[Review] Mad Decent Block Party returns to Chicago
Diplo’s Mad Decent Block Party returned to Chicago despite negative feedback from previous years. This year hosted in Chicago’s heart of the Museum Campus, Northerly Island, Mad Decent definitely received a much needed facelift. On the shore of Lake Michigan, Diplo headlined the event at the First Merit Bank Pavilion. The beautiful city skyline was a perfect match as the background met the sounds of Mad Decent.
Surprise electric Chicago duo artists Louis The Child joined the lineup, making them the only Chicago based artist to Mad Descent’s stop in Chicago. The duo worked the growing crowd with there headlining caliber set list.
The clear fan favorite was pop mega star Kesha. The fans came in droves to see the new leased on life artist. With support from The Creepies. Kesha didn’t disappoint the crowd with her crowd pleasing performance of TiK Tok, Your Love Is My Drug, and Take It Off. Despite her recent legal issues Kesha’s performance speak for itself. Currently on tour, Kesha hasn’t lost her groove leaving Mad Decent fans with a rock out set.
Rae Sremmurd’s short career is met with discussion of their successful hip-hop longevity. The Mississippi brothers have proven time and again their place in today’s hip-hop discussion with record breaking single from No Flex Zone, No Type, and Come Get Her. Festival fans were treated with a hip-hop thrill ride. The non-stop energy seeped through the crowd as the duo of brothers didn’t stop giving an energy packed performance from start to finish. Definitely one of the biggest take away from Mad Decent is seeing these young hungry hip-hop artists.
Mad Decent creator and one of the biggest faces in electric music, Diplo closed off the night. Diplo a true music jack of all traits kept the Mad Decent crowd going into the night with a mixture of electric, hip-hop, and house classics. Diplo’s long list of hit records were present with performances from Where Are U Now, Revolution, and Take U There. The music master had incredibility balanced all type of electric music from trap, big room house, reggaeton, and moombaton.
Minor setbacks from the volume to time in-between sets didn’t hinder the fact that Mad Decent found it’s footing in Chicago.
A true treat Diplo had in store for Chicago was hiss final five minutes of his set. After thanking Chicago for it’s day one fans he ended his set with Chicago house and juke jams. A true appreciation for Chicago's music scene we’d love to see Mad Decent and Diplo come back bigger then before.
Mad Decent Block Party Chicago 2016 - Photos
[Video] Sasha Go Hard at Mad Decent
The folks at The Fader teamed up with the Mad Decent Block Party crew to produce a series of videos from the summer-long fest that spanned most of the country. Chicago's own Sasha Go Hard, who was on tour for several of the dates, had a camera crew following her to catch all the action. Check out the video here below, presented by Puma.
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Mad Decent Block Party: Q&A with Big Gigantic
The Mad Decent team has been steadily criss-crossing the country with an also-steadily changing group of performers. As the summer begins hitting the homestretch, Mad Decent heads to Texas for an all ages performance at the Whitewater Music Ampitheater before the festival series heads off to the west coast for a pair of final dates in Los Angeles and San Diego. The New Braunfels stop includes headlining sets by Major Lazer, Bauuer, Dillon Francis and Flosstradamus, as well as Big Gigantic who we were able to catch up with before they hit the Lone Star state for a brief Q + A. Check out the interview below with drummer Jeremy Salken and head here for tickets if you'll be in the area this weekend.
Jake: Last time I talked to you two, you were preparing for New Year's Eve in Chicago. How have things been since?
Jeremy: Wow that was a long time ago! Now we’re prepping for this tour and New Years in NEW YORK!! Things have been freaking incredible. We literally just finished up our summer festival season and it couldn’t have gone better. We didn’t play as many festivals as last year but we headlined a few which was a huge step up for us! Cant wait to be back in Southern TX though! Things tend to get a little crazier down there!
Jake: What's the experience playing Mad Decent Block Party so far?
Jeremy: We’ve done 2 so far and they’ve been great!! Its an earlier show and the music literally never stops. It goes hard from start to finish and is always insanely entertaining!
Jake: Where is the direction of the music headed/plans for a new album?
Jeremy: The music is constantly growing and evolving. We were hoping to drop the new album this fall but are pushing things back to the beginning of 2014 to really get it where we want it to be. Dom has been working endlessly night and day writing, producing and working on putting this masterpiece together. He has the vision of what he wants it to be and you just cant rush that kind of thing. As much as we wanted to put it out as soon as possible, it’ll be better to take a little more time with it and get it perfect (or as close to perfect as he can get). We’re dropping a few tracks here and there for kids to check out to hold everyone over until 2014!
Jake: You two have been touring incessantly for a couple years now, any burnout? Going strong?
Jeremy: Stronger than ever!! The more we do it the more we figure out about how we want to do it. We used to just hit the road endlessly and tour tour tour. Now we kind of do it in chunks and take little breaks in between to recooperate. I think that’s one of the tricks to keeping it fresh!
Jake: Plans for the rest of 2013?
Jeremy: We’ve had a mellow summer so we’re hitting the West Coast for 2 weeks now, then we have a break before ROWDYTOWN at Red Rocks!! That’s like our hometown throwdown. It’s the most beautiful venue we’ve been to and just such an epic place to play and have all our friends and fam come rage with us! We have a break after that then we do a month long tour of the rest of the country in October! November/December is pretty much open to finish album stuff then Mayan Holidaze w/ the homies and 2 Nights in NYC for New Years! Then we get a short break and things start right back up again! I Guess we don’t take off as much time as I thought! Haha, good thing we LOVE playing music!
