Events, Review | North Coast Music Festival Recap

Posted by dshaq on September 19, 2013

Summer’s last stand, North Coast Music Festival’s motto, could not have been more accurate depiction of this past Labor Day weekend. With a lineup up to par with Lollapalooza, Coachella, and other big festivals, North Coast brought the house down beginning with Friday, where the festival had to be evacuated due to severe weather. While it dampened the mood for a little, the festival resumed and big names such as Mac Miller and Passion Pit killed their performances.

Saturday brought out some pretty good performers for the afternoon, such as Flatbush Zombies, who were probably my favorite performance of the whole festival, but also DVBBS, Futurerock, Gramatik, and Nas. Gramatik put on a killer set, straight shredding on the guitar. Nas also killed it as well, performing most of Genesis. I’m pretty sure my life has been completed from seeing that live. Finally by the end of the night, it was a tough decision: Afrojack or Big Gigantic? Torn between the two, I chose Afrojack. Although I did end up going to Big Gigantic for a little bit, Afrojack was definitely the right choice. It was one of the best sets I’ve heard in a while, incorporating a wide variety track list but he always kept the crowd jumping and engaged. That was one of the things that I noticed at Big Gigantic: although they played a great live show and sounded fantastic, the crowd was nowhere near to as upbeat as the people at Afrojack.

While the first two days were a lot of fun, they had nothing on Sunday. By far the best day of the festival packed with names such as Danny Brown, A-Trak, Madeon, Cherub, Datsik, Rebelution, Wu-Tang Clan, Purity Ring, and Lotus, it was easy to understand why Sunday reigned supreme. I began my day at Danny Brown. The Detroit native put on a fabulous performance incorporating old stuff from XXX and The Hybrid but also some of his newer stuff. He even brought out GBE member, SD, and the crowd went absolutely nuts for it.

After Danny, we darted over to A-Trak and the next two hours of A-Trak and Madeon, back-to-back, was amazing. A-Trak just knew how to get the crowd into it, dropping a New Slaves trap remix then going straight into Bugatti then straight to Aint worried bout nothin. Breath taking. Madeon was next and had some big shoes to fill after what A-Trak just did, but the French wonder kid put on a show nothing short of spectacular. After those two were finished, we made our way over to Cherub and watched them perform. I’ve seen Cherub before, but they were just as good as I remembered. Hold You and Doses and Mimosas got the crowd going wild and they had some jam sessions during the middle of their songs. Finally it was time for Wu-Tang clan. The best part about that was that they were performing all of 36 Chambers. All the while showing love to ODB, Wu-Tang did their thing up there. I almost shed a tear of joy when CREAM was played. Then straight out of left field, like Friday, they stopped the show and evacuated the festival due to severe weather warnings.

Although it was a bit anti-climatic, the festival was a surreal experience that will definitely have me coming back in the next coming years. A nice closed environment makes it easy to navigate while being close enough to see and hear all the artists perfectly. A big thanks to North Coast for their hospitality and see you at Union Park next year!