Fame Kills Tour by Kanye West and Lady Gaga Canceled

Kanye West and Lady Gaga's tour through U.S. and Canada has been canceled with no reason given. This happened just weeks after the rap star came under public fire for humiliating country star Taylor Swift at the VMA show.

Photo: Fame Kills Tour by Kanye West and Lady Gaga Canceled

Concert promoter Live Nation said in a statement on Thursday that the "Fame Kills" tour, that was due to kick off in Phoenix, Arizona on November 10 and run through January, had been canceled with refunds available at the point of sale.

West came under fire after an outburst at the MTV Video Music wards when he grabbed the microphone as country teen star Taylor Swift was responding to her best female video award to say that R&B star Beyonce should have won Swift's trophy.

The Grammy winner has since apologized to Swift and expressed regret twice on the Web and in a TV appearance on "The Jay Leno Show" for his behavior that drew boos from the crowd and prompted a ban of his music by some radio stations in California and Florida, Reuters reports.

It was also reported, the "Fame Kills" tour was an intuitive juxtaposition of the new pop power structure. West's panoramic hip-hop appeal with Gaga's even broader reach -- one that includes the gay/lesbian community -- was sure to draw a mind-bogglingly cross-cultural crowd.

The few leaked details on the actual show made it sound like a truly ambitious undertaking, with both artists on stage at the same time:

"The storyline is that Kanye is on one end of the stage and I'm on the other, and the whole show, we are trying to get to where each other is," Lady Gaga said. "I want something that he has, which is the fame, and he wants something that I have, which is home, and my humble beginnings. So we battle each other throughout the entire performance to steal each other's spaces."

She continued, "So I'm essentially on a quest to kill Kanye West to steal his fame."

The quintessential modern hip-hop star and pop's reigning drama queen embroiled in an onstage battle certainly sounds much more entertaining than most arena shows of the recent past. Two such dynamic performers teaming up for one grand and spectacle held nothing but promise, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Considering Kanye's "Glow in the Dark" tour was sold out and Gaga's star is on the rise, it's hard to believe ticket sales were that poor. However, in the case of the "Fame Kills" stop at New York's Nassau Coliseum, plenty of general admission tickets were still available hours after they went on presale. In fact, Ticketmaster's listing for the Nassau Coliseum show is still active, and GA tickets are widely available.

Of course, there's a fairly obvious reason for slow ticket sales: the wave of anti-Kanye sentiment that washed across the country when West stole the spotlight from Taylor Swift at MTV's Video Music Awards on September 13th. When Rolling Stone initially revealed the Fame Kills tour dates, the presale date listed on some of the concerts was just two days after the Swift incident, Rolling Stone reports.