Kanye West is demanding an apology from Billie Eilish before he takes the stage at this year’s Coachella music festival.
The rapper, formerly known as Kanye West, now known as ‘Ye’ took to Instagram on Thursday to call out Billie Eilish for a comment she made during one of her concerts, which Ye interpreted as a diss toward rapper Travis Scott, whose Astroworld Festival left 10 attendees dead after a crowd surge last November.
For context, Eilish halted her performance during a concert on Saturday to check on a fan in the crowd, according to fan video shared on social media. “You need an inhaler?” Eilish asked the fan, before directing her stage crew to help the concertgoer.
“I wait for people to be OK before I keep going,” Eilish said in another video of the encounter, according to Billboard.
Ye’s Instagram post on Thursday included a screenshot of a headline claiming Eilish “dissed” Scott with her comment.
“COME ON BILLIE WE LOVE YOU PLEASE APOLOGIZE TO TRAV AND TO THE FAMILIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES,” Ye captioned the post. “NO ONE INTENDED THIS TO HAPPEN TRAV DIDN’T HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING WHEN HE WAS ON STAGE AND WAS VERY HURT BY WHAT HAPPENED.“
The “Donda” rapper added that Scott will be joining him at Coachella, but demanded an apology first.
“YES TRAV WILL BE WITH ME AT COACHELLA BUT NOW I NEED BILLIE TO APOLOGIZE BEFORE I PERFORM,” Ye wrote.
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Eilish later responded and denied Ye’s insinuation.
“literally never said a thing about travis,” Eilish commented on Ye’s post. “was just helping a fan”
Ye and Eilish are both headliners at April’s Coachella, along with Harry Styles and Swedish House Mafia. Scott was originally tapped for the festival’s 2020 line-up, which also featured Rage Against the Machine and Frank Ocean.
However, a petition started last November called for Scott to be removed from the festival after the fatalities that took place at the Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas.
Eight people died on the day of the event. The ninth, a 22-year-old college student, died Nov. 10, in a hospital. The 10th – and youngest – Ezra Blount, 9, died Nov. 14, in a hospital in a medically-induced coma.
Scott has previously said he wasn’t aware of the crowd surge and deaths until “minutes before the press conference” that occurred hours after the concert.
“You want to make sure fans get the proper attention they need,” Scott said in a sit-down interview with Charlamagne Tha God in December. “Anytime I could see anything like that, I did. I stopped it like a couple of times to make sure everybody was OK.
“I just didn’t hear that. I got my music, I got my (in-ear monitors), I just didn’t hear that.“