Last weekend, Nicki Minaj flew 6,000 miles to headline an event called DWP Festival in Shanghai, China. The organizers of the festival reportedly paid $3 million USD for a 90-minute performance by the Queen of Rap. I don’t know how to say this but, uh, the festival is fake.
The real DWP, short for Djakarta Warehouse Project, is going to be held in Bali this year for its 10th year anniversary (despite having an entirely different Indonesian city in its name) with The Weeknd as one of its headliners.
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Organizers who are not affiliated at all with company that host DWP every year, Ismaya Group, essentially stole the DWP brand and misled Nicki’s team and thousands of people in the audience, some of whom paid up to $420 USD to see her live. Upon learning that something shady was going on, Nicki refused to get on stage. Good call! In a video taken before she left the country, she promised to go back to Shanghai with “a better partner.”
In a statement translated by Time Out Shanghai, the folks behind the counterfeit DWP festival said that they “strongly criticize [Nicki and her team’s] behavior” for refusing to give a performance after delaying it for a couple of hours. They also said they’re going to refund all full-price tickets bought from official channels, which is the least they could do.
On Thursday evening, Ismaya Group confirmed that it did not take part in the festival DWP China.
“The use of DWP including its variants during ‘DWP CHINA 2018 – Edition 2018 DWP China Shanghai’ event was not authorised by us and may be considered as an infringement to our trademark,” the statement read. “We reserve all our rights to protect our legal interests in this matter.”
Anyway, Nicki is now safe and sound back home and spending Thanksgiving with her family.
This story was updated at 7:50 PM Jakarta time to include a response from Ismaya Group.
