In honor of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, Big Daddy Kane took a flight to perform for his fans in Europe at the O2 Forum Kentish Town in London.
During the Hip Hop 50 event on Saturday, Aug. 26, the New York rapper was in the middle of rapping his song “Nuff Respect” from the “Juice” movie soundtrack when UK rapper Kamanchi Sly interrupted his set.
Video captured at the event shows Kane performing as the masked rapper, who is also a member of the group Hijack, walking from backstage and standing in front of the hyped crowd.
Kane entertained his shenanigans for a few moments before asking the DJ to stop the music. “You doing too much homie, you doing too much,” he said to Sly.
A few minutes into the video, one gentleman can be seen speaking with the London artist before he approaches Kane, who says, “I need the stage, playboy.”
As security attempts to take Sly off the stage, he confronts the rap pioneer to his face, saying something that prompted Kane to reply, “That ain’t my f—-n problem.”
Kane can then be seen taking off his black leather Gucci jacket as a swarm of crew members escort Sly off the stage to defuse the situation.
The 54-year-old took a brief moment to regroup himself before addressing the promoters or organizers of the event off to the side.
“Aye yo are you working that out?” he said into the mic. “Because the crowd getting restless. I’m here for them. I ain’t here for that bulls—t.”
The show continued on without a fight, but fans on social media felt Sly was beyond disrespectful for interrupting Kane’s set.
“I’m a huge Hijack fan but what they did was unacceptable. Why interrupt Kane!?! Wait till the end if needed. Kane handled it like a true pro though!!”
“Big up’s to Kane, he didn’t let goofy a— Lodon rapper throw him off of his game, he kept the show going and didn’t miss a beat.
“Hell of a freaking disrespectful Kane is a legend freaking royalty! You don’t ever do that he needs to apologize period.”
However, some YouTube commenters took the blame off Sly and placed it all on the promoters of the event. A few alleged attendees claimed that Sly’s group Hijack kept getting moved down further on the show’s roster.
“Dude missed his set and was mad. He should have took it up with the promoter. Had that been in the states he wouldn’t have been able to walk off stage.”
“I don’t think it was meant to be directed at Kane per se, but Kane still got hit with the disrespect… the promoters are jerks for letting it even get to this…”
“Regardless of what happened with the promoters messing up the scheduling, it was wrong for K Sly to interrupt Kane’s set like that – just plain disrespectful.”
Hijack was expected to perform before another group, Onyx, who pulled out of the show. In a series of Facebook posts, the British rap group referred to themselves as a “terrorist group” and slammed the event’s promoters and U.S. rap music.
“As per usual the DJs and Promoters of the show LICKED THE ARSE OF THE AMERICANS and disrespected UK side of the culture (HIJACK) by not letting us perform!” they wrote. “You were always unprofessional CLOWNS Nothing has changed #tonyspreadlove etc. So we walked on Kane’s set and he and they didn’t like it! AWWW.”
The post continued, “The American Artistes BORED the dead stock crowd so we performed outside the venue and gave them their monies worth!”
In a video, Sly discussed the heated tension between artists from the U.S. and artists from the U.K. He explained that Hijack was supposed to go on at 12 a.m. but they got skipped over twice for other American artists on the lineup such as Kane, who went on after 1 a.m.
He also noted that the venue closed at 2 a.m. therefore it didn’t make sense how they would perform after someone they were fans of.
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Sly said the only reason he came on stage was out of frustration not disrespect. “We still rocked it for the fans after Promoter tries to Diss and clown us out us because of their incompetence to be loyal to UK RAP,” Hijack wrote in another post.
The group went on to share video footage of them performing for fans outside of O2 Arena, where the event was held.