Soundwave Festival promoter AJ Maddah has dismissed rumours surrounding the potential for his bringing a major hip hop festival fronted by Eminem to Australia. Earlier this month it was revealed that Maddah was in talks to bring an event called Rapture Festival to life.
UPDATE: EMINEM CURATED RAPTURE 2014 AUSTRALIAN FESTIVAL DATES CONFIRMED – DETAILS HERE!
Asked by a fan over Twitter as to whether Rapture Fest was a “work in progress” or simply a “hit and miss,” Maddah explained that the festival was “something discussed for almost a year” however “sadly not going to work.”
Earlier today a fan tweeted the promoter to insist that any hip-hop festival not take precedence over a post-rock festival, to which Maddah sternly replied “Trust me, I will not be doing a hip hop festival. Ever.”
Maddah spoke to Music Feeds last month via Twitter, explaining why he wasn’t in the market to promote a hip-hop festival, citing lazy artists and unscrupulous agents and managers, saying:
“It’s plain larceny on the part of fake agents and managers selling acts they don’t have with money up front or promoters lying about acts and then not refunding; or “artists” that can’t be fucked getting on a flight or leaving hotel. It’s just 1 giant circle jerk of thieves and arseholes. And even when they do turn up, the ‘artist’ usually wants to do the absolute minimum fuck-all possible to fulfill contract.”
The rumours started when The Herald Sun’s Nui Te Koha reported that Eminem would be touring Australia in early 2014 and revealed that the Soundwave team were brought in to get the tour off the ground. Maddah subsequently explained that his group was in talks with Eminem regarding a new festival named Rapture.
Music Feeds later uncovered a digital artefact that suggested the idea for Rapture Festival had been in the pipeline long before Maddah’s involvement. A web post on the Eminiem fan forum and self-described “Ultimate Eminem Fansite,” TRShady.com, dating back to early December 2011, where a fan who’d attended a Sydney Eminem show stated:
“Before he came on, this video played. The audio was pretty quiet…But what I took from it was that Eminem will be returning every year with some of the biggest names in hip-hop to put on a hip-hop festival called Rapture.”
Subsequent forum members confirmed what the original poster had seen though the thread went cold soon after. Much, it seems, as the Rapture Festival saga has, for now.
