Fans at the Ravinia Music Festival in Highland Park, IL were in for a treat tonight, as the I Love The 90’s: The Party Continues tour brought your favorite artists from one of the best decades in music for a memorable night of nostalgia.
With opening performances from Snap! (‘The Power’), All-4-One (‘I Swear’), O-Town (‘All Or Nothing’) and Biz Markie (‘Just A Friend’), and headlining sets from Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath and TLC, it was rare that fans heard a track that wasn’t a big hit years ago. Whether you were singing along to TLC ‘No Scrubs’ or belting out the words to Biz Markie’s ‘Just A Friend’, it was impossible to leave the festival grounds tonight without a smile on your face.
Tonight marked one of the last major shows for the Ravinia Festival’s 2017 season, and it couldn’t have gone any better. Highland Park residents and music fans across the state of Illinois are already counting down the days to another memorable summer at The Ravinia.
Check out our photos from tonight’s performance below.
Although Niall Horan still has his 2017 tour ahead of him, where he will perform a show at Chicago’s Rosemont Theatre, the former One Direction star will re-launch his tour in 2018 for a number of dates across the globe. And Niall isn’t traveling alone either, as rising Country-star Maren Morris will join the Flicker World Tour 2018.
Kicking things off in Houston, TX on July 18th, Horan will make stops in Nashville, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Toronto, Irvine, St. Paul, Denver and many more, until the tour concludes over a year from today in Miami. Fans can visit Niall’s official website for tickets and more information.
Peep the dates for Niall’s Flicker World Tour 2018 below, and listen to his brand new track ‘Too Much to Ask’.
In 2014, AAHH! Fest rivaled all other Chicago music festivals in just one day. The rap and R&B festival, led by Chicago’s own, Common, saw performances from Kanye West, Dave Chappelle, Jennifer Hudson and more. The next year however, the festival announced that it would be taking a year-long hiatus, hoping to return in 2016.
The festival surprised many and kept its promise, returning in 2016 with huge performances from J. Cole, The Roots, Vic Mensa, Common and a surprise appearance from Chance The Rapper.
Unfortunately for fans wishing to attend AAHH! Fest in 2017, history is repeating itself as AAHH! Fest abruptly announced that this year’s festival would be cancelled. In an official statement the festival announced that they are “retolling this initiative to create an experience that goes far beyond an outdoor music event.” And with that, the festival announced that it will return on September 15, 2018.
Be sure to save the date and hope that AAHH! Fest returns bigger than ever.
Get excited because Action Bronson is hitting the road this year, for his headlining Blue Chips 7000 tour. Getting things started on October 5th in Dallas, TX, Action will make stops in Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Houston, Vancouver and many more, until the tour concludes in December at The Palladium in Worcester, MA.
Bronson stole the show at a number of music festivals this past summer, including Miami’s Rolling Loud and Outside Lands in San Francisco, so believe us when we say that you won’t want to miss out on a tour of his own, in support of his new Blue Chips 7000 project. Tickets for the tour go on sale here, this Friday, September 15th.
Check out the dates and locations for Action Bronson’s Blue Chips 7000 Tour below.
Scalpers, look what you made Taylor Swift do! In an effort to combat ticket scalpers and ensure that real fans get tickets to her concerts, Taylor Swift is getting a lot of undeserved hate for her new Taylor Swift Tix program with Ticketmaster Verified Fan.
For those not familiar with the program, Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift have created a program to “beat the bots”, where fans can engage in a number of activities (including buying her album and merch) to boost their future chances of buying tickets. The thought process? Bots and scalpers are less likely to engage in these activities to buy tickets.
First off, is her war against ticket scalpers legitimate? Of course. Taylor isn’t the first, she is joining artists and entertainers like Bruce Springsteen, Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles and even Louis CK, to help ensure that their fans don’t get ripped off by horrible resale prices.
Why are people upset? Of the many things fans can do to boost their chances at tickets, they can pre-order her album and buy merchandise. Some view this as Taylor ripping off her fans. However, are fans at her concerts not already buying merch and ordering her album? Of course they are. So why not reward them for it?
Do you have to spend money to participate? A simple review of the Taylor Swift Tix program will show you that there are many more free activities than paid ones, to help boost your chances at buying tickets. You can watch her new music video, lyric video and a number of behind the scenes videos all up to 10 times a day. Sure, watching a 2-minute video doesn’t get you as much of a boost as pre-ordering her album, but someone who orders her album is more likely to be a true fan.
In no way though are you required to spend money. You don’t have to have the most boosts of all her fans, you just need more boosts than the 15,000th person in that city or whoever is the first person who is met with the horrible “SOLD OUT” message when buying tickets.
It’s impossible to know exactly how much you will need to do to ensure tickets, but after less than an hour of watching some Taylor Swift videos online, my status bar was filled up nearly 90% for her next potential Cleveland concert.
What’s the alternative? One way to avoid scalpers making huge profits off fans, in an economics sense, is to price tickets at their true market value. On her 1989 World Tour, Taylor sold out stadiums and arenas all throughout the world, including two sold-out shows at Chicago’s Soldier Field. If $100 tickets sell out in minutes, where a percentage of those tickets go to scalpers who sell them for 2x or 3x that, the alternative is Taylor bumping up prices of her tickets by another $100 or so. Every $200 in profits that a scalper doesn’t get for selling tickets, is another $200 in the pockets of a true fan, Taylor’s sheer profits off tickets remains the same.
