How did Rolling Loud festival become the “Disney World of hip-hop”?
nme.comRolling Loud have spoken to NME about how it became the world’s largest hip-hop festival ahead of the second-ever edition taking place in Portugal this weekend.Established in Florida eight years ago, the festival was created by hip-hop event promoters Matt Zinger and Tariq Chief.
In 2010, Zingler and Cherif started to organise monthly parties in Miami headlined by some of today’s most successful rappers – such as Rick Ross, Travis $cott and Kendrick Lamar.Rolling Loud was first held in a Florida warehouse and had six headliners; Schoolboy Q, Curren$y, A$AP Ferg, Action Bronson, Juicy J, and $cott.
Now, the festival has not only vastly expanded at home but has spread across the world with events in Australia, Canada, and Portugal.
This year it debuts in three new countries: The Netherlands, Thailand and Germany.Despite scaling up, Cherif stated that the purpose of the festival is still the same – to “bring happiness to millions of people while promoting and nurturing hip-hop culture.”“We started Rolling Loud because we had been throwing hip-hop concerts in Florida for five years across all the different sub-genres of hip-hop, and we started seeing there were a lot of fans that overlapped at all the shows,” Cherif explained. “We figured we could put a bunch of artists on one show and, and give all these fans a great experience.”Another reason was to show off the local Floridian SoundCloud scene they were managing via their own touring company, Dope Entertainment.
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