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Las Vegas’ local talent highlights first-ever Strong Music Festival from the Cox Pavilion on campus of UNLV.
Five of the 11 performers during the one-day festival claim Las Vegas as their hometown
The combination of Lurk Franklin, Lit Reeezy, Dylan Jacob, Ka$hdami and Dizzy Wright served as the perfect table setters for the headliners along with Florida’s Johnny Oz and Atlanta’s Ken Carson.
Tory Lanez (Toronto), Lil Tecca (Queens), Lil Yachty (Atlanta) and Trippie Redd (Canton) were packaged as the four-head monster entrusted to close the show.
Raging was the encouraged behavior from fans in attendance as Franklin set the tone as several performers would find their way into the crowd at one point or another.
In order to encourage proper hydration, members of the Ikon Presents team were seen tossing out water bottles to fans in the crowd.
Locals like Lit Reeezy, Dylan Jacob and Ka$hdami made several references to being hometown natives and encouraged fans to get louder for that reason alone.
None more than Ka$hdami, who took several opportunities to stop his performance to entice fans to make more noise, encouraging him to proceed.
The pair of Reeezy and Jacob provided a different energy for the Cox Pavilion crowd.
The former brought forth a performance complete with a full wardrobe change, full complement of dancers and special guests.
As for the latter, Jacob opted to bring fans into his world through the pain in his music.
Again, with both making constant references to being a Vegas native.
Dizzy Wright’s performance came as part of the next leg of his SmokeOut Conversations Tour.
Ten years ago, Wright released his “SmokeOut Conversations” album.
Since then, he has made it his business to “put on for the Vegas hip-hop scene.”
Despite being a hip-hop veteran, Wright’s humbleness bled through as he welcomed the crowd to take a walk through his performance along with him so they can see what the last decade has been like.
Highlighted by more of the essential elements of rap, Wright’s set came with aromas of West Coast hip-hop of decades past.
That point only became clearer as Wright donned a commemorative Nipsey Hussle shirt that read the words, “All Hu$$le, No Luck.”
Even with a somewhat lengthy delay due to delayed travel time by at least one of the artists, fans were kept engaged with several additions to the show including an impromptu twerk contest and even having one of the members of the crowd front flip back into the sea of supporters after being called up on stage.
Official Yung Moody served as the night’s host and emcee, even stealing some cool points with multiple backflips off the DJ booth perfectly synced with the beat that was playing over the loudspeakers.
Tory Lanez made short work of his stage opportunity, choosing instead to join the fans. He even crowd surfed to various preferred sections of the general admission audience.
He even refused the help of security when opting to head into the horde of phones.
Lil Tecca commanded the stage with different color spotlights, often choosing a dimmer tint.
While performing under the dim lightning, Tecca's backdrop was a big LED screen with his "We Love Tecca 2" album cover.
Lanez and Tecca opened the door for Yachty and Trippie to bring the festival to a close with a bang.
And that they did, with Yachty getting the first chance.
Almost immediately, Yachty informed fans in the front row, hoping he’d take their respective cell phones to record parts of his performance for social media, that it would not happen.
Instead, he passed waters out to the entire crowd and then prompted a building wide water fight.
Some may not have gotten the message of the end of the water fight as one fan barely missed Yachty with a half-full water bottle as he performed later in his set.
His response? To douse the young fan with a fresh water bottle of his own before continuing his set with the help of the Cox Pavilion faithful.
Speaking of the faithful, as it often does, the fans in attendance helped the closer (in this case, Trippie) with his rendition of his various hits.
The tone was set as Trippie made his entrance to “Dark Knight Dummo,” in an entirely dark arena.
With tremendous crowd control, Trippie teetered the line between smoking on stage and serenading his supporters with the rhythmic sounds of his all-time records.
Recognizing the moment, Trippie held separate moments to acknowledge fallen rappers Juice WRLD and XXXtentacion.
As he often does, Trippie stood in silence as the crowded Cox Pavilion audience bellowed XXXtentacion’s verse on “F*ck Love.”
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