“After the podcast, the Dropout Kings reached out to the author via IG & told them that they had been deceived by Ashley as well & also that the green-haired gentleman wasn’t in their group. They didn’t however apologize to Lil Xan.”

It was recently announced that Lil Xan aka DIEGO was going to headline a tour for the Born Dead clothing company. When he was never paid and the contract was never sent, Xan withdrew from the tour. Things went further when Ashley (whose real role remains unknown,) began passing herself off as Lil Xan’s manager & even hiring people as such. Despite some things they were unhappy about, DIEGO’s team was going to leave it at that. However, when the tour’s supporting act, the Nu Metal (think Linkin Park,) band Dropout Kings went to social media to disparage Xan with untruths, despite also apparently being scammed by Ashley. Xan’s new manager Tee Johnson felt compelled to speak out. Tee’s a longtime music business insider who’s dabbled in many areas. After witnessing how DIEGO was being taken advantage of, he’s stepped into things to right the ship. Tee sat down with DGB via Zoom to set the record straight.

This seems to be a complex situation, could you break it down for us?

Yeah man, you know people get to talking & running their mouth about stuff you know they know that they don’t know about, they just hearing stuff and then they just blow off with it. First and foremost, you know Diego wanted to get out there for the fans man, he was excited because the kid loves his fans. We wanted to do everything we could to make this thing happen. I’m about to break it down, the bottom line is business has to be handled in order to make things happen right. For weeks and weeks I’ve been talking to this promoter and trying to get the business handled. We’re trying to get depositing contracts done, you know all these things that have to happen. We’re doing the best we can, I’m on the phone with her, and then she starts dodging my calls. I can’t get her on the phone & when I finally do she makes promises. We’re gonna get this. We’re gonna get that. Nothing.

Did you have any further contact with her?

She starts hitting me up saying, “oh well you know Xan’s not selling tickets ” What are you talking about Xan is not selling tickets? First of all, Xan’s not a promoter, he’s supposed to come to the event and perform. That’s not his job to sell tickets, his job is to show up and perform for whoever the promoter gets into the venue? Why are you trying to make him the promoter? He gets paid the same whether one person shows up or 500 people show up. You don’t. That’s not on him, it’s on him to be there on time and do what he’s supposed to do. Just to give this lady her due, just so we can get both sides of the story, suppose in the contract he signed it did have a certain amount of social media promotion he was supposed to do that he didn’t live up to. Well, let’s go back to this. Where’s the signed contract? Where’s my contract miss promoter, miss booking agent? She wasn’t the promoter, there were 15 different promoters on the Born Dead tour. There was a different promoter in almost in every city, so I’m supposed to be dealing with all these different people who I never met, we never met? Looking for Diego’s money. That’s not how it’s done on this level, you pay upfront. None of these quote-unquote support acts that get on social media to get a name know anything.

So basically Xan was all the way wronged and then the Dropout Kings started going on social to complain & then trash him?

I’ll talk about what Xan did to them, he did nothing to them. I don’t know what their business was with this booking agent. My understanding is she was managing some of them and she’s a booking agent too. The bottom line is you know I didn’t like the way the tour started out from the beginning, because you got to understand I became Diegos manager just a couple of months ago. This was already in place when. When I come in, I’m looking for business to be done right, but the Born Dead business ain’t done right. I’m trying to get the business straight so he could take off on this tour that I didn’t like in the first place. It made no sense for a Soundcloud rapper to be on tour with three or four rock groups, completely different than what we do. I don’t even understand, he’s headlining with rock groups underneath and that makes no sense to me. Little Xan fans don’t want to come to listen to three rock groups before it gets to him. Then these dudes want to get on some nonsense. The little leprechaun with the green hair is bumping his gums talking about “oh Little Xan this, & Lil Xan that.” He doesn’t even know what’s going on, he’s getting secondhand information from somebody who’s not even telling them the truth. That’s on top of the fact that the booking agent knew that I wasn’t going to send anybody out on tour without some type of deposit. The hell we look like paying for travel and everywhere else and we haven’t got fifty cents worth of a deposit? For an artist of that magnitude

This lady, to her credit, does have good taste in publicists because she hired Quinnelle Holder aka Coach Q who’s one of the best publicists in rap, so the blessing is that you got to meet him and he got to meet you.

You know she represented herself to him as actually being Diego’s manager which was incorrect and that wasn’t legal. We don’t run to the police type and I don’t really know them white-collar laws but isn’t that illegal?

Pretty much, actually, it’s very much illegal, on top of the fact that technically she’s committed several acts of fraud, but ion run to the police either.

She misrepresented a whole lot of stuff. She told Q that she was supposed to be Xan’s manager. Also his main publicist. So why hire a publicist for a specific tour? That makes no sense. Why are these promoters not promoting in their city? Or are they promoting them & we don’t even know what’s going on? When publicists do tours don’t they promote the whole tour instead of one artist?

Because if you can get somebody to see Lil Xan & they might go see the green hair gum bumper & like him right?