Even when tickets are expensive in your mind, if they sell out well before showtime, then the tickets clearly aren’t priced as high as they could be. That’s why scalpers take advantage of this, and often make a killing.
So unless you’d rather pay much more for your seats, be happy that fans have a free avenue to ensure they get tickets from Taylor directly and not some creep off Craigslist, tickets which may or may not be authentic.
So cool your jets… Maybe Taylor will see a spike in pre-orders and merch sales, but who cares? No one is forcing a gun to anyone’s head. Taylor isn’t some capitalist pig. If that was the case, she would raise her ticket prices even more and her last concert (and her only show in 2017) wouldn’t have been a completely free event, where fans in Houston and throughout the country were able to win tickets via a number of online and in-person contests.
If you want to see Taylor Swift in concert in the relative future, sign up for the program and watch a couple videos, otherwise take a seat, because the haters gonna hate.
English singer/songwriter Dua Lipa is transitioning from her festival shows and dates in support of Bruno Mars, into a big headlining North American tour of her own.
Dubbed The Self-Titled Tour, the ‘Be The One’ artist’s tour will kick off on Monday, November 20th in Boston, and will make stops in Chicago, Nashville, New York, Toronto and more, with a second leg starting up in February 2018 with more dates throughout North America. Stay tuned to Dua Lipa’s official website for tickets and more information.
Check out the dates for Dua Lipa’s The Self-Titled Tour below.
It appears that rapper Ski Mask The Slump God is distancing himself from friend and frequent collaborator, XXXTentacion, amidst X’s recent abuse allegations, as fans have noticed that Ski Mask has unfollowed XXXTentacion on Twitter.
Just months ago, the two rappers were almost one in the same. You couldn’t hear Ski Mask’s name without hearing XXXTentacion as well. But now that Ski Mask is starting to make a name for himself and land some big collaborations, it appears that the bad press that comes with XXXTentacion may be too much for him. Whether or not this is the true reason, distancing himself from XXXTentacion may not be the worst thing for Ski Mask right now.
Stream Ski Mask The Slump God’s Lil Yachty and A$AP Ferg assisted track, ‘No Tilt’, below.
Aftera three year hiatus of live performances in North America, P!nk returned to the stage for a huge sold-out show at Milwaukee’s 50th Anniversary of Summerfest. Just 90-miles south though, Pink’s Chicago fans were left wondering, “what about us?”
And tonight Pink answered that question, as she traveled to the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in Tinley Park, IL for a special Chicago performance, and one of her select few dates all year. The ‘Raise Your Glass’ singer did not leave her Windy City fans disappointed, as Pink got the party started on a Saturday night, while delivering a memorable set that will tide the city over until her next visit.
Not only did she bring her talented crew and catalog of hits along for the ride, but she brought her sass, charisma and her high flying acrobatics, to put the cherry on top of an already great night.
Check out our photos from tonight’s performance below.
When asked to directly name an industry plant by Complex’s Everyday Struggle co-host DJ Akademiks, rapper/producer Russ admitted his eyebrows are raised when it comes to whether or not Chance The Rapper is an industry plant. The ‘What They Want’ artist wouldn’t directly say whether or not he thinks Chance is a plant, but he certainly tried to make the case.
“Your coming out party, your debut mixtape when you have 25,000 follows, you have Jake One beats and Justice League beats and Twista, and Ab-Soul on the video. That type of shit, it definitely raises my eyebrows.”
In Russ’ defense and to put things in better context, he does mention that he fucks with Chance and his people, he is a fan of Chance’s music and told the Everyday Struggle cast that Chance is a very smart person, but all while subtly putting an asterisk on all of Chance’s accomplishments, hinting that Chance has potentially had a secret big label backing the entire time.
But as anyone from Chicago will tell you, Chance’s come up was not overnight. Only in the past year or so has Chance been frequently headlining major festivals throughout the world, while becoming a household name. While Russ cites Acid Rap as Chance’s debut mixtape, it was Chance The Rapper’s 10 Day mixtape which came first, and really started to build a buzz in the city of Chicago and elsewhere.
The success of that project then led to a huge opportunity for Chance as he then was invited to join Childish Gambino on his sold-out tour. Sure, maybe your grandmother didn’t know what a “Chance The Rapper” was at that point, but Chance was doing a number of supporting dates and headlining college shows throughout the Midwest to introduce himself to fans.
Chance’s come up is more than impressive, especially when doing it without a major label backing, but to discredit his success by hinting that there is no way he isn’t secretly being promoted by some big name music executives is crazy. Also, wouldn’t an industry plant get a little more love from Top 40 radio? Besides his features, it’s still relatively rare to hear a lot of Chance The Rapper when you tune in.
Watch Russ’ sit-down with Complex’s Everyday Struggle crew below, and check out his discussion on industry plant at the 14-minute mark
With one of the more unexpected, but entirely awesome, collaborations of the year, G-Eazy has recruited the pretty mother f*cker A$AP Rocky, and the hottest new artist in rap, Cardi B, for his new track ‘No Limit’.
‘No Limit’ has Rocky on the hook and hot verse from Cardi B as Young Gerald’s track also pays tribute to the Three Six Mafia’s classic 1999 record, ‘Slob On My Knob’. Although we’re not sure if ‘No Limit’ will get as much replay value as Juicy J’s classic track, we definitely wouldn’t bet against the trio of Cardi, G-Eazy and Rocky.
Stream G-Eazy’s new Cardi B and A$AP Rocky track ‘No Limit’ below.
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