San E criticized for impolite behavior towards hip-hop festival staff

Hip-hop and rap artist San E is currently under the spotlight after his alleged impolite behavior of both himself and his team to a hip-hop festival staff after being over 20 minutes late to his performance. 

The initial story of the rude behavior first rose from a poster, claiming to be a musical director of a hip-hop festival that took place a month ago, at a hip-hop forum of the famous Korean online community DC Inside on December 11th.

The poster cites impolite language from San E’s staff to the hip-hop festival staff, as well as unnecessary demands on top of being 50 minutes late for his performance.

Following the spread of the story, BrandNew Music rebuked it, saying to TV Daily on December 12th, “The post is simply there in order to mar San E’s image. We cannot even confirm whether or not the event hosts’ wrote the post. So this strengthens our suspicion that the poster simply intended to defame San E. We had told them two days prior to the event that San E would arrive at 12AM due to his busy schedule. When San E arrived, we asked them politely to wipe the stage of soap bubbles, which were abundant on stage because we didn’t want San E getting hurt. San E also apologized to the audience because he felt sorry the performance was cut so short. We also did not use any vulgar language of the sort mentioned in the post and although short, San E did his best on stage.”

“The hosts of the event are still not responding to our calls. According to the manager, they were impolite to us for some reason, and they even said ‘Watch what tomorrows articles say.’ There are a lot of posts criticizing San E in such ways, and they are turning into hot topics even though their validity isn’t confirmed. I hope fans do not misunderstand San E based on such fabricated criticism.” 

Those in charge of the event told TV Daily, “We are busy because of end of the year events, and that’s why it’s been difficult to connect with the performance team. I don’t know why we need to be telling you this stuff.”

The original post from DC Inside can be found below, directly translated by Koreaboo. The original post can be found here

“It’s already been a month, but I want to tell you all a story.

I’m a hardworking citizen of Korea who struggle day by day. At the time I was working at a musical director for a festival.

This festival took place in a rural area near Asan and took place over two days with hip-hop and EDM concerts. Many famous hip-hop artists as well as DJs came and performed.

These festivals always have cause for trouble because from the host’s perspective, it is a service business and in a bigger sense it is business between people. So festivals always open on the assumption something will go wrong. (Most people say with events unless something goes wrong it was successful)

But something did go wrong.

On Friday, the first day of  the festival, hip hop concerts were taking place.
The weather was getting fairly cold, but since hip-hop had become extremely popular with diss battles and Show Me the Money, the crowd’s reactions were heated and things went very smoothly.

The festival started at 5PM and was scheduled to end at 12:10AM. Although it was an outdoor festival, it was very close to residential areas so even with the residents’ permission, we had to finish on time at 12:10 AM.

At 11:25PM the festival was drawing to a close. The closing artist who was to go on in five minutes was a hip-hop musician I will refer to simply as ‘SAN.’

(This post is written to bring awareness to the wrong actions of someone, but apparently if I mention real names, I can get sued for defamation so I will call him ‘SAN.’  I hope no one realizes who he is! Well, he was a hot topic for locking himself in his waiting room in August at a university event saying that he was tired)

SAN’s concert was scheduled from 11:30PM to 12:10AM. He was the finale and the superstar of the concert. He was the climax everyone was waiting for.

At 11:25, the last song of the artist before SAN was playing. When the song ended, the plan was to black out, put SAN’s introduction on stage. All the staff and artists were on stand by.

That’s when the person in charge of the artists told me, ‘Director we have a huge problem!! San isn’t here yet ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ…’

An artist who was supposed to be on in five minutes wasn’t here and getting ready. When I called and asked where he was, his agency replied he will be there in 20 minutes.

Well, we couldn’t teleport him so we had 20 minutes of empty space.

Even the artists who performed previously had only the songs they performed on CD, so they couldn’t do an encore or anything.

The crowd started murmuring at 11:35PM after five minutes of black out. The fans were starting to become angry because the artist they had been waiting for over seven hours wasn’t showing up. They started blaming the hosts of the festival.

SAN’s side said they would be here at 11:50 so I did what I had to. I went up on stage to perform -_-….

The fans were furious when I went up on stage instead of SAN, but I thought it would be better to even create a makeshift program than tell the crowd they would have to wait 20 minutes. I didn’t want to pressure SAN into hurrying because of the recent car accident of a girl group made me think twice before hurrying them along. So I went up on stage and DJed.

