Slowthai got a little too comfortable with one of the hosts at the NME Awards and got kicked out after confronting an audience member for booing his actions. After dropping his debut album, Nothing Great About Britain, last May, the U.K.-born rapper has become known for his outrageous antics. He's recently been gaining greater recognition in the United States after his ostentatious performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon earlier this month.
The NME Awards, which were held at the O2 Academy in Brixton on Wednesday evening, honoured the artist with the Hero of the Year Award, but the moment didn't go quite as planned.
Slowthai took the stage to accept the award from the night's hosts, comedian Katherine Ryan and Beats 1 presenter Julie Adenuga. However, slowthai's questionable comments toward Katherine as well as his invasion of her personal space rubbed audience members the wrong way.
Things started to go downhill when, later on in the evening, slowthai directly called out an audience member for booing him and "ruining [his] speech" while he was accepting his award. That same audience member called him a "wasteman" which prompted others in attendance to throw drinks (and even a microphone) toward the stage. Slowthai threw his drink right back before jumping into the crowd to confront the person in question. Security intervened and slowthai was removed from the premises.
Many were quick to stand up for Katherine Ryan after it appeared that she had been sexually harassed by the Brit, but the comedian took to Twitter to clear things up.
Responding to a user who condemned slowthai's actions and came to her defense, Katherine tweet, "He didn’t make me uncomfortable. This is why we need women in positions of power. I knew he had lost from the moment he opened his mouth like any heckler coming up against a COMIC - not a woman - a COMIC. I was operating 2/10. What a sweet boy. I defused it. Tonight was fun!" Thursday morning, Slowthai took to Twitter to address the situation as well, asking the NME Awards to give his award to Katherine.
"@nme please forward my award to @kathbum for she is the hero of the year," he tweeted. "What started as a joke between us escalated to a point of shameful actions on my part. i want to unreservedly apologise, there is no excuse and I am sorry. i am not a hero...katherine, you are a master at your craft and next time i’ll take my seat and leave the comedy to you. to any woman or man who saw a reflection of situations they’ve been in in those videos, i am sorry. i promise to do better. let’s talk here." Katherine responded, letting him know there was no bad blood between them.