As New York Drill Goes Viral, Local Acts Struggle to Play Shows in Their Hometown
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Last month, the organizers of the rap festival Rolling Loud announced that they wouldn’t be holding their annual event in New York this fall. “For the last few years, we’ve made some legendary moments happen in Queens,” a graphic posted to their official Twitter account says. “Sadly, due to logistical factors beyond our control, Rolling Loud will not return to New York in 2023.”
The organizers haven’t divulged the specifics of those logistics, but the cancellation highlights the issues the festival faced in New York, notably its constant run-ins with the New York Police Department, which has removed artists from the bill on multiple occasions.
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Rolling Loud New York Canceled as Organizers Cite 'Logistical Factors Beyond Our Control'
Rolling Loud was founded in 2015 and runs festivals in Los Angeles, Miami, and Toronto, as well as overseas. Just two days before the inaugural New York festival in 2019, NYPD Assistant Chief Martin Morales sent Rolling Loud organizers a letter informing them that five local rappers — the late Pop Smoke, Casanova, Don Q, Sheff G, and 22GZ — could not be allowed to perform, citing “safety concerns.” In 2021, Fetty Wap was picked up by federal authorities right before his set. The festival organizers ran into similar issues last year when the NYPD once again removed 22GZ from the bill along with Bronx rappers Ron Suno and Sha Ek. Suno’s manager Diamond “Bo” Brown told Rolling Stone that he “was informed by Rolling Loud that NYPD is pulling us off the show. With no explanation. How does a person who [has] no criminal record and no gang activities be denied to perform in his hometown after all his hard work[?]”
The NYPD has operated a notorious Enterprise Operations Unit — aka a “Hip-Hop Police” unit — since at least 1999. These cops surveil rappers and generate a weekly report on rap shows occurring in the city, reportedly categorizing events as low, medium, or high risk based on their perception of the artists on the bill. Former “Hip-Hop Cop” Derrick Parker told Vulture in 2015 that “the NYPD sees rap groups as gangs committing crimes, and they see the rapper as someone who has money and public influence.” With that default perception, it’s hard for artists to get a fair shake.
That dynamic is apparent even beyond New York. In 2019, Rolling Loud Miami was marred by Lil Wayne canceling his set because, as he alleged in a tweet, law enforcement officers on the grounds “made it mandatory that I had to be policed and checked to get on the stadium grounds.” He added,” I do not and will not ever settle for being policed to do my job.” The same weekend, Kodak Black was arrested on festival grounds after an “extensive [federal and state] investigation.” Federal investigators had his home address, like Fetty Wap’s, but chose to apprehend both at their place of business — a rap show.
After the first round of removals in 2019, Rolling Loud co-founder Tariq Cherif tweeted, “All the public sees is the letter. Way more happened behind closed doors. If we want [Rolling Loud] to return to NYC, we have no choice but to comply. That’s the position we’re in.” Two things may be true at once. Rolling Loud organizers may feel obligated to comply with local police department directives, but their acquiescence has made them a striking point, fairly or not, of the criminalization of rap.
Organizers for Rolling Loud did not respond to requests for comment.
Ron Suno, who was planning to be on this year’s Rolling Loud New York after being removed last year, tells Rolling Stone he knows that some of the police officers are there to keep the peace at the festival. But that shouldn’t come at up-and-coming artists’ expense.
“I understand they try to do their job, [but they] just got to give artists the chance to see the other side of the light,” he says. Suno, who recently released his album, It’s My Time, says he rarely gets to perform in his native New York City because his shows “always get shut down.” He hasn’t yet gotten to perform at Rolling Loud.
Suno was involved in a fight on the festival grounds in 2021, which may have played a part in the NYPD removing him from the bill last year. Rolling Loud told him last fall that they were still planning to have him on their next bill, but he won’t get the chance this fall. Though organizers didn’t officially announce the cancellation until March, he says that they told him in January that they likely wouldn’t be holding a festival in New York this year.
“With them shutting down Rolling Loud and smaller shows, it’s harder for artists to make money,” says Nicole Racine, a native New Yorker and founder of New York drill outlet Talk Of The Town. “That’s how artists end up in jail because they aren’t making the money that they could’ve been making.”
Overall, Suno says that the cancellation ”is very heartbreaking because people want to see their supporters. I never got to see my supporters in my town. It’s kind of sad that we don’t got the opportunity.”
Meanwhile, the festival scene is facing nationwide challenges along with the rest of the live music industry. Last summer, Day N Vegas canceled its 2022 showcase, also noting “logistics” as well as “timing” and “production issues” as the culprits. A source told Billboard that, ultimately, poor ticket sales made the event unsustainable.
TT Torrez, a vice president at the iconic New York rap radio station Hot 97, says she understands the increasing difficulties of running a festival in a post-COVID-19 pandemic world. She’s put on numerous concerts and events in the New York and New Jersey area and also helps the station organize its annual Summerjam showcase. On Monday, Hot 97 announced that the concert would take place at UBS Arena, near the border between Queens and Long Island, making it the first New York showcase in years. Rising local talent like Ice Spice, Lola Brooke, and Lil Tjay also appear on the lineup.
“I understand the complexity of putting together such a massive show,” Torrez says. “It’s a lot of pieces that go into that, so I understand why someone would decide not to put on such a huge show, especially in the economy that we’re in right now, where you have the banks collapsing, and you have inflation on the rise, and it’s a big risk to do concerts anyway, even a bigger risk when you do concerts to that magnitude.”
Still, smaller shows, where developing artists build the type of buzz that could earn them a spot at a concert like Summerjam, continue to get shut down, ultimately creating a ripple effect for both artists and fans. The plight of the New York rapper is exemplified by the late Pop Smoke, a buzzing Brooklyn artist whose posthumous Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon project continues to be one of the top streaming albums years after his death in 2020. He never got to do a hometown show before he tragically passed away.
Racine says that the lack of smaller shows in New York has slowly eroded the in-person dynamic of fandom. “If you go to the Bronx to perform, it’s getting shut down…[It’s] making consumers lazy,” she says. “We’re just going to stream them or watch them. That excitement to go see them in person is not really there anymore. That’s why I think people’s online audience are growing, but it’s making [things] really inorganic.”
While it remains unclear what Rolling Loud’s exact reason for skipping New York this year was, pressure from law enforcement only would have made things more challenging to navigate as costs continue to rise. The ever-expanding festival is still set to run events on four continents and in five countries this year.
Torrez says she hasn’t personally encountered NYPD issues while coordinating Summerjam and other shows, succinctly adding, “Nor do I want them, so God bless them.”
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