Edi Rama, an artist who also happens to serve as Albania’s Prime Minster, has defended plans to stage a Kanye West concert in a recently built stadium outside Tirana, even as some Jewish groups continued to accuse the rapper of antisemitism.
West, who previously denied the Holocaust and posted about his intentions to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” is set to perform on Saturday in a custom-built venue erected at a cost of millions of euros. The Albanian media previously quoted one prominent Jewish group as calling the concert an “amplification” of the rapper’s views and a “moral contradiction.” (In January, West did take out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal to publish an open letter apologizing for his past antisemitic remarks, writing, “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.”)
The Balkan Insight reported that Gazment Bardhi, an Albanian MP, had also called on Rama to cancel West’s concert.
Rama hit back at his detractors on Facebook this week, describing their claims as “scorpion-tailed lies to poison Albania.”
“4 MILLION EURO in the last minute, not to embarrass Albania, in the eyes of nearly 25 thousand foreigners from 80 countries whose Germans have bought tickets for Kanye West on time – while many others are scared of fear of the concert being canceled,” Rama wrote in another Facebook post.
It is the latest controversy to embroil Rama, who is facing a mass cry for his resignation that is known as the Flamingo Revolution. Central to that revolt is Rama’s plan to allow a group of investors to build a luxury resort along the Balkan coast. One of those investors is Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Rama has claimed that the denouncements of him surrounding the resort are “ideological bullshit.”
Even before the onset of the Flaming Revolution, Rama had also faced scrutiny after he fired a deputy facing a corruption investigation earlier this year.
Rama, who has been in power in Albania since 2013, is also well-known as an artist, with his work appearing in venues ranging from the Venice Biennale to the Bienal de São Paulo. “Rama is that rarest thing: not a politician with artistic leanings, but a real, bona fide artist in power,” wrote the Guardian in 2016. He is currently represented by two blue-chip galleries: Marian Goodman and Société, the latter of which took him on in 2025, the same year he began his fourth term.
Just last month, Rama brought his work to Art Basel’s Parcours section, which situates large-scale artworks around the Swiss city. Rama’s contribution was an untitled bronze sculpture based on drawings that he made while in the Kryeministria, or the Prime Minister’s Office.
