A bill known as the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant was approved by Congress in 2020 and signed into law by Donald Trump. The fund was designed to support artists and venues that were being forced to close because to COVID-19. But it ended providing funding to a few very popular performers as well.
According to an exposé by Business Insider, big artists such as Chris Brown, Alice In Chains, and Lil Wayne, misused those funds by earning millions of dollars and then lavishly spending it.
Lil Wayne got a taxpayer-funded $8.9 million grant from the above fund, and he “spent more than $1.3 million from the grant on private-jet flights and over $460,000 on clothes and accessories, many of them from high-end brands like Gucci and Balenciaga.” The A-list rapper also reportedly used $175k of that money on “a music festival promoting his marijuana brand, GKUA” and also used the grant for “flights and luxury hotel rooms for women whose connection to Lil Wayne’s touring operation was unclear, including a waitress at a Hooters-type restaurant and a porn actress.”
Lil Wayne is also accused of taking $88,000 in taxpayer money for a concert in Coachella, California that he never showed up for. When Business Insider reached him via text, Wayne responded with “a sexually explicit overture to a reporter and did not respond to questions.”
Clients of the managing business NKSFB received at least $207 million in grant funds, while the firm itself took $7 million out of that, according to Business Insider. The article details the expenditures they made using the paper trail they left behind. For example, it appears that Chris Brown received $5.1 million and his touring firm received $10 million. In addition, he received $80,000 to celebrate his birthday in a lavish way. According to reports, Marshmello received more money than any other musician—nearly $10 million.
The article details the ways that musicians like Steve Aoki, Rae Sremmurd, and Shinedown were paid grant money as well. It claims that members of Alice In Chains were paid $3.4 million and there’s a detail that will surely disturb some people: “Scott Dachroeden, a guitar tech and tour photographer who had worked with the band for years, received a cancer diagnosis in late 2022. The band, which records show did not spend grant money on benefits like health insurance, circulated a GoFundMe page on Twitter.” Dachroeden has since passed away, and sources told Business Insider that the band didn’t do much to help him financially.
