So Icey Stealing Money

“Johnnie [Cabbell] is the grand vampire,” proclaims legendary Chicago-based promoter Godfather. For over twenty years, Godfather has been promoting concerts through his company Star Power
Entertainment Group. He estimates his losses from bad business deals with Johnnie Cabbell and Debra Antney to be nearly $100,000. “I don’t work with Johnnie anymore,” he states emphatically. “He sucks the blood out of you.” As the CEO of Hitt Afta Hitt (otherwise known as HAH), Johnnie Cabbell is
Gucci Mane’s exclusive booking agent and also manages Bankhead rapper Shawty Lo. Johnnie’s “partner in crime,” Godfather says, is Debra Antney, who describes herself as Gucci Mane’s “business partner and manager.” As CEO of Gucci’s So Icey Records and the management company Mizay Entertainment, Antney also oversees the careers of OJ da Juiceman, Nicki Minaj, and others. Multiple promoters from across the country allege that Cabbell and Antney have collaborated to defraud them collectively of hundreds of thousands of dollars. THE SO ICEY TOUR Scheduled for at least 12 cities in July 2009, the So Icey Tour was supposed to feature OJ da Juiceman, Nicki Minaj, and the headliner, Gucci Mane. It sounded promising. Gucci’s buzz was at an all-time high. He had just returned
home from prison a few months earlier to ecstatic crowds at “Welcome Home Gucci” parties throughout the South. His artist/protégé OJ had been steadily building a buzz of his own and helping to keep Gucci’s name alive by flooding the streets with mixtapes and fresh material. They were both
hot commodities. And in an industry nearly void of female artists, up-andcoming emcee/sex symbol Nicki Minaj was quickly building a name for herself, strengthened by her affiliations with Lil Wayne and Gucci Mane. The timing seemed perfect. But by all accounts, the “tour,” organized by a Carolina-based promoter named Shannon Marshall, was a mess and fell apart almost immediately.
None of the artists showed up for the first two Florida dates (July 4th & 5th), leaving veteran promoter Mr. CC (who, like Godfather in Chicago, has been successfully promoting concerts for over 20 years) with losses of over $140,000. He claims that nearly half of that money, around $70,000, is in the hands of Cabbell/Antney, who refuse to return the deposits or reschedule
his dates. On July 19th, 2009, midway through the scheduled tour dates, Soulja Boy tweeted, “My
nigga Gucci back in jail. Free Gucci.” (right) Rumors quickly spread that Gucci had again violated the
terms of his probation and was back in jail (or rehab). Although Gucci’s management and label
denied the rehab rumors and it’s still unclear exactly where Gucci was in mid-July, it’s clear where he wasn’t: He wasn’t on the So Icey Tour. Of the 12 scheduled tour dates, OZONE has confirmed that at least six, but probably more of these shows (Jacksonville, FL; Pompano Beach/Ft. Lauderdale, FL;
Louisville, KY; Chicago, IL; Baltimore, MD; and Detroit, MI) never happened, leaving furious promoters demanding refunds. That’s a less than fifty percent success rate. “People get fired for those type
of numbers in baseball,” laughs Baltimore attorney Paul W. Gardner, of the Gardner Law Group. Gardner spoke to OZONE on behalf of his client, who also lost “a significant sum of money” by booking the So Icey Tour for a stop in Baltimore on July 18th, the day before word of Gucci’s alleged re-incarceration leaked on the ‘net. “[About] four days before the event, [Cabbell/Antney] said that [Gucci] might not show up,” says Gardner. “Later we found out it was because he was in some sort of rehab facility.” Gardner declined to reveal the exact amount of the deposit, but based on other promoters’ experiences, it is reasonable to assume his client’s total losses were in the range of $40,000- 50,000. When Gardner’s client attempted to reschedule the date, So Icey suddenly
changed their story. “They said, ‘How can we reschedule something we don’t have the [deposit] for?’” he laughs. It’s a theme that is repeated over and over in other promoters’ stories: after months of contracts, wire transfers, and conversations, Cabbell/Antney suddenly played dumb, either
pointing the finger at each other or hiding behind a complex web of multiple contracts with middlemen.
The So Icey Tour dates were officially contracted through two other entities: reputable New York-based booking agency Ujaama Entertainment, and the much less reputable third-party
agent Shannon Marshall. Both of them apparently kept a small percentage of the deposits as a booking fee before sending the bulk of the funds to Cabbell/Antney, presumably to secure all
three artists. Because of the complicated paper trail, most of the various promoters’
attempts to legally retrieve their deposits have been difficult and thus far unsuccessful.
“I’m not sure if it’s on purpose,” notes Attorney Gardner, “but [the way the contracts are written up] are very nasty and sinister. It’s A True Story by Julia Beverly How a new breed of greedy artist
managers and booking agents, led by Gucci Mane’s representatives, are sucking the blood out of the
music industry. Check the whole story, cause with this one the list goes on, and on, and on, and on….

Gucci stay in tilll this blows over….

Gucci mane manager Robbing all Concert Promoters

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