Report: Chris Brown Refused to Appear at Gay Pride Event Because Gay Men Were There [UPDATED]
LatestThis is… odd but not unbelievable: the Georgia Voice, an LGBT community paper, is reporting that Chris Brown bailed on a scheduled appearance at an Atlanta Black Gay Pride Weekend event. The supposed reason? The event, billed as “the biggest girl party in the country,” also had a handful of gay men in attendance.
The report from the Georgia Voice, which we saw via Joe My God, says that Brown “refused to enter the building” on Saturday night at the The Georgia Freight Depot nightclub. The party was being thrown by Traxx Girls, a lesbian-owned production company. The Traxx Girls promised some 4,000 women at “The Big Bang” party Saturday night, plus what a promotional flyer featured on their website billed as a “super surprise guest.” Chris Brown is featured on a Traxx Girls flyer on Atlanta Pride Weekend’s website, and was repotedly supposed to introduce artist Teyana Taylor, but not actually perform himself. He was already in town as part of his One Hell of a Nite Tour.
Melissa Scott, the found of Traxx Girls, told the Voice she knew something was up when Brown hadn’t arrived by 2 a.m., and someone on his team was telling her via text message to take down a promotional image because he looked “too feminine:”
Scott says she knew there was “trouble in paradise” when she and Brown’s team were exchanging text messages (which were verified by Georgia Voice) at 2am and he still hadn’t arrived at the venue.
“I was being told to take his (Brown’s) image down because he looks a little feminine in that image, an image that he took. As a promoter I should be focused on my crowd. I had to send text messages of pictures of my crowd to say, there’s nothing but girls in here man.”
It’s unclear how Brown knew there were men in the crowd — or why performing for lesbians is cool but gay men are an unacceptable audience — but Scott says that none other than Fetty Wap graciously agreed to step in: “We called Fetty Wap who is the hottest artist in the country right now and he was five minutes away (from the venue) and asked him if he could come,” she told the Voice. “He said ‘hell yeah!’ I said it’s a gay party. It’s tons of people here. He said he didn’t care and was on his way.”
A handful of tweets confirm that Atlanta partiers were expecting Brown and are not particularly impressed with his no-show:
Neither Brown nor Fetty Wap have commented on what they were doing — or bailing on — Saturday night.
Update, 4:20 p.m.:
Brown tweeted that he was never booked for the show, never bailed, and has “nothing but love and respect” for the LGBT community:
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Brown performs at Aaron’s Amphitheatre at Lakewood in Atlanta, Georgia on Saturday, September 5, 2015, the same night he reportedly backed out of the Traxx Girls appearance. Photo via AP Images