Another day, another slightly rogue celebrity beef, this time between Kanye West (aka Ye) and Billie Eilish. Where would we be without the rich and famous to take us out of the mundanity of our day-to-day lives?
In this week’s edition of Celebrity Disagreements I Didn’t Expect, Ye posted saying he wouldn’t perform at Coachella until Billie apologised to Travis Scott.
Ye and Billie Eilish are both headlining Coachella, along with Harry Styles.
Why did Ye want Billie to apologise to Travis, you ask? Well, because Billie stopped one of her shows last weekend to help get medical assistance to a fan.
According to Fox News, Billie paused the show, asked the fan if they needed an inhaler, got the lights turned on and asked other people in the crowd to give the person some space.
Last night @billieeilish stopped her show in Atlanta to give a fan an inhaler. 👏👏👏
🎥 @morehonestt pic.twitter.com/LOc9jT9zEN
— Everything Georgia (@GAFollowers) February 6, 2022
Essentially, she just showed basic human decency.
When the show resumed, Billie told the crowd: “I wait for people to be OK until I keep going”.
That comment was perceived by some media outlets to be a reference to Travis Scott’s Astroworld festival, where 10 people were tragically killed after the crowd got out of control.
Hundreds more people were injured and more than 300 lawsuits associated with Astroworld have been filed.
Instead of, IDK, texting her about it (I assume all celebs have each other on WhatsApp) Ye posted an Instagram about the incident. In it, he said he’d pull out of Coachella if Billie didn’t apologise to Travis Scott.
View this post on Instagram
“Come on Billie we love you, please apologise to Trav and to the families of the people who lost their lives,” Ye wrote.
“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.
“Yes Trav will be with me at Coachella but now I need Billie to apologise before I perform.”
So quite a lot of drama over an incident where Billie didn’t even reference Travis by name.
Billie’s now responded to the (pointless) beef.
In a comment on Ye’s Instagram, she wrote: “Literally never said a thing about Travis. Was just helping a fan.”
Families of the Astroworld victims have also criticised Ye’s post.
The family of Ezra Blount, a nine-year-old boy who died of his Astroworld injuries, called it “idiotic”.
“To hear Kanye’s words, that’s hurtful to us. What an idiotic thing to say,” Bernon Blount (Ezra’s grandfather) told Rolling Stone.
“That’s crazy that he wants someone to apologise for putting the welfare of someone else before their profits. That’s someone who needed their asthma pump.
“They could have lost their life, right then. This world is twisted, and we have to stop doing this.”
Ye hasn’t posted yet about whether Billie’s response constitutes enough of an apology for him to perform at Coachella.
It’s also interesting that Ye said he’d be bringing Travis Scott with him to the festival. Back in December 2021, it was reported by Billboard that Scott had been taken off Coachella’s setlist after the fallout from Astroworld.
