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6ix9ine sued for $5.3 million over cancelled show

By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 9 July 2020

If he’s getting bored of planning sneaky chart strategies from home while on COVID-lockdown-cum-house-arrest, 6ix9ine could apply his strategic mind to how he might go about defeating some litigation in the civil courts.

The rapper has been sued by the promoter of a cancelled 2018 show in Washington DC. He is accused of breach of contract for bailing on the concert at the very last minute and of defamation for comments he made after the show was canned.

The concert was due to take place at Washington’s Echostage venue on 28 Oct 2018. The lawsuit filed by promoters Hits Before Fame and After Hours explains how there had been a number of false starts to getting the show off the ground, but that a deal was ultimately done with reps of the rapper, and the vast majority of his $60,000 fee was paid upfront.

There were concerns in the run up to the show because 6ix9ine had failed to promote it via his social channels, although he had recorded a promotional video for the promoters and ticket sales had been going OK. The real concerns started on the day of the gig, because the rapper’s people hadn’t provided any schedule for his arrival and soundcheck.

The lawsuit runs through a series of increasingly stressful calls and text messages between the promoter and the rapper’s reps as crowds started to gather at the venue and there was no word on when 6ix9ine would arrive. It later transpired that, as fans started to queue outside Echostage, he was still at home doing an Instagram interview with website The Shaderoom. He then later appeared at an event in Newark, New Jersey, 220 miles away.

In the wake of the cancellation, 6ix9ine told fans via Instagram that he hadn’t been paid the pre-agreed deposit by the promoters of the Washington show and that the people Hits Before Fame and After Hours had been liaising with didn’t actually work for him. These comments, the lawsuit says, were not only untrue, but they intensified an online backlash that had already begun against the promoters.

With all that in mind, Hits Before Fame and After Hours say that – not only did they incur a direct financial hit from the cancelled show, given they’d already laid out for the venue, support acts and marketing, as well as the rapper’s fee – but their businesses have been negatively impacted ever since. And so now they are suing for $5.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

The cancelled show lawsuit follows another back in March in which clothing brand Fashion Nova accused the rapper of taking a $225,000 advance in 2018 to do some Instagram promo despite having no intention of ever doing so.

So, there’s plenty of legal wrangling for 6ix9ine to be thinking about, if and when working out how the play the Billboard 100 chart rules gets tiresome.