A sold-out crowd of roughly 1,500 fans packed The Van Buren in downtown Phoenix Tuesday night expecting a full set from rising rapper Nine Vicious. Instead, they got three songs, a stage full of malfunctioning speakers, and a chaotic scene outside that ended with Phoenix police deploying pepper spray on people who wouldn't leave.
Sound Problems Sparked an Onstage Meltdown
The trouble started almost immediately, according to Arizona's Family, whose reporter Zach Prelutsky detailed how the venue's speakers kept cutting out during the performance. The audio issues visibly angered Nine Vicious, who at one point picked up a security guard's headset and threw it on the ground before the two argued after the sound continued to fail. Concertgoer Miguel Rodriguez, who attended the show, told the outlet the situation became chaotic and that he grew worried about his friends in the crowd.
A fan named Josh told Arizona's Family that Nine Vicious was furious because he had paid for the venue and its staff, yet the sound still wasn't right. At another point, the rapper led the crowd in expletive-laced chants against the venue and reportedly told the audience to mess the place up, per the same account. The concert, which was supposed to be a full show, ended after just a few songs amid the continued technical failures, and the exact reason it was ultimately cut short remains unclear.
Police Move In as Crowd Surges Toward Tour Bus
Once the show ended, concertgoers were told to leave the building, and Phoenix police responded for crowd control around 9 p.m. Tuesday, according to Arizona's Family's report. Separate broadcast reporting by 12News indicated that several dozen concertgoers attempted to breach a back security gate near Nine Vicious's tour bus, prompting officers to deploy pepper spray and less-lethal pepper balls after people refused to leave and began damaging property outside the venue.
Phoenix police reported no injuries and said nobody was arrested in connection with the disturbance. The tactic mirrored a similar crowd-control response from Phoenix police in March 2026, when officers used pepper balls to break up a disruptive crowd near 5th and Roosevelt streets following a late-night fight downtown, according to 12News.
Fans Still Waiting on Word About Refunds
In the aftermath, concertgoers asked The Van Buren for refunds after paying for a full show that ended after only a handful of songs, but as of Arizona's Family's reporting, they had not heard back. Box office staff at the venue declined to comment on Tuesday night's concert and referred inquiries to corporate owner Live Nation, which had not issued a formal response as of Thursday, per 12News.
Legal analysts at Sauder Schelkopf note that while ticketholders typically receive automatic refunds when an event is canceled outright, shows that start and are cut short often leave refund decisions up to the organizer's discretion under force majeure-style provisions in ticketing agreements. Arizona has seen state intervention on ticketing disputes before: the Arizona Attorney General's Office secured $71 million in refunds for local Ticketmaster customers amid a broader ticketing dispute, as reported by the Phoenix New Times in 2020.
Who Is Nine Vicious?
Nine Vicious, whose real name is Treyvion Deronta Echols, is a 24-year-old hip-hop artist from Athens, Georgia, affiliated with Young Thug's YSL Records and known for his underground rage rap sound, according to AllMusic. He has more than 1.3 million monthly Spotify listeners and over 546,000 Instagram followers, and Chartmetric data from August 2026 shows his breakthrough single U Fancy? has surpassed 20.4 million Spotify streams as part of a catalog topping 350 million total streams.
The Van Buren itself carries some history of its own. The 1,800-capacity venue opened in August 2017 inside a 1929 downtown Phoenix building that once served as an automotive showroom for the Phoenix Motor Company and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, according to Wikipedia. The venue, located at 401 W. Van Buren Street, is operated by Live Nation Entertainment, the company fans are now waiting to hear from about possible refunds.
