Former Take That singer, Robbie Williams, has surprised fans by performing alongside antisemitic rapper Wiley at London’s Emirates stadium over the weekend.
The 51-year-old singer, who is currently on the opening leg of his Britpop tour, has so far been joined on stage by a number of surprise guests, including boy band Five and Scottish singer Michelle McManus.
At Saturday’s show, Williams enthusiastically performs alongside rappers Wiley, Lethal Bizzle and Scorcher, after welcoming them onto the stage to perform their new single Can’t Touch This.
The move received mixed reactions from fans – with some celebrating the unusual collaboration, while others expressed upset that Williams seemed to be endorsing the disgraced rapper.
Posting on Reddit under the name YungMili, one fan wrote: “Me and my Jewish friends had to leave. Why Wiley? You can google his antisemitism which he's double downed on - he’s never apologised for. Why was he on stage? If a Jewish act was as racist as Wiley was antisemitic would Robbie have bought them on stage?”
Known as ‘The Godfather of Grime’, the 46-year-old whose real name is Richard Kylea Cowie Jr. was awarded an MBE for services to music in 2018. However the honour was stripped last year after he posted a string of antisemitic posts on social media.
The controversy began in 2020, when he launched a social media tirade lasting multiple days, where he described Jewish people as "cowards and snakes" and compared them to the Ku Klux Klan.
He was banned from Facebook and Twitter, but later had the ban revoked – only to be kicked off social media for a second time in 2021 after sharing a video on Instagram of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan saying he was “here to separate the good Jews from the Satanic Jews”, and creating a Twitter account using a photo of Campaign Against Antisemitsm’s (CAA) Joe Glasman as his profile picture, before unleashing a tirade of posts attacking the anti-racism activist.
Williams, whose wife Ayda Field is Jewish, has previously said they are raising their children as Jewish, and that he is “grateful” for the Jewish people.
Performing in Israel in 2023, he told the crowd: “As an outsider coming in, you have something incredibly f*cking special here. I went for a walk the other night.
“I noticed a peace here, there is a peace here that I don’t feel in London, that I don’t feel in Los Angeles.
“Considering as a people you have so much going on, there is a calm, and a sincerity… Just by this walk, I felt you, I know who you are, I know how you are, and you mean an awful lot to me. It’s always really special coming out.”
