Lil Wayne raised eyebrows when he announced dates for his upcoming Tha Carter VI Tour earlier this month. New Orleans, his hometown, was nowhere on the list of 35 dates.
It’s far from the first time a popular artist has skipped New Orleans on tour. But fans have still questioned why the Grammy-winning rapper would pass on an opportunity to perform in the city so tied to his identity as an artist.
On social media, some speculated that the decision was due to hurt feelings following a perceived Super Bowl snub, after organizers tapped Kendrick Lamar as the halftime performer in New Orleans this year.
Young Money, Lil Wayne’s record label, responded to the discourse in an Instagram post: “Flattered by the questions and no we didn’t forget about New Orleans — Wayne would NEVER skip his home town,” the post reads.
But it’s unlikely that the decision was based on Lil Wayne’s personal feelings, said Nate Cameron, co-founder of the New Orleans-based glbl wrmng music collective and a former tour coordinator. After all, Lil Wayne already performed at the Jazz and Heritage Festival this year. And his record label is promising “something special” at the rapper’s annual Lil Weezyana Fest in the city this fall.
“We’re just not big enough of a market for him to make sense to come down three times,” Cameron said.
There are a host of factors that make New Orleans a less attractive — and less profitable — tour stop for Lil Wayne and other artists, according to industry professionals.
The size of live entertainment venues in the city and other economic constraints make it less accommodating for touring artists. Increasing costs of transportation and gas factor into the decision, too. New Orleans’ geographic location — hours away from the nearest primary and secondary markets — makes it an inconvenient tour stop for artists on the road.
Another central reason is that New Orleans isn’t a big ticket-buying market, Cameron said. In a city saturated with live music, touring artists and venues can end up vying with free or less expensive alternatives for the attention of ticket buyers.
“It’s the gift and the curse of being from and in a place that you can essentially go and hear fabulous music almost any time of the day,” Cameron said. “I could go on Bourbon or Frenchmen right now and somebody is sounding good, playing something or singing something.”
A lack of ticket demand in the city is one of the reasons why New Orleans-based group Tank and the Bangas started touring early in its career, rather than only honing their live act at local venues, said manager Tavia Osbey.
“There’s music all over this city that you can access for free,” Osbey said.
New Orleans is home to nearly 100 live music clubs, which are mostly made for small crowds. Cameron said there are relatively few mid-sized music venues, such as the Orpheum and Saenger theatres, considering the size of the city. This means it can be harder for venues to accommodate artists who can bring in a medium-sized crowd.
Another factor venues have to take into consideration when booking acts is whether they can sell enough tickets to recoup the upfront guarantees paid to performers.
And venues are facing what Howie Kaplan, former director of the Mayor’s Office of Nighttime Economy, said is a “dramatically” changing ticket-buying market. More expensive concert tickets and younger audiences who are less interested in those tickets are contributing to a decline in demand. That, coupled with a proliferation of scalping, is contributing to markets across the country suffering, he said.
In addition, the rising costs of touring have resulted in rising ticket prices. Cameron said that there aren’t as many people in New Orleans who can afford concert tickets for an artist like Lil Wayne, compared to other cities.
As of mid-June, prices on Ticketmaster for his concert in The Woodlands, Texas, the closest show to New Orleans, start at $55 and go as high as $383, though resale prices range in the thousands. In Memphis, Tennessee, available tickets range from $90 to $410.
“A lot of the people that are fans of him that look like me that are in New Orleans cannot afford that,” said Cameron, referring to Lil Wayne’s largely Black fanbase. “Some of that target demographic is very supportive how they can be, but they can’t be supportive for a $150 ticket and $40 worth of parking.”
Kaplan said that although socioeconomic factors in New Orleans generally make it a less attractive market, live music is a driver of tourism for the city, and the tourism industry relies on it.
He pointed to last year’s Taylor Swift Eras Tour, which sold nearly 200,000 tickets across three shows at the Superdome and drew more than 160,000 people to New Orleans, according to estimates from Greater New Orleans, Inc.
“New Orleans is a destination in and of itself,” Kaplan said. “And it is for a lot of the artists.”
Still, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on both the city’s tourism industry and its local music businesses are affecting who gets booked where.
Because of rising costs in recent years, “it’s expensive for artists at every level to go out touring now,” said Osbey, who previously coordinated touring for Tank and the Bangas. “And a lot of smaller venues have closed since COVID.”
Even smaller clubs that have survived the pandemic are feeling a financial strain, said Kaplan, who owns The Howlin’ Wolf, a Warehouse District venue. Kaplan says the Howlin’ Wolf is hosting fewer shows lately because it can’t afford to lose money if not enough people buy tickets.
“With the current economic and political climate, we’re getting less tourists, in particular from areas outside the country than we did before,” Kaplan said. “And we count on those tourists to go see shows, which would directly impact how many artists are able to perform at our wonderful venues.”