Sam Speaight, managing director of live promoters Peace Music, has spoken in detail about organising an Australian tour for rapper Mos Def that cost the company $250,000 and had him in tears.

It comes as part of an interview conducted by Australian website The Vine, where Speaight seizes an opportunity to speak for promoters worldwide. “So often”, he claims in the piece’s intro, “promoters are dragged into the street and shot (proverbially speaking) by the ticket-buying public over hip-hop artists’ cancellations and their childlike antics. Few people understand that, in many cases, the promoters have driven themselves to the brink of sanity and financial ruin to avoid an artist cancelling.”

Speaight, who now lives in London, goes on to say that “the total chaos that seems to govern most of all the management side of these artists’ careers is just dumbfounding. If people knew what went on behind the scenes, if nothing else, it would be a spectacle worth reading about.”

As it turns out, he’s not wrong, and The Vine‘s piece provides an illuminating look into the toils of being a promoter of this scale when artists aren’t prepared to play ball. You can read the entire thing here.