The artists themselves also wandered around like festival visitors, listening to the performances of their colleagues and occasionally taking a picture. Between the concerts, but especially at the end of the evening, there was no shortage of opportunities to voice their deep rap fans’ questions about specific lyrics, beats or albums, and to remember that the rappers themselves are already the biggest rap fans, and they too are happy to have the opportunity to talk about issues that people outside the commune does not touch
It seems that the fact that it is a genre festival that will not appeal to every passer-by worked in favor of “Straume”. Both the listeners and the performers could count on a limited audience – everywhere they looked, there were only hip-hop fans. This aspect of the commune was clearly among the biggest successes of the festival. Almost no one seemed to come to pose and take a good shot, and I often heard someone mention that part of the motivation for coming the first year was to support the festival the day before. Another good indicator – regardless of the degree of intoxication, as far as I know, not a single fight or scuffle broke out during the two days, and the infrastructure of “Zeit” did not even suffer from several moshpits. We behaved loudly, but politely.
Music
I think that a relatively small number of visitors arrive at the festival (any) territory from the first minute, without missing a single artist. For example, in order to enter the store, set up a tent and catch the performance of the boom-bep rapper March at six o’clock, you would have to leave Riga before four o’clock, which is simply not possible for many. For example, I missed both March and $ourJ and Yam’s performances and didn’t get to the stage until around eight when Od and Gocha took the stage. Fortunately, you can say that their performance was a double concert, because after about half an hour Ode’s biggest (and sweetest) a hitthey returned to the stage as themselves another self Mauku Sencis and Grandmasters Neons to perform a couple of songs from the yet-to-be-released mixtape “Honorable name 4”.
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The first evening of “Straumes” was closed by two very different people headliner – “all-terrain vehicle” roland če, whose stage energy could power a small nuclear reactor, and Edavārdi, who gathered the audience with his eight-album wide catalog – each with their own offer of a well-spent evening. After two moshpits, an hour passed and sunglasses on, for roland če on the stage two things for sure: First, if you see his name on the poster of your festival and are not afraid to get a little dirty, it is definitely worth going to the respective stage. Second, the album “all-terrain” is really for the stage, not for headphones. I thought I knew it, but in concert i finally experienced it.
It could be said that Edavārdu’s performance was the full comfort zone of the festival visitors. First, Ed led a tour of last year’s “In ecosystems“, until he called out “something really old” and together with the whole crowd of a few hundred (accumer says – around five hundred?) people roared “Road signs are for drivers“, devoting most of the rest of the program to songs that have become classics of the decade, from mixtapes and representations to melodic backing vocals. Naturally, this was the most diverse program of the evening and the common denominator of the last fifteen years of Latvian hip-hop.
If the first day was mostly dedicated to melodic modern trap, then the sound of the second day was much broader. The day was started by punchline master Wiesulis, who performed almost his entire debut album in a 40-minute set.Side panel“, which after an inexplicably long 80-minute break was followed by I MEAN LOVE, whose slow love songs were a relatively low energy point; relaxation before the evening. (For comparison, the no less melodic Finkis later led a much more active program, which allowed both singing and moving.) While other listeners gathered for Rīmdar’s performance, I ate my only hot meal of the day (meat soup for 4.50 euros) and lay down in the net park with my new friends.
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