A invoice often called the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant was accredited by Congress in 2020 and signed into regulation by Donald Trump. The fund was designed to help artists and venues that had been being compelled to shut as a result of to COVID-19. However it ended offering funding to a couple very talked-about performers as properly.
In response to an exposé by Enterprise Insider, huge artists akin to Chris Brown, Alice In Chains, and Lil Wayne, misused these funds by incomes tens of millions of {dollars} after which lavishly spending it.
Lil Wayne bought a taxpayer-funded $8.9 million grant from the above fund, and he “spent greater than $1.3 million from the grant on private-jet flights and over $460,000 on garments and equipment, a lot of them from high-end manufacturers like Gucci and Balenciaga.” The A-list rapper additionally reportedly used $175k of that cash on “a music competition selling his marijuana model, GKUA” and in addition used the grant for “flights and luxurious resort rooms for ladies whose connection to Lil Wayne’s touring operation was unclear, together with a waitress at a Hooters-type restaurant and a porn actress.”
Lil Wayne can be accused of taking $88,000 in taxpayer cash for a live performance in Coachella, California that he by no means confirmed up for. When Enterprise Insider reached him through textual content, Wayne responded with “a sexually specific overture to a reporter and didn’t reply to questions.”
Purchasers of the managing enterprise NKSFB obtained at the very least $207 million in grant funds, whereas the agency itself took $7 million out of that, in accordance with Enterprise Insider. The article particulars the expenditures they made utilizing the paper path they left behind. For instance, it seems that Chris Brown obtained $5.1 million and his touring agency obtained $10 million. As well as, he obtained $80,000 to have a good time his birthday in a lavish means. In response to reviews, Marshmello obtained more cash than every other musician—almost $10 million.
The article particulars the ways in which musicians like Steve Aoki, Rae Sremmurd, and Shinedown had been paid grant cash as properly. It claims that members of Alice In Chains had been paid $3.4 million and there’s a element that can certainly disturb some individuals: “Scott Dachroeden, a guitar tech and tour photographer who had labored with the band for years, obtained a most cancers prognosis in late 2022. The band, which data present didn’t spend grant cash on advantages like medical insurance, circulated a GoFundMe web page on Twitter.” Dachroeden has since handed away, and sources informed Enterprise Insider that the band didn’t do a lot to assist him financially.