Soulja Boy has been benched from the Millennium Tour in wake of Young Dolph’s fatal shooting.
G-Squared Events announced the news Thursday night, explaining its team made the decision out of safety concerns for the artists, patrons, and touring representatives. As of now, Soulja will not perform during this weekend’s stops in St. Louis and Memphis, where Dolph was gunned down Wednesday afternoon while purchasing cookies from a bakery.
“The safety and welfare of our patrons are the first and foremost priority.” G-Squared Events said in a statement. “We pride ourselves on bringing high-quality concert experiences to our patrons. In times like this, we will stop at nothing to ensure that everyone that participates in these experiences is healthy, safe, and quite frankly having a good time.”
Soulja Boy later took to Instagram to respond to the decision, writing, “I’m still getting paid what him dying got do with me? I’m tryna see my fans.”
About a week before Dolph’s murder, he and Soulja got into a tense online exchange over money claims. Dolph said he was bringing in $100,000 for each live performance, but Soulja apparently wasn’t convinced that Dolph was telling the truth.
“How da f**k I’m an independent artist and gettin 100rax plus for a show?” Dolph wrote. “How da f*** @keyglock got more cars & ice than you & your CEO?”
Soulja weighed in on the claim after it was reshared on Akademiks’ Instagram page.
“That’s big cap [cap emoji] They signed to @empire [laughing-crying emoji] I’m really 100% independent no cap,” he wrote.
Soulja went on to issue an expletive-filled warning to Dolph, Key Glock, and the rest of the Paper Route Empire team.
“Young Dolph if you don’t get your bitch-ass artists out my motherfuckin’ DMs, n***a,” he said in a video. “Fuck Paper Route, fuck Key Glock, fuck Young Dolph, fuck all y’all n***as.”
Soulja faced additional backlash Wednesday after he released his “Stretch Some” record, which many believed was a Dolph diss track. ATL rapper Trouble slammed the “Crank That” artist over the release, suggesting it was a disrespectful move.
Soulja went on to say “Stretch Some” was not about Dolph, and said the track had been out for months but didn’t get an official release until this week.
Memphis police continue to investigate Dolph’s murder, and have yet to identify the masked killers who were captured on surveillance video.
