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At a hip-hop festival called Craze Fest in Hammond, Indiana, just outside of Chicago, rapper Chief Keef appeared on stage as a hologram. But his Saturday night performance only lasted one song before the police shut it down.
Chief Keef, born Keith Cozart, originally planned to hold a benefit concert for his friend and a toddler who were both killed during a shooting this month. The concert was to be held at a theater in Chicago, but Mayor Rahm Emmanuel's office reportedly pressured the theater to cancel the event, according to the Chicago Tribune. The New York Times says the mayor's office called Chief Keef "an unacceptable role model" whose music "promotes violence."
Instead, Chief Keef told his fans that he would perform at an undisclosed location and enlisted Hologram USA to help him appear virtually rather than physically, citing outstanding warrants for his arrest in Illinois. Fans weren't told Chief Keef would be performing in Hammond at Wolf Lake Pavilion as part of Craze Fest until 9pm that night.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Chief Keef performed his hit "I Don't Like" [remix and NSFW] from a sound studio in Beverly Hills, California. "[He] was talking about putting a stop to violence when the power was cut off. Police rushed toward the stage, turning the music off about 10:25pm. Shining flashlights, they ordered concertgoers to leave. Fans who gathered Saturday left the grounds in an orderly fashion, though disappointed."
Wanted in Illinois, appeared as a hologram in Indiana, still shut down by police. Good thing for him he was in California.
Additional material from the BBC.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:38PM
Yes but that's the crazy part about it. How can they sue Rahm Emmanuel since it was the cops in Hammond, Indiana who shut down the performance? Rahm can say, "What? I had nothing to do with this. I fully support First Amendment rights!!!" Unless they subpoena his email records and phone records and find a smoking gun where he ordered the shutdown, any such lawsuit would quickly go nowhere with respect to the mayor of Chicago.
It's an especially crappy move on Rahm's part because the people who will get sued are in Hammond. Hammond, by the way, along with Gary, Indiana, is a ridiculously poor area that sits on the other side of the Calumet Skyway and is dominated by old tailing ponds from US Steel. It's the kind of place you're afraid to go in broad daylight, much less after dark.
It does show Rahm is a smarter political operator than Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who does have authority over the George Washington Bridge and whose handiwork could mostly be traced back to his office and to him when he shut down the bridge to punish the mayor of Ft. Lee, NJ, a political opponent. But it does not explain why or how the political powers in Hammond, IN, would honor his request to shut down the concert when they would bear all of the risk for the fiasco and Rahm would not.
Washington DC delenda est.