A.D. Amorosi In 2008, on a pier beside Philly’s Delaware River, the Roots started what would become an annual live gathering, the Roots Picnic.
The inaugural fest was a one-day affair near the City of Brotherly Love’s downtown, with its greatest highlight being hip-hop’s mightiest live band backing legacy rap and R&B artists such as Snoop Dogg, Erykah Badu and De La Soul, giving each vocalist a raw, inventive new energy.
As the first, ongoing, hip hop-artist-curated fest, the Roots Picnic predates J. Cole’s Dreamville in North Carolina, Jay-Z’s Made in America in Philly, H.E.R.’s Cali-based Lights On and anything Travis Scott may do in the future as the blueprint.Fourteen years later, for 2022’s iteration of the Roots Picnic on Saturday and Sunday, the extended ensemble delivered again — this time, backing the original queen of hip-hop-laced R&B, Mary J.
Blige, for night one’s closer – but much had changed since its start. That it’s currently held on a lawn, the Mann Center’s bucolic Fairmount Park, gives the now-two-day event a familial picnic vibe.
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