Concert Review: Made In America Festival [Day 1]

Made in America is the annual music festival that brings summer to an end on Labor Day weekend, but this time due to the weather it seemed as if summer had already passed.

On the first day of the festival it was raining throughout the day and that caused it to be much colder than I imagined it being during the first week of September. The weather didn’t stop people from attending the festival and by 3 P.M. it was already getting crowded.

Cardi B was the first performance I saw and she came out in an outfit ready to go to the Met Gala. She opened with her song “Wash Poppin” and to no ones surprise a majority of the females were rapping along to every word. She also did “Lick”; “Foreva” and “On Fleek” that got the crowd going but she knew what song we were all there to see her perform. When “Bodak Yellow” blasted through the speakers there was no question that it was still the song of the summer. Cardi was crouched down letting the audio play and watching the crowd spit every line in the song, then played it back one more time since the crowd was rapping the lyrics back to her a cappella. She ended her set after “Bodak Yellow” and gave her fans some exciting news that she was dropping her album in October.

Migos performed on the main stage right after Cardi and probably had the wildest audience throughout the entire festival. Starting their set by getting everyone hype to “Get Right Witcha” there was no looking back from there. They performed multiple songs from their most recent album Culture, and transitioned to their old classics such as “Hannah Montana” and “Fight Night”. Migos was able to keep the crowd jumping, moshing and dancing throughout their 45 minute set. Almost a year later after its original release date, “Bad and Boujee” still gets the masses going as the Migos closed their show with their biggest song to date.

Next was J.I.D an artist signed to J. Cole’s label, Dreamville. Even though he was performing on one of the smaller stages he was able to draw a bigger audience than I expected. The energy for his performance was through the roof and he also teamed up with his fellow Dreamville label mates EARTHGANG and they performed their song “D/vision”. These young artists had a lot of energy and the crowd could sense their energy since a lot of them didn’t know the words to most of the songs but could feel its power through the energy. J.I.D. with all that energy decided to close his show by performing his biggest record “NEVER” on a tree near the stage. This was similar to what Travis Scott had done last year and got the entire crowd jumping.

Cole was the headliner for the first day of the festival and came out living up to the expectations. He brought his tour to the festival as he came out with an orange jumpsuit through a jail cell and had jail guard’s escort him out which is identical to his tour setup. One of the most surreal things was that he opened with his song “For Whom the Bell Tolls” off the album 4 Your Eyez Only, and the first line of the song J. Cole raps, “I see the rain pouring down before my very eyes”, and as he rapped this line it started to rain harder to the point where it might’ve not been a coincidence. Cole was rapping passionately as his subject matter is not light and he wanted his audience to take it all in and think about what he was saying. Cole did multiple songs off 4 Your Eyez Only going through his album in the order of the track list. After going through almost half the album he went into his own bag of classics that most of the crowd has been listening to for years such as “Lights Please” and “Can’t Get Enough”. Cole was having fun dancing around and bouncing energy off the audience and insisted that even the guys that usually act cool during concerts and don’t dance would be dancing and moving around to his catalog. He then proceeded to show the surveillance video from his home that inspired him to write the song “Neighbors” and this was one of the many personal things Cole let the audience in on during this hour and a half journey with him. He ended his performance with songs off his critically acclaimed album 2014 Forest Hills Drive, and a huge smile on his face since he could tell by the audiences sound level that they enjoyed the show just as much as he did.