Macklemore Kicks Off Free Palestine Tour With Hozier, Kneecap, & Ed Sheeran’s Backing Band

Last month, Ed Sheeran dropped Macklemore as the opener of his US stadium tour — reportedly because of pressure from Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who doesn't approve of Macklemore's stance against Israel's genocide of Palestinian people. Naturally, the resulted in a huge and justified backlash against Sheeran. All of Sheeran's other openers quit the tour, as did Beoga, the Irish folk band who backed him up during part of his show. Sheeran claimed that he's "not complicit" and then made a tearful but meaningless speech once his tour resumed. Meanwhile, Sheeran's shows at Kraft's Gillette Stadium were canceled for severe weather anyway, and then Zach Bryan wore a "Free Palestine" shirt while playing the same stadium. In the meantime, Macklemore announced his Free Palestine benefit tour, and he kicked it off with some surprise guests Monday night in Dublin.

Macklemore already announced that he's donating the $1 million that he earned as an Ed Sheeran opener to Palestinian aid, then said that all the protests from his Free Palestine tour will support the same cause. He assembled the tour quickly, only announcing three shows at the beginning but promising more to come. The first of those shows was last night at Dublin's sold-out 3Arena. The evening was billed as "Macklemore and Friends," and none of the friends were announced ahead of time. When it went down last night, Macklemore's guests included the Irish pop-folk star Hozier, the staunchly pro-Palestine Belfast rap group Kneecap, and the former Ed Sheeran backing band Beoga.

Billboard reports that other guests included dead prez member M1, singer-songwriter Lina Makoul, and DJ Habibeats, as well as appearances from regular Macklemore collaborators like Australian singer Tones & I and "Same Love" guest Mary Lambert. Game Of Thrones star Liam Cunningham and activists Nadia Greenspan and Samir Eskand spoke to the crowd, and the show had remote appearances from the Strokes' Julian Casablancas, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Nixon, Ilana Glazer, and Natasha Rothwell.

A member of Beoga told the crowd, "You don't fuck with the Irish" and that "the tide is changing."

Hozier's set included a performance of the Irish folk ballad "The Prayer Of Shields," which Hozier reportedly learned from Lankum's Ian Lynch, and a screen behind him showed a QR code that took people to a petition for Ireland to expedite the process for 55 Palestinian students whose scholarships have been approved but who are still awaiting visas from the Irish government.

Kneecap's set naturally included a whole lot of passionate talk about Irish solidarity and the importance of a free Palestine, and one of them told the crowd, "We’d like to thank Ed Sheeran for organizing this concert."

During his set, Macklemore said that his entire campaign started with "two words" — free Palestine — and that "those two words are so threatening to some people. They would rather silence those two words than confront what they actually mean. Because freedom that requires another person’s oppression is not freedom at all." He performed all his big hits, as well as his recent protest songs.

The remaining London and Paris dates on the Free Palestine tour are sold out, too. The Paris show goes down 10/29 at Accor Arena.