The annual Big Day Out festival wound into Sydney last weekend, and Music Feeds was there to capture the magic. Stay tuned in the next couple of days for our exhaustive coverage of both days, but for now check out this report from Ninemsn about a rather unfortunate incident that occurred when a journalist from Rupert Murdoch’s own News.com.au rubbed Dizzee Rascal the wrong way:
“Publicists at the Big Day Out have pressured a journalist to destroy her footage after British rapper Dizzee Rascal lashed out at her in an expletive-laden interview.
The entertainment reporter said her interview with Rascal, at Homebush venue in Sydney’s west last Friday, involved some “banter” that ended inexplicably on a sour note.
According to a report on news.com.au, Stephenson asked Rascal towards the end of the interview if he had ever fallen over on stage.
“Yeah, yeah I have stacked it on stage,” replied the rapper, the singer of hits such as Dirty Money and Dance Wiv Me .
Stephenson: “What happened then?”
Rascal: “Well I stacked it, innit.”
The conversation ended suddenly when the reporter joked: “So, you didn’t eat the floor or anything like that?”
Replied Rascal: “What the f–k do you want from me man, I’ve already said I done it. Yeah I stacked it, bitch. F–k!”
Stephenson told ninemsn that she left the interview without thinking much more about the encounter and went into the arena to do further stories, but did not take her mobile phone.
She said around 45 minutes after the interview a “BDO publicist approached me, and so I was called back to the media tent. I had between 10 and 12 missed calls on the phone. The calls were from Dizzy Rascal’s publicists and from other BDO publicists as well.”
On returning to the tent the journalist was told to destroy her footage, but she protested that she was unable to do so as without losing all the footage from the day.
“There was a lot of pressure and they (the publicists) were wanting us to delete it on the spot,” she told ninemsn.
Instead she was made to sign a hand-written contract saying that the footage wouldn’t be used.
“He was refusing to do any more interviews until I signed it,” she said.
A team from a commercial radio station were waiting anxiously to speak to him, so Stephenson signed the release, but is disappointed at the heavy-handed nature of the publicists and Rascal’s lack of courtesy.
“He (Dizzy) has a responsibility when he does these interviews,” she said.”
Music Feeds’ own Mikey Carr sat down with Dizzee on Friday, and by all reports he was a pleasure to talk to. We can only assume that it wasn’t only the last question this interviewer asked that pissed Dizzee off (although that was a pretty stupid question to keep pushing… What else was he supposed to say?!). I mean, come on, does this guy look angry?
Keep an eye out for footage of our own (successful) interview with Dizzee Rascal later in the week.
