Reg­gae artiste Siz­zla has pub­licly re­fut­ed claims that he de­mand­ed pay­ment equal to an­oth­er per­former—who failed to ap­pear—in or­der to close the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val. He de­scribed the al­le­ga­tion as a “bla­tant lie”.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, the Ja­maican en­ter­tain­er clar­i­fied that dur­ing a meet­ing with the event’s pro­mot­er—who had not yet paid the 50% de­posit out­lined in their agree­ment—he mere­ly sug­gest­ed that the un­paid sum could be cov­ered us­ing the funds in­tend­ed for the ab­sent head­lin­er.

“We sim­ply said to the pro­mot­er in a meet­ing, when he still didn’t of­fer to pay us the 50% of our orig­i­nal con­trac­tu­al amount, that he should pay us the 50% that he was go­ing to pay the artiste that was to head­line the show and didn’t ap­pear, and I will head­line the show,” he wrote.