Welcome To Rolling Loud
POV reporting and photo journal from the festival
Our curator Dom went to Florida for Rolling Loud last weekend. This was his experience.
I got to Orlando Thursday morning. I was staying in an airbnb with a bunch of the music blog homies: For the Speakers, ibreathemusicallday, Off Record Sounds, Cash Cow Music, and others.
The label apg hosted an open bar pregame I went to before the Feng House Party that Sad Prt hosted. I was DJing the Feng party, and the cops came right after my set so I was basically the headliner.
There was drama with the balcony above where I was DJing because it could only support three people at a time, so they had to keep kicking people off of it so it wouldn’t collapse and crush everyone at the DJ table. The whole thing was a frat party. It reminded me of being back in Michigan.
Friday was the first day of the festival. Weirdly none of the staff knew where the press area was. I guess they didn’t want people back there that shouldn’t be back there. So we had to go find it.
In the press pit, you had to be really on it with these artists. Even if you had something set up beforehand with the PR company or label, you had to fight for your time. When Xavier walked out there were probably 50 people crowded around him trying to get an interview or photo. I had all my shit set up beforehand but some artists just didn’t work out because it was chaotic or their team was disorganized. It really came down to how good your relationship was with whoever was in charge of the artists.
The security is very very strict. I was hearing complaints from artist teams about it. Some DJs got kicked out for security reasons. After an artist performed they would literally get driven off-site. If they wanted to come back to do more press or whatever, sometimes they weren’t allowed back in.
Nettspend had the best set for sure. He had the red hair. It started raining. It was super fire. My other favorite set was Feng. He put footage from the day before of me DJing at his party on the stage visuals. The crowd was getting lit as fuck. You see all this Feng discourse, but it’s really just online shit. In real life his fans love him.
I’m not really a fan of Nine Vicious but his set was fire. He had a strong stage presence, stronger than I had thought, and cool screaming sound effects. Bleood was good. I didn’t see 2Slimey but I heard his set was crazy too.
Snow Strippers was performing at the same time as Don Toliver who was headlining. I was saying like, yo, they could have a bigger turn out than Don Toliver. I was totally wrong but their set was cool. The Rolling Loud crowd was fully appreciating what they were seeing. Snow Strippers were playing a lot of beat tracks, and some deeper cuts like the Christian Dior Denim Flow remix, which I did not expect.
Overall the festival was one of the best I’ve been to. Just more evidence that the underground is where the culture is at right now. The mainstream lacks community.
Backstage Portraits
All portraits by Dom
