The “Make America Slime Again” (MASA) Tour, headlined by one of rap’s most controversial and potent voices, NBA YoungBoy (Kentrell DeSean Gaulden), was intended to be a victory lap for his eighth studio album. Instead, it has devolved into a shocking national cautionary tale—a series of violent incidents and security meltdowns that expose the fragile line between passionate fandom and outright danger. The chaos reached a terrifying peak in two separate, harrowing events: a brutal, unprovoked assault on an elderly venue employee in Kansas City and a dramatic, emergency police extraction of the rapper himself from a frenzied mob in New Orleans. These moments are not isolated anomalies; they are symptoms of a systemic crisis plaguing high-energy hip-hop concerts, forcing a painful reckoning for artists, venues, and law enforcement alike.

The Vicious Beatdown: A Seating Dispute Turns Bloody

The most disturbing incident occurred on September 24, 2025, during the “Massacre” concert stop at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The victim was 66-year-old Thomas Schlanger, a dedicated guest services employee with 17 years of experience helping concert-goers. His only offense? Politely asking a teenager to move to his correct seat—a routine request made thousands of times before without incident.

The confrontation escalated with frightening speed. A 14-year-old teen, whose name is withheld due to his age, violently pushed Schlanger to the ground and proceeded to deliver a horrific, sustained beatdown. Witnesses describe a furious barrage of punches, with the teen landing over ten clean strikes to the face and body of the elderly man as he lay helpless on the concrete floor. The assault lasted approximately 20 to 30 seconds, but the damage was severe: Schlanger suffered a broken nose and significant facial bruising. The violence was so uncontrolled that when a security guard attempted to intervene, he was immediately attacked by the same teen.

The sheer brutality of a young person attacking a man old enough to be his grandfather—and then turning on anyone who attempted to stop the assault—sent shockwaves through the community. The whole horrific sequence was captured on cell phones and quickly went viral, igniting widespread outrage over youth violence and the vulnerability of elderly workers.

In a sea of people recording the incident, one individual emerged as a hero. Antonio Claytor, a concert attendee, described the horrific scene to Fox 4 News, stepping in when everyone else was frozen in shock or focused on their cameras. Claytor’s motivation was simple and profound: “Like, I have family members that are at that age. This isn’t right… I was raised with morals and values.” His bravery cannot be overstated; he put himself at risk, with no knowledge of whether the attacker was armed, to save a complete stranger. Schlanger was rushed to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, his memory of the actual assault blocked by the trauma. The 14-year-old attacker was detained by the Kansas City Police Department but was later released to a guardian pending investigation, leaving many questions about accountability and justice for the victim.

The Police Extraction: Rapper Hoisted to Safety

Just a month later, the specter of chaos resurfaced with the same intensity in New Orleans. On the early morning of October 20, 2025, after his sold-out show at the Smoothie King Center, NBA YoungBoy was spotted walking through the busy Canal and Bourbon streets in the city’s downtown district. The shocking detail that turned a simple walk into a life-threatening security failure: the rapper had no personal security, no bodyguards, and no detail protecting him.

Predictably, an enthusiastic mob of hundreds of fans quickly swarmed him. The situation, described as “straight chaos” that rapidly escalated into an “absolute frenzy,” threatened to turn deadly in seconds. While there was no traditional violence or weapons drawn, the crushing force of the crowd—all desperate to get close, touch him, or snap a photo—was overwhelming, blocking pathways and trapping the star in a human hurricane.

The dramatic climax came when the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) intervened. Officers, acting on pre-planned threat intelligence, physically lifted NBA YoungBoy off his feet and carried him to a waiting vehicle to ensure his safety. Multiple viral videos showed police literally hoisting the artist above the heads of the crowd, brushing him away from the mob in a scene more typical of an emergency evacuation than a post-concert stroll.

The NOPD’s dramatic response was not a lucky coincidence; it was part of a pre-planned operation. Law enforcement had intelligence suggesting potential problems and were posted up and ready, a testament to the known security risks surrounding the rapper. This fact immediately raised a crucial question: if the police knew of the dangers, why was NBA YoungBoy left to navigate the streets of one of America’s busiest party districts with absolutely no personal security detail? The silence from the rapper’s camp following the incident only amplifies the mystery and concern over his team’s decision-making.

