This was a busy weekend for the music industry. There were two festivals happening in Canada, and one in the States. Suffice to say, music lovers had ample line-ups to choose from (and locations). Despite the festival overlap, some artists managed to play more than one fest-- in fact, Future hit up all three. That's a busy weekend.
OVO Fest caters more specifically to a 'hip-hop' audience, although this year's OVO Fest was even more focused, basically combining "Summer Sixteen" and Caribana into one. Osheaga is broader in terms of genres, but nonetheless we had representatives for all walks of hip-hop life. Rappers like Vince Staples, Post Malone, Jazz Cartier and The Underachievers showed up for the hip-hop youth, while Cypress Hill held it down with classics (you know they did "Insane In The Membrane"), and Logic gave us that true hip-hop grit. After some confusion/delay, Mac Miller did make his set on Sunday, however we gotta say Tory Lanez killed it right before him. The back-to-back highlights of Saturday were Jazz Cartier followed by Future. Jazz was the perfect warm-up to Future, with an incomparable energy (okay, maybe only comparable to fellow Torontoian Tory Lanez-- both boys are big into crowd-surfing and hanging from banisters). The rapper ran through fan-favorites that kept the crowd moshing, for real, including "100 Roses," "Red Alert," "Stick & Move," "New Religion" and recent-but-already-classic "Lil Wayne."
Future's set basically served as a highlight reel ("Wicked," "Fuck Up Some Commas," "Jumpman" etc). If you're a light Future fan, that probably works for you, if you're a stan, maybe not. We got tastes of some of his biggest records to date, but I say "taste" because a lot of these included featured artists, which, unfortunately were not on stage to perform alongside him-- leaving him to cut the songs short or else rely on the DJ (although he did bring out Chance The Rapper in Chicago for Lollapalooza).
If you follow us on Snapchat (holla, @hnhhsnaps), then you've likely already had a nice recap of Tory Lanez's Sunday set, as the rapper took over our Snapchat for the day. You can still catch those Snaps (!!) but in case you haven't, the rapper once again put on a great live show, utilizing much of the stage and the crowd too. He's built up a reptuation as a crowd surfer, and as previously mentioned, much like Jazz, he didn't hesitate to get right in there with the fans, especially for the turn-up anthem "For Real." Of course, he did I Told You singles as well, making us all the more ready for that debut album.
Check out photo highlights in the gallery above. All photos captured by @DJDeleon & @Chops_Goon.