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Joshua Thelwell
Russ
Music News
Russ Addresses Onstage Incident at Toronto Concert: 'I Refuse to Be Gaslit'
The Atlanta rapper called out someone trying to get his attention from the crowd at Budweiser Stage on Saturday night. Now, he's facing backlash from some Indigenous fans for refusing a gift of a beaded medallion.
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Russ has responded to the controversy surrounding his recent Toronto show.
The Atlanta-based rapper took to Instagram and TikTok yesterday (July 13) to address a situation at his show at Budweiser Stage in Toronto on Saturday (July 12) where he called out a fan who was trying to get his attention to gift him a beaded medallion.
"I'm trying to perform and you're spending the whole show trying to get me to look at some s--t you're holding up like, the whole time, man. What you want me to do, stop what I'm doing and say, 'Hold on, everyone else, all 10,000 of y'all, wait; we've got to pay attention to this one person,'" Russ said in his brief onstage rant.
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@yung_mc00 Oooppppp 😭😂 honestly the person was being annoying so fair 🤣 #russ #budweiserstage #toronto @RUSS
The incident sparked controversy, as the concertgoer was an Indigenous fan trying to gift the rapper a custom beaded medallion. Fans in the comments compared the incident with other artists like Ice Cube and Jelly Roll, who accepted similar gifts without pausing their show.
"This is the same lady that gifted Ice cube Mid show right? And he took it and said thank you and Kept preforming without missing a beat. Idk why he thought that taking a medallion made by that woman would take the whole show 🤦🏽," said one TikTok user. Others suggested accepting the gift would take less than a minute whereas the rant took considerably more time.
Russ explained that his discontent with the situation stemmed from the way his attention was signalled. A few songs prior, crowd members had waved their flashlights to signal that someone in the crowd had passed out. The group of fans with the medallion later did the same to get Russ' attention, causing him to falsely believe that a medical emergency was happening in the crowd.
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"If it's not that, please don't do it because I'm just going to assume somebody is passing out; 'Cause now I just stopped the song," he said during the show.
He doubled down on these remarks in a four-minute response video posted to Instagram and TikTok the following day.
"That's f--ked up to act like it was a medical emergency just to show something that you made," he added.
Russ voiced his appreciation for the Indigenous community in his response, explaining that he has often received and accepted gifts from the community, even recounting that he played his first show ever in Billings, Montana to a mostly Indigenous crowd.
"I have no issue with Indigenous people. I'm allowed to get rattled and get thrown off from people acting like somebody passed out. Nobody passed out, you just acted like it to get my attention and then you doubled down on it still trying to distract and disrupt. That"s not cool," he said.
Watch the rapper's full response to the incident below.
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