Ye, the Chicago rapper formerly known as Kanye West, announced Monday that Los Angeles will be one of seven stops on his upcoming international tour. This is the first time since 2016 that a concert tour has taken Ye to L.A.
The artist is scheduled to perform on April 3 at SoFi Stadium. According to the venue’s website, it will be his only L.A. performance.
The tour begins March 29 and includes stops in New Delhi, Istanbul, Marseille, Reggio Emilia and Madrid. The tour also includes two shows in Arnhem, Netherlands.
Ye announced the tour ahead of the delayed release of his 12th studio album, “Bully,” scheduled for March 27.
Most recently, Ye performed two shows in Mexico City on Jan. 30 and 31. He featured a surprise performance by his daughter, North West.
The last time Ye performed in L.A., he headlined the Rolling Loud California festival, joining Ty Dolla $ign onstage for a “listening experience.” The two did not deliver any vocals and rather wandered the SoFi stage while their “Vultures 1” album played over the speakers.
The announcement of the upcoming SoFi concert has drawn mixed reactions from students.
Kaia Seldman, a senior majoring in theater and a member of USC Hillel, said the show is in poor taste.
“I think it’s awful. It was better when we shunned him from society,” Seldman said. “He’s made antisemitism more mainstream than it already was.”
Ye was banned from Twitter in December 2022 for posts with antisemitic comments, including ones that read, “I love Hitler” and “I’m a Nazi.” He was further criticized for comments made in business meetings and other public appearances.
In February 2025, he made remarks that included statements like, “Some of my best friends are Jewish and I don’t trust any of them.”
He also released a music video in May 2025, “Heil Hitler (Hooligan Version),” that contained the lyric “So I became a Nazi, I’m the villain.”
In January, Ye published a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal apologizing for his behavior during what he described as a prolonged mental health episode in 2025 that included “psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior” that “destroyed” his life.
Ye backtracked on his previous statements in the Wall Street Journal advertisement.
“I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people,” he wrote.
Ye attributed his mental health struggles in part to a car accident 25 years ago that broke his jaw and injured the right frontal lobe of his brain.
“At the time, the focus was on the visible damage — the fracture, the swelling and the immediate physical trauma,” he said in the advertisement. “The deeper injury, the one inside my skull, went unnoticed.”
“I lost touch with reality,” he continued. “Things got worse the longer I ignored the problem. I said things that I deeply regret.”
Freshman economics major Hailey Pulis predicts Kanye will back out of the performance.
“I feel like there is a 50/50 chance it’ll actually happen,” she said. “If it does happen, I could see a lot of protests taking place.”
Seldman said she believes some students may attend the concert “without realizing” the severity of the artist’s past statements.
However, not all USC students are against Ye’s return to the stage. Ezekiel Castanada, third-year music performance major, called the concert announcement “chill.”
“Honestly, good for him,” Castanada said.