasted local authorities for agreeing to the gig which had been expected to attract more than 100,000 and was promoted by Milan-based Vivo Concerti. The vice president of the National Association of Italian Partisans, Albertina Soliani, stated: ‘It’s time to say enough to these people who believe they can say what they want. Someone can be a fantastic singer but then they are also judged by what they say, and West has made some inhumane declarations and with what’s happening in the world today we cannot accept this concert.”

It’s led to questions about what’s next for Ye, who was last seen in concert cameoing at Travis Scott’s ‘Utopia’ album launch at Rome’s Circus Maximus in August 2023; that event saw 11 people injured which may have led to the ‘security’ issues prompted by RCF Arena to cancel the show. As of now, the construction that was taking place for this week’s rumoured show is currently being put back into storage. West has been seen in Italy for a number of months now with his ‘wife’ Bianca Cesori, so could he still be looking in the country for a place to perform his proposed comeback show alongside Ty Dolla $ign? Perhaps a move to Rome’s Circus Maximus might be on the cards.

But given Italy’s history with fascism during WWII, there might be a few more people around areas of Italy, perhaps the country might not be the ideal location for such a show – maybe Kanye could end up taking a leaf out of Travis Scott’s book and attempt to perform at the Pyramid of Giza