This year’s ONE Music Fest didn’t hinge on new trends or viral moments. It was all about the classics. The festival’s lineup leaned heavily on legacy acts whose hits still soundtrack cookouts and car rides decades later. From ’90s icons to early-2000s chart-toppers, the energy across both days proved that nostalgia still holds the strongest pull in music.
ONE Music Fest shut down the city once again and this year’s show may be their biggest one yet.
With Atlanta being the cultural intersection of music, food and fashion, it was no surprise that this year’s event brought out more than 50,000 festival goers. Dozens of food trucks offering various cuisine across multiple cultures, a mini skating rink sponsored by BET and unique cocktail experiences provided by brands like Bacardi and Tito’s Vodka were spread throughout Central Park in downtown Atlanta.
Colder days are quickly descending on the peach state but that didn’t stop attendees from sporting some of their best festival looks; from fringed crop tops and maxi skirts to sweaters and bell bottom jeans.
The only thing more eye-catching than everyone’s fall fashion was the eclectic artist lineup.
R&B icon Lauryn Hill made a rare yet spellbinding appearance as she closed out Saturday night with a soulful live set. Her son Zion, famously referenced in the song “To Zion” from the singer’s 1998 debut album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, along with her grandsons joined her as they sang along to her some of her timeless classics.
City Girls put on for them hometown of Miami right before the duo brought out Usher for a surprise performance of their recent feel-good collaboration “Good Love.” Chlöe gave a show stopping performance with a sexy cover of Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me,” and Jeezy resurfaced his popular snowman alter-ego rapping to “I Luv It” while Democratic Georgia Governor nominee Stacey Abrams cheered him on from just a few feet away.
Ashanti & Ja Rule, Juvenile and Tweet put on the 99’s and 2000’s and effortlessly transported the crowd back to 2002, performing songs from their early catalogs and hyping up the crowd as they didn’t miss a beat and recited every word.
Lil Baby set off an explosive performance (literally). Fans watched on as the stage dramatically lit up with sparklers as the Atlanta native rapped along to some of his biggest hits like “We Paid” and “Drip Too Hard.”
ONE Music Fest has successfully provided epic experiences for the Atlanta community for more than a decade and continues to push the needle in entertainment with the help of Toyota, Live Nation, Pandora and more, while promoting cultural innovation and social change.
Check out some of the most memorable moments from One Music Fest 2022 below.
PHOTO CREDIT: ONE Music Fest
Atlanta’s annual One Music Fest kicked off last weekend on October 9th and this year was special because it was the festival’s 11th anniversary.
Atlanta-based music festival One Music Fest took place last weekend in the historical Centennial Olympic Park downtown. Surrounded by some of the city’s most notable landmarks including the what used to be the largest aquarium in the world, The Georgia Aquarium and the CNN headquarters, the “#1 progressive urban music fest” was a weekend to remember.