“We put everything: aircraft carriers, all possible and imaginable lights, pyrotechnics, dinosaurs...”
.
In a report from
Le Monde
, from a series called
Rap Business
, Vald's manager, Mehdi Guebli sheds light on one of the punch-lines of the song
Sur un nouveau album
, present in
V
, the rapper's latest project released in February 2022.
“We would explain how to lose five hundred thousand euros with the full Accor Hotel Arena”
raps Vald in the title.
A sentence which refers to the concert of the artist, on November 16, 2019, in the Parisian hall, renamed in 2020 Accor Arena.
A symbolic room for many artists but which will have been more than expensive for the rapper, as he has explained several times during his promotion.
The decryption of the
World
explains that despite the sale of all the tickets for the concert, that is to say 16,000, Vald is in debt of half a million euros for this evening alone.
“
When we asked for the accounts to be closed, it turns out that we had gotten into it
,” explains Mehdi Guebli, alias Merkus, manager of the 30-year-old rapper.
In question?
The rental of the room, between 50,000 and 70,000 euros per evening, promotion, equipment, but above all, the scenography.
In the report from
Le Monde
, Merkus confides that Vald's teams have spent lavishly for this first time for the artist at Bercy:
"We put everything: aircraft carrier, all possible and imaginable lights, pyrotechnics, CO2, ball faceted, confetti, pterodactyl, dinosaurs, huge screen, satellite dish, cannons, a lot of actors...".
The manager explains that he had to deal with another major problem.
Vald, who has vertigo, could not climb to the proscenium (raised part of the stage), 12 meters high:
"We had to cut, which cost us 20,000 euros"
.
After calculation, the expenses for the evening amount to 1.2 million euros.
An amount that the 700,000 euros generated with the sale of tickets are far from amortizing.
Asked by journalists from
Le Monde,
turner Eric Bellamy, who specializes in rap concerts, explains that the evolution of the rap scene and the proliferation of concerts in Bercy are pushing rappers to want to
"get out of the game"
.
For this, the artists invest in
“scenography, effects, etc.”
he develops.
An investment that is often offset by the economic benefits associated with a concert of this magnitude.
With the Covid-19 crisis and the total cessation of concerts for many months, the manager of Vald confides that he still has not amortized the cost of this evening at the Accor Arena.
“It will be amortized this year”
, he declares, before a next concert in the Parisian hall, scheduled for November 2022. More modest this time?
“At the next Bercy, in terms of creation, it will be a guitar stool
,” Vald quipped in February with
RapElite
.
