May be the sales were slow, may be the organizers finally realized that the Los Angeles line-up sucked – Imagine Dragons and John Mayer as headliners, talk about exciting! – or may be it was both. In any case, Kanye West and Iggy Azalea have been added to the west coast version of Jay Z ‘s Made In America.
Kanye (who is already playing at the east coast version in Philly) will play on Sunday and Iggy on Saturday, but she is not headlining, you are still stuck with the always generic Imagine Dragons for that. Will this addition make me spend $200 and go to the two-day festival? Not a chance, first of all Jay Z is way too rich already and there is almost not a single band I would like to see in this lineup! But if I couldn’t care less for Kanye or Iggy, I recognize their huge crowd-magnet potential, which could turn this festival into a downtown mayhem. They expect 50,000 people in the area, and honestly I am still very doubtful about the choice of the location, Grand Park (a brand new park around City Hall, downtown LA). I was there for New Year Eve, it was already very crowded and the crowd was only estimated at 25,000, so I can’t even imagine what it will be like with the double amount of people! The LA Weekly wrote about it a few times, and reported that the festival was approved without some of the usual protocols and councilman Jose Huizar being informed about it: ‘None of these things – street closures, permits, public safety issues – were put before his office (as would be the norm) before the event was apparently greenlit, Huizar’s motion indicates’.
But our mayor took care of all this…so good luck to the people living downtown (10-day street closure ahead!!) and also great courage to the festival goers who will endure not only an extremely crowded place but also several 30-minute rants by Kanye.
It’s the first time the festival (or any festival) happens simultaneously on opposite parts of the country, and here is the complete lineup for Los Angeles:
Saturday, August 30
Imagine Dragons
Kendrick Lamar, Afrojack, Iggy Azalea
Sublime with Rome, Metric, Capital Cities
Gareth Emery, Schoolboy Q, Borgore
DVBBS, YG, MUTEMATH, Dr. Dog, Hit-Boy
ZZ Ward, Classixx, Ab-Soul, Isaiah Rashad, Jay Rock, Cut Snake, GrandTheft
Sunday, August 31
Kanye West, John Mayer
Juanes, Weezer, Rise Against
Steve Aoki, Chance the Rapper, Cypress Hill
R3HAB, Wolfgang Gartner, 12th Planet
Rita Ora, Nipsey Hussle, Terraplane Sun
Yellow Claw, Will Sparks, Scavenger Hunt, SZA, A Tribe Called Red
