PARTYNEXTDOOR Unimpressed With Australia

Canadian R&B star PARTYNEXTDOOR made his Australian debut last week, but fans hoping to see him return might want to start tempering their expectations.

In a since-deleted tweet posted last Saturday (March 23) – and immortalised on Instagram by Take Flight – the artist (whose real name is Jahron Brathwaite) claimed he was less than impressed with his first experience Down Under: “Australia I can’t front, [I don’t know] if I’ll ever come back. There’s a life I’m living [and] I know y’all ain’t living like that,” he wrote candidly.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C43prtjyxeg/

PARTYNEXTDOOR performed twice last weekend, taking to the mainstage at the Souled Out festival in Sydney (Eora) on Friday (March 22) and the Gold Coast (Yugambeh) on Saturday; his tweet was made shortly after the latter. He has three more festival dates on the itinerary, too: the tour will hit Auckland (Tāmaki Makaurau) tomorrow (March 28), then Melbourne (Naarm) on Friday March 29 and Perth (Boorloo) on Sunday March 31.

Also on the lineup for this year’s Souled Out festival are acts like Summer Walker, Bryson Tiller, Lucky Daye and Majid Jordan. Tickets for the remaining dates are still on sale via the festival’s website – head here to find them.

In the comments of Take Flight’s Instagram post, fans have defended PARTYNEXTDOOR by claiming the festival’s atmosphere has not been up to par. “I was the only one in my section legit screaming the lyrics everyone [while] was dead,” wrote one commenter. “He should have come to do his own concert and not a festival and more people who actually like him would have shown their support.”

Another commenter wrote that crowds at Souled Out have been “consistently dead”, with artists having to “push the crowd to get hyped and sing along”.

PARTYNEXTDOOR has thus far released three studio albums – PARTYNEXTDOOR TWO in 2014, PARTYNEXTDOOR 3 in 2016, and PARTYMOBILE in 2020 – with his fourth, PARTYNEXTDOOR 4, scheduled for release on April 26 via OVO and Warner.