He finally arrive at 12AM. (30 minutes late)

You would think if someone was late, they would apologize, hurry on stage and perform right away.

They didn’t come up on stage, so I looked around and one of the staff told me, ‘Hyung, he has a DJ set.’

DJ sets are private DJ equipment that artists bring when they have their own DJ. The problem was this required set up so it would take more time until SAN performed.

So he would take more time still.

As a musical director, I was responsible for setting up the equipment, and the DJ came and left me with the equipment cases, so I started setting up.

Five minutes later when the DJ appeared, he was furious.

He shouted, ‘AH I said to not take out the friggin equipment!!’

I was flustered, but since I respect artists and their equipment I tried to understand that he didn’t want anyone else touching his equipment. It makes one wonder what he wanted me to do with his equipment for the five minutes he left me alone with them….

I would think they would have thanked me for filling in while they ran late and apologized.

Anyway since it was my responsibility I helped him finish setting up his equipment and I found out later that during the five minutes I was alone with the DJ’s equipment, the DJ ordered the staff to move the DJing table closer to the stage because people wouldn’t be able to see him the way the stage was set up.

It was already 12:15AM at this point and police were starting to appear.

Everything was set up and finally everything was ready and we asked San to hurry and perform.

His manager told me he couldn’t yet..

He told us to clean the stage…….

There’s a lake nearby the area so there were drops of water here and there on the stage. We took this in consideration and the floor was made of rubber for safety issues and other artists had no trouble in their performance. (Plus SAN was wearing Jordans)

SAN apparently said he needed to have no water on stage so staff complied, but he wasn’t satisfied so asked for the stage to be wiped again. At this point he was 45 minutes late.

I pleaded with the manager that he has to get on now, and the manager yelled, “Than give me the  rag. I’ll do it myself!!”
(They were all speaking informally and being extremely disrespectful, while our staff was being extremely respectful of the artists)
So I gave him what he asked for.

He proceeded to the middle of the stage and threw a pile of tissue on the floor and started wiping with his feet (towards the crowd) and started swearing at the staff, ‘Get your fucking hands out of your pockets and get up here and wipe!!’

The staff member was warming up his hands in his pockets and apparently that got on his nerves. He started asking around who was in charge, and I went up and told him and said SAN needs to go on stage, adamantly.

He said, ‘Ha, you sound like you’re going to hit me. Go ahead go ahead.’

I couldn’t believe what was going on when the show was running so late.

Was SAN unaware of all this? No. He saw everything yet still did not go on stage for 50 minutes and was power tripping.

Manager went back to SAN and said, ‘Let’s delay this bastards even more.’

SAN, however, got up on stage and he tried to take a can of beer with him on stage. I told him he couldn’t do that because there were underage audiences as well. Than he looked at me with an expression that said, ‘Who are you to stop me from doing what I want to do?’

He got up on stage after 50 minutes of waiting and the crowd seemed to calm down at his appearance. The problem, however, was that we couldn’t keep the concert going on for much longer. We were supposed to end the concert at 12:10AM, but that time had passed and the police were demanding we end the event right away. So SAN had to cut his performance short. He didn’t even perform half the length of the 40 minutes he was supposed to and the festival ended at 12:40 AM. The crowd was angry that they had waited for so long to see less than 20 minutes of performance.

To be honest, those around SAN caused us more trouble than SAN himself did. But I want to tell him that if he is a celebrity, he needs to begin making sure the people around him act properly as well. His team, in its current state, would offend anyone that worked with them.

We didn’t pressure SAN in any way when he was late, and he was not complying with the terms of the contract. But SAN and his crew, even though they were late, demanded things of us, delayed things further and swore at the staff. They never even apologized for their actions to us on that day or later.

I could ask for compensation from his company because they did cause us a lot of trouble. I could ask for up to 3 times the amount we paid him. But this wouldn’t change much. I wish to prevent such an event happening by spreading word of this event. He needs to officially apologize.

Well I guess he did apologize. He posted on his official Facebook ‘I’m sorry ㅠㅠ’ it looked like he drew it on his galaxy note -_-. His fans have already made everything look like the hosts’ fault.

But I still believe he needs to officially apologize to his fans as well as the event holders, at least, for breaking the terms of contract.”

Source: DC inside and TV Daily