Iggy Azalea, the controversial Australian rapper, has stamped “cancel” on her tour of United States arena venues that had been scheduled for the fall months of 2015. Azalea, whose real name is Amethyst Amelia Kelly, was originally supposed to perform her Great Escape tour shows in the spring, but in March, the “Fancy” rapper announced that those shows had been pushed back several months because she was a psychopath.
Now Azalea has called off the entire tour, saying that she won’t tour again until her next album comes out in 2016.
Iggy Azalea has been dogged by controversies, mainly over what critics say is her blatant imitation of a southern African-American accent in her rapping, which they consider to be theft of an entire art form created by American blacks, by an Australian white woman.
Though no reason for the Iggy Azalea tour cancellation was offered, it appears that the controversies surrounding the young rapper may have taken their toll at the box office. The Los Angeles-oriented news blog Defamer published a graphic supposedly showing available tickets at that city’s Staples Center, an arena with approximately 19,000 seats.
“That’s a half-full Staples Center, and tickets had been on sale for more than 3 months,” wrote Defamer blogger Jay Hathaway, who said that the graphic showed that Iggy Azalea’s ticket sales, at least for the Los Angeles stop on her now-cancelled tour, were “in the toilet.”
The announcement of the cancelled tour was made in the form of an email to fans who had already bought tickets.
“The Iggy Azalea ‘Great Escape’ Tour scheduled for this fall has been cancelled and refunds are available at point of purchase,” the brief email stated. “There will be a new tour planned around Iggy’s new record to be released in 2016 and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
The cancelled Great Escape Tour followed the 24-year-old’s appearance earlier in May at the Billboard Music Awards, at which she appeared to have recently undergone plastic surgery to her face . While not confirming the rumored surgery, Azalea did post a message on her Instagram page saying that she was, “loving my new look.”
At the Billboard Awards, Iggy Azalea teamed up with veteran, 33-year-old pop star Britney Spears to perform the new single on which the pair collaborated, “Pretty Girls.”
But shortly after the performance, the single took a sharp drop on the Billboard charts and has now been deemed a flop by music industry observers.
The cancelled tour only adds to what so far has been a difficult 2015 for Iggy Azalea.
[Image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images]