Rakim Claps Back At Festival Crowd For Throwing Bottles Onstage: Watch

Rakim and Insane Clown Posse are not two acts you’d typically link together. And yet, the former did a show at ICP’s annual Gathering of the Juggalos festival. Rakim had a set of new and old songs in store for the crowd, but things went awry when bottles started being hurled at his head. The rapper made it very clear that he didn’t appreciate the disrespect. He proceeded to stop the show and lay into the ICP audience for putting his safety at risk. Evidently, Rakim is not someone you want to tick off.

“Chill with the motherf**king bottles, man,” Rakim told the audience. He tried to recover the momentum he’d lost after the bottle incident, but it proved fruitless. “For everybody that came to have a good time, make some noise,” he added, to no avail. It was here that the God MC decided to get stern. He laid out his frustration with the incident and made it very clear he wasn’t going to tolerate it again. “‘Cause, you know, I’m not tryna get hit with no f**king bottle, man,” he stated. “I love y’all, but I don’t wanna walk off stage while we having a good time, you know what I mean?”

The set was likely not what Rakim had in mind when he first announces his comeback. The rapper put out his first new album since 2009 in July, and spoke endlessly about his desire to prove he still had a musical spark. “The expectations that I not only give myself, but what the people give me,” he explained to Billboard. “I use that as fuel. I’d rather people expect me to succeed than to expect me to fail. I gotta keep doing it at a higher rate because that’s what they expect from me.”

Rakim also talked about the rush he gets from performing in front of a crowd. He told the New York Post that he never thought he’d get the chance to rap into his mid-50s, much less sell out venues. “In one of my rhymes, I said, ‘I’ma move crowds to 2,000 and somethin,” the emcee recalled. “But I had no idea I’d still be here rhyming at 50-something. For me, it ain’t something I could just fall out of love with. It’s who I am.” Hopefully the next show goes better.