Right, you know what I mean? Why would you just have a publicist for one artist? If you were gonna make this tour make sense you would have the rock band going to the rock radio station or whatever the equivalent is in that city. Then have Xan going to work his fanbase. It doesn’t even sound like there was an attempt at synergy. Then you got the little leprechaun dude running around like the Lucky Charms elf talking about “oh Little Xan wasn’t selling tickets to the cities.” You’re a support group so that tells me that all of you guys were looking for Little Xan to be your meal ticket.

Do you think it might even be more devious than that? Maybe they knew that the business wouldn’t be handled &they figured they’ll pull some shit to get the tour some attention?

That’s exactly what I felt from the beginning. It made no sense, there was no travel money, there’s nothing. There’s nothing set aside for anything, it’s just this this this clothing line, I forgot the brand (Born Dead) but the clothing line picked up something on the internet and then had a press release about Diego’s off their tour. Please, you didn’t put one Xan off your tour, we decided to not go because everything wasn’t in place. I challenge any of them to show me one contract that was signed before we were supposed to leave. I ended up getting two contracts after I pressed it, and I got them the day before we were supposed to leave and they still didn’t have a deposit, it was two signed contracts, but still no deposit

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Did they look like they were original or boilerplate?

They’re boilerplate and they have like e-signatures, they weren’t even filled out right. The contracts didn’t even have my guy’s real name on here, they had Little Xan and you know that’s not how a real professional contract is done right? Then the “manager” tells me this is done all the time. This ain’t my first rodeo, let’s not be stupid. Oh, this is a hard ticket to sell? If Little Xan in 2022 is promoted right he sells. We’re trying to get him back out there to show he can do this for his fans and he’s an artist. I’m the manager. I take care of the business, he goes and performs. As an artist he wanted to get out there but at the same time we can’t put ourselves in a backwards motion by shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to go on tour with no guarantees of getting the money back.

I mean talking Diego, you could have a flash mob 10,000-person concerts just by announcing it four hours before it happens.

Like I said I challenge them to show anywhere we acted in bad faith. With a little leprechaun dude you know he’s talking about he’ll beat Xan up and all this stuff. Look here homie, you know you got a chance to run your mouth, but you we ain’t no keyboard gangsters around here man. I’ll pay your way if you want to come up or we’ll pay our way to come and see you. I don’t like keyboard gangsters and all that talking through cameras. We don’t do that around here, so if you really feel a certain kind of way let’s get together. Let’s talk about it for real if they really feel like we pulled out because cities were canceling. Guess what? We didn’t have any paperwork, we had no deposits, and we had nothing. Why would we show up the day before without being paid? Then the “manager” dipped and dodged my calls for three days or four days, she wasn’t returning my text messages, nothing. I have no contact with none of these groups we wouldn’t have talked to these people so how all of a sudden are we supposed to tell these groups that we’re not coming?

People that run tours are over-communicative, it’s unfathomable not to be able to get in touch with somebody running a tour.

Yeah, she’s supposed to be putting this thing together, she’s supposed to be the booking agent. I’m your headliners manager & I can’t get a return call? I did everything I could, and Xan did everything he could. I let her know every time she needed to do her job & if these things didn’t happen it wasn’t gonna happen. Just from a logistics standpoint, we haven’t gotten anything in a timely matter, but I’m supposed to be booking flights, booking buses, booking hotels… I’m supposed to be doing all this stuff but at the very last minute, the day before & the business isn’t being taken care of from their side?

Diego is lucky, I can tell you really care, that this is upsetting to you.

His whole career he’d been taken advantage of him, his whole career. That’s not going down anymore, it’s a wrap. That’s just not going down now. Like I said man, I don’t like people talking out of pocket, for them to just jump out there like that and start trying to down the kid. He’s already going through mental health issues you know & he’s doing the best he can to stay sober. He’s been sober all this time and all these things are the type of things that can start sending people backward. If he was a weaker kid or had a weaker group around him this could have ended up bad for him, for something that he didn’t even do. Don’t blame us for protecting ourselves and wanting the business to be taken care of and if that’s what you want then blame me.

The article can’t all be about negativity, let’s get to some good news how’s Xan doing?

He’s great, he’s in the studio every day. He’s making things happen. I’m a slipping little here but here’s an exclusive for you. We’re working on putting together a nice TV show. Everything is coming together really nicely, we have a lot of things cooking for him right now you. He’s staying positive and moving forward. We’re not gonna let anything like this hold us back. I just wanted to clear the air on it, but you know he’s about to give his fans something new. There’s another side of him you know. People think he can’t make good music sober. There’s just always doubters in general that don’t believe he’s gonna make it.

You know in general every artist who got sober mostly made better music afterward?

Yeah, that is such a myth. The funny thing about Diego is that at 25 years old, he knows so much about music. I’m talking about all genres, it’s ridiculous. His knowledge of music, we’re talking about people like Willie Hutch. He really has an appreciation for the music and his fans. If people sleep on the man they really don’t know how hard he’s working. Working on staying sober, his music, and his career. He just really wants to stay on the right side of that line.