Lil Wayne, Chris Brown and Marshmello are just a few of the musicians who applied for and received payouts as part of the Shuttered Venue Operations Grant, a government program meant to aid independent venues and arts groups struggling during the pandemic. But according to a new report, they allegedly used the money to instead pay themselves or throw lavish parties at the cost of taxpayers.
In a detailed report from Business Insider, the musicians who received the grants — also including Alice in Chains, Shinedown, Rae Sremmerd and Steve Aoki — applied for assistance after the grant was signed into law by Donald Trump in 2020. The artists were eligible to receive up to $10 million to spend on “ordinary and necessary” expenses earmarked for their loan-out companies, and were required to make a good-faith statement to the Small Business Administration and show their companies had lost revenue of at least 25 percent between one quarter in 2019 and the same quarter in 2020.
But the report claims that many of the musicians who received the grants, none of whom responded to the publication’s requests for comments, used the money to pay either themselves or for unrelated expenses. Wayne, whose reps did not respond to Variety‘s request for comment, received $8.9 million that he divvied up for personal use including $1.3 million on private jets, over $460,000 on designer clothes and $2.14 million to settle a debt to his former manager Cortez Bryant.
Brown, meanwhile, received $10 million for his company CBE Touring. The performer paid himself $5.1 million and spent nearly $80,000 on his lavish 33rd birthday party. Marshmello was given a $9.9 million grant, all of which went into his pocket since he made more than $9.9 million from touring in 2019.
Aoki’s company DJ Kid Millionaire Touring used $2.4 million on payroll costs, $1.9 million of which was paid to Aoki. Three members of Shinedown split $2.5 million of their $8.3 million grant, while its 15 touring employees received a combined $650,000. Rae Sremmurd got $7.7 million for its Sremm Touring, with a solid chunk going to the duo.
In total, 13,000 arts groups received money from SVOG. At first, musicians weren’t explicitly eligible until the SBA reversed the decision in late 2021. According to the SVOG website, the program included over $16 billion in grants to shuttered venues.