A Tour Defined by Threats and Cancellations

These two headline incidents—the broken nose and the police rescue—are merely the most severe examples of a deeply troubling pattern on the MASA Tour. Throughout the run, NBA YoungBoy’s events have been plagued by threats, clashes, and near-disasters:

Atlanta (October 19, 2025): The show at State Farm Arena was completely scrapped hours before doors opened after the rapper’s crew clashed with police over security protocols, leading to a physical confrontation between the team and law enforcement.
Los Angeles (September 11, 2025): A concert at the Crypto.com Arena had to be fully evacuated following reports of gunfire. While no one was ultimately struck, the panic, stampede, and psychological impact of a credible shooting threat were immense.
Houston (September 7, 2025) and Washington D.C. (October 2, 2025): Fans ambushed and swarmed the rapper’s vehicle outside the Toyota Center and after a show in D.C., demonstrating the high risk the artist takes every time he makes himself accessible.

The decision to cancel the Chicago concert on September 24, 2025, highlights the severity of the threat landscape. The show was preemptively canceled due to “fears of violence” stemming from the rapper’s ongoing, highly public feud with rival Chicago rapper Lil Durk, including diss tracks and genuine street politics that spill over into public venues. The United Center even enforced a strict no-bag policy beforehand, indicating the perceived level of danger.

The Shadow of Astroworld and the Industry’s Crisis

The security challenges faced by the MASA Tour do not occur in a vacuum. They are part of a larger, deeply troubled trend in the hip-hop concert landscape—a landscape irrevocably altered by the 2021 Astroworld festival tragedy.

On November 5, 2021, at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival in Houston, a catastrophic crowd surge during the headlining performance led to the compression asphyxiation deaths of ten attendees, aged nine to 27, and injured hundreds more. It became one of the deadliest concert disasters in U.S. history and fundamentally changed how the industry views crowd control at high-energy hip-hop events. Investigations later cited poor crowd control, oversold tickets, and grossly inadequate planning—such as only one medic for every 800 attendees—as primary factors. Most controversially, Travis Scott continued performing for 40 minutes after a mass casualty event was declared by police.

The Astroworld disaster is the tragic precedent that informs the intense, often disproportionate, security measures seen today. The massive deployment of over 400 police officers at NBA YoungBoy’s New Orleans show is a direct, albeit extreme, result of lessons learned from Houston. Venues and authorities are now terrified of mass casualty events, which leads to everything from preemptive cancellations to heavy-handed police presence.

However, the problem extends beyond U.S. borders and the NBA YoungBoy tour. In October 2025, a free outdoor rap concert in Paris, France, was canceled due to massive overcrowding, after which a mob of fans rioted, beating a plainclothes police officer unconscious and injuring three others. In June 2024, a surprise Travis Scott pop-up performance in New York saw approximately 5,000 fans rush the barriers, creating stampede-like conditions that injured several people—an eerie echo of Astroworld that narrowly avoided fatalities.

Beyond Bias: The Need for Nuance and Preparation

It is crucial to approach this issue with nuance, as data does not conclusively prove that rap concerts are disproportionately violent compared to rock, EDM, or country music events. However, hip-hop shows face significantly stricter scrutiny and security enforcement—such as strict, race-conscious bag bans—a fact that raises uncomfortable questions about racial bias in security protocols.

Nonetheless, several genuine factors converge to create unique risks at these events:

Youth and Impulsivity: Rap concerts often attract large crowds of young people, who are statistically more prone to impulsive behavior and less developed conflict-resolution skills, as tragically demonstrated by the 14-year-old attacker in Kansas City.
Artist Rivalries: Ongoing street beefs and rivalries, such as the one involving NBA YoungBoy, transform concert venues into potential flashpoints for real-world violence, leading to credible threats and, in the case of the LA evacuation, reports of gunfire.
High-Energy Culture: Artists like NBA YoungBoy and Travis Scott cultivate intense, high-energy fan cultures, making crowd control extremely challenging once the energy becomes uncontrollable.

The violence surrounding the MASA Tour has laid bare the enduring security crisis at urban music festivals. It highlights a painful truth: safety is not guaranteed, and the cost of insufficient planning can be measured not just in cancellations and police escorts, but in broken bones and the lasting trauma inflicted on the most vulnerable workers. The industry has a moral imperative to ensure that the music—which is meant to unite and electrify—does not become the soundtrack to tragedy.