How Rolling Loud Became The World's Biggest Hip Hop Festival

Rolling Loud 2023 is fully in stride. Already hosting shows in Los Angeles and Thailand, 2023 has been a huge success. This summer, the festival is returning back to its roots in Miami. Headlined by Playboi Carti, A$AP Rocky, and Travis Scott, this year's lineup is set to be one of the festival's best yet. In addition, they have a reputation for following industry trends. Rolling Loud 2023 is ushering in prominent rookies such as Ice Spice, Pink Pantheress, and Central Cee.

Rolling Loud's journey to becoming the biggest hip-hop festival on the planet started in an elementary school classroom. Tariq Cherif and Matt Zingler would meet, and quickly become close friends. The duo embarked on Rolling Loud after having respective careers in event management in their 20s. The festival quickly blew up, differentiating itself as a hip-hop-focused act. "We were already booking all these Soundcloud rappers month after month in Florida," Cherif stated. "We were like, 'Dude, why are there these other genre-specific festivals, like Ultra and Electric Daisy Carnival with EDM, and Stagecoach for country, and how come there aren't any for hip-hop?'"

While a few other hip-hop-centered festivals existed, these events occurred every few years. Additionally, they didn't contain the differentiating factor of introducing fans to new artists that Rolling Loud contains. Florida was a perfect place to get this initiative off of the ground. Back in 2015, there was a revolution of local acts that were beginning to garner worldwide attention. You had the rage-filled acts such as XXXTentacion, Denzel Curry, and Lil Pump, who were each carving out a new sub-genre within hip-hop. Blending punk, grunge, and emo elements, Rolling Loud quickly became an event associated with huge mosh pits.

However, Rolling Loud is more than solely angry rap. They're able to blend the poetic and aggressive worlds of the genre, drawing in both types of fans. Darting from J Cole to Action Bronson to Schoolboy Q, a diverse and unpredictable artist skillset is the case for every event. Cherif and Zingler spent long hours establishing their artist base, discovering future big names before they were well-known. For example, they allowed Travis Scott to perform Pre-Rodeo. They also hosted the likes of Megan Thee Stallion, Lil Uzi Vert, and 21 Savage before they were household names.

Back in March, Rolling Loud 2023 was hosted in Los Angeles with a headliner list of Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, and Future. Playboi Carti teased new music at the event, with the sound in line with Whole Lotta Red's punk aesthetic. While Travis Scott's performance was cut by a curfew, one of his first returns to the main stage after the Astroworld incident was met with a significant hype. He performed on a Saturday night in front of a sold-out crowd. While Rolling Loud started at Soho Studios in Miami, it has since morphed into a global and multi-yearly event. After only three years of being in business, their shows had gone from hosting a few thousand fans to over a hundred thousand. The independent duo had officially made it.

The logical next step was for Rolling Loud to go international. By 2019, they had Kid Laroi performing for them in Australia. On the second weekend of this April, Rolling Loud 2023 went to Thailand. This summer, they're going to Portugal. "For the show in Portugal, we try to bring out artists that are based in Europe or local Portuguese artists. There are different acts that maybe have a larger draw there. We will always show love to where we're at," Zingler stated.

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rolling Loud stayed relevant by partnering with Twitch to live stream their performances. The dubbed Loud Stream brought in nearly five million viewers over a two-day period. Before the lockdown, Zingler and Cherif had already implemented live streams at their festivals. Once again ahead of the curve in the event space, it made their transition into the lockdown far more seamless than it was for other major events. Since the pandemic, live streams have become a standard in the live event space. Coachella hosted a live stream throughout their two weekends, which caused much controversy when Frank Ocean's set was skipped over.

Tariq Cherif and Matt Zingler have been able to differentiate Rolling Loud by identifying underground artists with blow-up potential, merging the worlds of lyrical and rage rap, and keeping the event exclusively focused on hip-hop. In doing so, it's begun to rival Coachella as the world's largest music festival. With the festival already hosting a show in Los Angeles before traveling to Miami and Portugal in the summer, Rolling Loud 2023 is set to be bigger than ever.

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