The San Francisco-based crowdfunding platform Tilt has cancelled the Snoop Dogg concert it planned at Ole Miss. Instead, Tilt is bringing Tupelo natives Rae Sremmurd to the Lyric on September 9.
Tilt announced that Ole Miss would receive a free concert by the West Coast rapper after the university won a point-based contest against other colleges around the nation in December. The winning school was supposed to receive the concert by June 2015, according to the Tilt website.
A source with knowledge of the negotiations said that Tilt made a strong effort to give Ole Miss a Snoop Dogg concert. The source explained Snoop Dogg was open to playing a concert for Tilt, but the artist would not have been able to perform until 2016 because of a busy 2015 schedule.
“Tilt immediately talked to their ambassadors once they realized Snoop Dogg wasn’t available for 2015,” the source said. “Tilt asked the ambassadors, ‘If you were to have an artist come, who would you want it to be?’ Rae Sremmurd was who they said.”
Senior Ole Miss Tilt ambassador Lee Srebnick opened an official Tilt for the Rae Sremmurd concert at 11 a.m. Monday. The Tilt requested $1 donations which will go to the Ole Miss Athletics Association. Donors will receive one ticket for every dollar donated, up to two tickets. Though these tickets sold out within an hour, Tilt said it reserved extra tickets to be given away through its Instagram account for those who were unable to secure tickets.
Ole Miss Tilt Ambassador Costa Kell said the ambassadors hadn’t known about the cancellation very long and the new Rae Sremmurd concert was put together quickly in order for students to enjoy it as soon as possible.
“We were very eager to get a high profile concert that Ole Miss earned and deserved,” Kell said. “The guys at Tilt pushed for a concert while working with the Ole Miss Student Activities Association and Snoop, and they were keen to give us what we had won.”
Tilt has over 30 on-campus student ambassadors at Ole Miss. Kell said these ambassadors are responsible to promote and help Tilt grow within the Ole Miss community.
The source said that since Tilt is a startup, it is constantly learning and making mistakes and that it would never let something like this situation happen again.
“There’s no way Tilt would want to disappoint the Ole Miss students,” the source said. “Tilt hopes the students will understand how hard they tried to deliver. In the end, a scheduling conflict prevented that from happening.”
Srebnick said he helped Tilt plan the Rae Sremmurd concert and explained the change in venue from the Grove stage to the Lyric because they didn’t want to mess with the Grove during football season.
Jack Thompson, a sophomore business major, expressed some disappointment at the change of artist and venue. He said it would have been significant for Snoop Dogg to perform at the university, but having Rae Sremmurd was a good effort from Tilt to make amends.
“The fact that Tilt couldn’t pull off the Snoop Dogg concert after advertising it so much… let’s be realistic,” Thompson said. “Tilt is still a relatively new company, so it’s a little understandable for them not to have huge sway and be able to pull strings, because Snoop Dogg at this point in the game is a marquee name. I can’t say I’m too surprised.”
Thompson said he would be wary of Tilt promotions in the future but would probably still utilize the app.
“It just means they’ve got more building to do, but I guess I have less faith in possible deals they could have,” Thompson said.
