This past weekend, Rolling Loud held its 10th anniversary in Miami, Florida, and it may have been one of their biggest ones yet. Rolling Loud is not only one of the biggest music festivals in not only the United States but the entire world. Rolling Loud is a hip-hop festival where numerous A-list rappers and artists come to perform to hundreds of thousands of fans throughout a 3-day event hosted in multiple different locations every year. This year, there were around 200,000 fans who attended this festival and Rolling Loud made around 16 million dollars in revenue. They also have a live stream where tons of fans who aren’t able to attend tune in to which is where I watched this event.
Many of hip hop’s biggest names performed such as Lil Yachty, Don Toliver, Yeat, Lil Baby, Polo G and Ken Carson. The festival lasts for three days and each night ends with a headliner who is considered the “main event” of the night and is among the artists who have the most influence and is on top of the rap game. This year those artists were Future, Travis Scott and Playboi Carti.
Night one started off hot with a very solid lineup that consisted of artists such as Bossman Dlow, Lil Tecca, Trippie Redd, Lil Yachty, Yeat and then to top off the night, Future. Bossmon Dlow really emerged as a bigger artist this year when his songs started to blow up all over social media. He doesn’t have much experience performing but he definitely got the crowd excited to hear his music. Moving to Lil Tecca, Trippie Redd and Lil Yachty, who are artists who have been in the rap game for a while now, performed a lot of their old hits since they knew that’s what the crowd wanted to see. It brings back that nostalgic feeling from the 2016-2019 era that rap fans love to reminisce about. While Yeat wasn’t the headliner, the way he performed matched that headliner energy. His set had fans going crazy and it wasn’t even the last performance of the night. The live stream showed all the fans going ballistic with a very visually pleasing stage. And finally to end the night off Future went out and did his thing. Future has been at the top of the rap game forever with tons of old and new hits that he performed. Although he played a lot of his hits the livestream showed that maybe the fans were a little worn out from the Yeat set but still enjoyed Future It was a great performance to end off night one of Rolling Loud.
While it wasn’t as hype as the first night, the ending of night two may have gone down as one of the best performances in Rolling Loud history. We saw performances from many middle-tier artists such as NLE Choppa, Kodak Black and Lucki. NLE Choppa has made a recent comeback by dropping new trendy music that is way different from his old hits— the crowd still enjoys hearing his new music live since it’s so catchy. Kodak Black ended up having a disappointing set due to him not really even trying to perform. Similarly, Lucki is known to have many good songs but not to be the greatest performer— but the end of the night was where the real fun began. The last two performers of the night were Don Toliver and headliner Travis Scott, who are both in Scott’s self-made record label “Cactus Jack.” Toliver really set the tone coming out right before Scott since they almost have the same sort of energy as each other. He played lots of his songs from his newest album which got the fans going. Finally, to end the night came Scott. He is known as the best hip hop performer and seeing him live is an experience that fans never forget. For his set, he arrived right before in a helicopter which surprised his fans. He came out bringing that energy he always brings and getting the fans really into his performance. He played a lot of his greatest hits as well as previewing new music that hadn’t been heard before. I would argue that from the livestream that was the best performance of the week. Overall night two had many ups and downs but it’s safe to say Scott’s performance saved the day.
Since night three was the last night, you know they had to stack the lineup to end off the festival with a bang. We saw performances from Destroy Lonely, Ken Carson, Lil Baby and headliner Playboi Carti. People were super excited for this night because lots of artists from Carti’s self-made record label “Opium” were performing tonight. They are known for their energy performances that fans go all out for. Starting off with Destroy Lonely, he started by getting the fans’ energy up by performing his songs that really bring the crowd’s energy up which transitioned into Ken Carson later in the night where fans continued to feed off of the vibe that Lonely brought in. Carson had an electric performance where we saw fans going 100 percent for every song he performed. When Lil Baby came out the energy definitely died out a bit. He performed a lot of his old songs which fans loved but his music is not on the higher end of making the fans go crazy. This was probably for the better since the headliner Playboi Carti was next. It’s very rare that fans get to see Carti perform since he only performs a couple of times a year and drops music about once or twice a year. When he came out the fans instantly lit up going the hardest they had all night. He teased his upcoming album “I AM MUSIC,” which is expected to be released soon while also playing his popular songs. I would say that the fans were the most into this performance out of all of them from the livestream. It was a great way to end the night and a great way to wrap up Rolling Loud Miami 2024.
Overall, the festival was a great success. The livestream was able to show the full performance from many different angles and showed the energy the crowd brought those nights. We got to see lots of the best artists perform their best songs, hardcore fans, unreleased music and performances that will go down for the ages. The Rolling Loud 10 year anniversary will definitely go down as one of the best Rolling Louds ever held.
