Riky Rick addresses 'reckless super-spreader' event backlash

After coming under fire for posting a video of his performance over the weekend, which showed partygoers seemingly “breaking Covid-19 regulations”, rapper Riky Rick believes it's not their job as artists to police whether pandemic protocols were being observed.

In an exclusive interview with TshisaLIVE, Riky said the backlash baffled him as he was on stage to make people happy and not to monitor whether people were wearing masks or social distancing.

“Our job is to get to a venue and make people happy, to make them sing and dance and rejoice.

“Our job is not to force people to wear their masks. It might seem like we have that responsibility because everyone sort of looks at artists to spread the message, which we did, but unfortunately we also have to do our jobs, and our jobs are where people are drinking and having fun.”

Riky said people who didn't attend the gig but watched the viral video only saw “something crazy going on”, but according to him, it wasn't as bad as social media users have made it out to be.

“It might look to someone who was sitting at home that something crazy was going on, but when I look at that video, I don't see 500 people. I saw sanitisers coming in and out of the event.

“I understand people's concerns, but at the same time our job is to jump on stage, make people happy and give them what they paid their hard-earned money for.” 

The Ungazincishi hitmaker said he didn't understand the uproar around the viral video because he posts often performance videos.

“Maybe me posting the video makes people feel different, but I've always posted videos of my performances. It's something we always do. If you look through Instagram and WhatsApp statuses, that's what everybody does.

“I do understand the concerns people have, but maybe we need to find solutions to ensure people wear masks at events. However, from what I saw coming in, I saw people using sanitisers. When we got on stage we sanitised our equipment and sanitised ourselves, and then we rocked.” 

He said he saw an environment in which people were sanitised and there to have fun.  

Aked whether he felt the need to apologise, a baffled Riky replied: "Apologise for what? Like I said, we are booked to cater to people who are at the show and who are spending their hard-earned money.”