CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Fans of Houston-born rapper Slim Thug were excited to hear news that the musician would be in town to ring in Juneteenth weekend celebrations at Water's Edge Park last Saturday.
Texas Association of Black Personnel in Higher Education festival organizers told 3NEWS that although the rapper ultimately missed the 25th anniversary show, he has made a verbal agreement to potentially make it up to fans and even return the money he took in exchange for the mishap.
Corpus Christi TABPHE chapter president Simone Sanders and her mother, fellow organizer Tina Butler, have been hard at work preparing a slate of events in the ten days leading up to Juneteenth, which is officially June 19.
Butler has reportedly reached out to see if the rapper will offer fans an apology video. Sanders said that there is no ETA on that.
The chapter president said Slim Thug's management team made efforts to let her know that the artist would not be able to make the event on the night of his appearance.
"We could kind of hear the news making its way through the crowd before he was supposed to go on," she said.
Sanders confirmed to 3NEWS that she and event attendees saw a Snapchat video where the rapper told fans he was stuck in Wharton, on the way to Corpus Christi, citing issues with getting his Tesla truck to charge.
"He left at the right time," Sanders explained. "Mishaps happen, and they happen even up to the day of."
She and other organizers plan the events, which often feature business opportunities for Black vendors, free food and resources for the community and of course -- live entertainment -- for free. They stressed that the incident should not keep the community from remembering the true meaning of the holiday.
"The spirit of Juneteenth is service," she said.
While some community members speculated that Slim Thug may have missed the event due to crowd size or his featured performance at a Meg Thee Stallion concert in Austin, Butler maintains online that the concert date doesn't match up to Saturday's scheduled performance. She and Sanders told 3NEWS they are moving forward in good faith that the rapper will make up the situation to local fans.
Simone has been planning local Juneteenth events for years and tells 3NEWS that she remembers celebrating the festival when she was younger. She said seeing the festival scaled back over the years inspired her to reach out to bring bigger acts to the community.
"That's just me, I'm always going to do it bigger," Sanders said. "I think it was a good thing that we had two artists. They still got a show."
Singer-songwriter Tweet also was billed on the performance and Sanders said fans enjoyed her performance.
You can see pictures of the community celebration at the link below:
