International hip hop festival Rolling Loud has announced it is not returning to Toronto this summer.
In a tweet posted Friday, the festival said its stop in Miami will be its last show of the year from July 21-23. Now Toronto reached out to Rolling Loud for a statement but did not hear back by the time of publication.
Needless to say, Torontonians are very upset about the news, especially since the highly popular festival claimed it would return for 2023 after its debut in the city last year.
In a since-deleted tweet by Rolling Loud, it also said “something happened since that day that’s stopping us, unfortunately” leaving fans to wonder whether this refers to the chaos that erupted at Toronto’s festival last year.
“Wow thanks @RollingLoud crazy mismanaged first Toronto rollingloud last year and now you just cancel this years without even an official announcement lol. We see how much Canadian fans mean to you guys,” one user said, to which the festival responded “Will be back, don’t stress.”
Other fans also expressed their disappointment.
Last year, Toronto’s Rolling Loud was considered a train wreck after fans said there was a shooting, late appearances, artist cancellations and criticism surrounding crowd energy levels.
Now Toronto’s affiliate, The Brandon Gonez Show, attended the three-day festival and witnessed the chaos first hand.
According to the show, day one went off without a hitch, despite some big artist cancellations, including Lil Uzi Vert, and comments from Lil Skies about the crowd’s energy during his performance.
Day two, however, started off smoothly but started to dwindle closer to Future’s performance, which was reportedly cancelled then revived hours later, leaving many fans disappointed.
Later that night, during the exclusive loud club section, a shooting took place which led to crowds of people running for their lives. Toronto Police initially reported that no shots were fired, no gun was found and no one was injured.. But then the next morning, police released an updated statement saying there were reports of gunshots in the VIP area, a gun was found and no one was injured.
As a result of the chaos, all media interviews with artists were cancelled for day three but the performances continued, with Wizkid as the headliner.
By the end of the festival, some fans said the event was severely misorganized, as there was little to no communication from organizers and no statement was made about the shooting.
