Kanye West cleared to play in Netherlands

In this Nov. 6, 2019, file photo, Kanye West, who changed his name to Ye in 2021, appears at the WSJ. Magazine 2019 Innovator Awards at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on Nov. 6, 2019. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

U.S. rapper Kanye West, whose concerts have been banned in several European venues over controversial antisemitic remarks, may perform in the Netherlands for two concerts in June, officials said Friday.

The 48-year-old, also known as “Ye,” has sparked widespread anger over remarks glorifying Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and for antisemitic rants, which he has blamed on having bipolar disorder.

The mayor of the eastern city of Arnhem, Ahmed Marcouch, has granted a permit for the June concerts to go ahead despite what he described as “reprehensible statements made by the artist in the past.”

The majority of the Dutch House of Representatives had called for the rapper to be denied entry to the country.

But asylum and migration minister Bart van den Brink said there were no formal legal grounds to bar him from the Netherlands.

“You need clear reasons to bar people from your country. We did not find those in the analyses that were conducted,” said Van den Brink.

West is scheduled to play in Arnhem on June 6 and 8 -- the latter date being the rapper’s birthday.

He is also slated to appear in Istanbul on May 30.

However, his extreme statements and actions -- last year he released a song called “Heil Hitler,” with swastika T-shirts advertised on his website -- caused a backlash against his planned European tour.

In April, the British government banned him from entering the country to headline a festival, forcing organizers to cancel the event.

A week later, he postponed a concert in Marseille following reports France’s interior minister was seeking to block the performance.

A Polish stadium cancelled a West concert scheduled for June 19, with the culture minister saying Poland wanted to bar him over his “promotion of Nazism”.

Later, Swiss football club FC Basel told AFP they had turned down an approach about hosting a West concert.

In January, West took out an advert in the Wall Street Journal to defend himself, saying: “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite” and “I love Jewish people”.

He attributed his behaviour to a manic episode brought on by bipolar disorder.

He is also set to perform in the Albanian capital Tirana on July 11, and in Prague on July 25.