(Reuters) – The singer CeeLo Green has been removed from the lineup of an Alabama music festival, the latest fallout over online comments attributed to him about rape after he pleaded no contest last month to giving the drug ecstasy to a woman in 2012.
The cancellation of Green’s Oct. 4 performance at BayFest in Mobile was announced on Monday, and comes on the heels of similar cancellations by the Freedom LIVE concert in Washington, D.C., and the Gretna Heritage Festival in Louisiana.
In addition, several media outlets reported last week that TBS has canceled Green’s reality TV show, The Good Life, after one season.
Green, whose real name is Thomas DeCarlo Callaway, was sentenced last month to three years of probation and ordered to complete 52 Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings as well as 360 hours of community service.
According to prosecutors from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, Green gave the banned drug ecstasy to a 33-year-old woman at a Los Angeles restaurant. Green pleaded no contest to a felony charge of giving ecstasy to the woman last month.
The woman initially accused Green of sexual assault, but prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to charge him with rape of an intoxicated person. His attorney has said Green had consensual sex with the woman.
After his sentencing, Green defended himself on Twitter, writing that if someone is passed out they’re not even WITH you consciously, so WITH Implies consent.
Green subsequently deleted that and other contentious postings, later apologizing for them.
Those comments were idiotic, untrue and not what I believe, he said, also on Twitter.
Earlier this year, the Georgia native said he was stepping down from his role as a judge on NBC’s popular singing competition The Voice.
Green is known for his 2010 hit song Forget You and as half of soul music duo Gnarls Barkley, which was behind the 2006 smash hit Crazy.
(Reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in New Orleans; Editing by Jonathan Allen and Mohammad Zargham)
