Austin City Limits: Hip-Hop, R&B And Pop Under The Blazing Texan Sun

Jay Z, Solange, Chance, Ice Cube, Gorillaz and more brought their A game to the Texan festival.

Austin City Limits 2017
Publicist

Image via Publicist

Austin City Limits 2017

This weekend just passed, Complex flew out to Austin, Texas for the first weekend of their annual, two-weekend Austin City Limits blow-out. Jay Z, Chance The Rapper, Ice Cube, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Solange, Ryan Adams, DRAM, Danny Brown, Run The Jewels and a whole host of other acts from the worlds of pop, rock and dance music. If you're used to UK festivals, ACL will come as some surprise. For starters, it's hot as hell in Texas.

Solange, as ever, delivered a hugely powerful and arresting performance. Backed, as ever, by her phenomenal live band, we were treated to the vast majority of A Seat At The Table. If you've ever been blessed enough to see her live, you'll know how phenomenally tight the band are (James Brown would've been envious), but this time felt different. Perhaps she was happy to be in the South, but she just seemed to be right at home on that stage and her performance felt even freer and more impassioned than ever.

Right after that, Jay Z took to the American Express stage for a triumphant role call of hip-hop's canon (aka his greatest hits). With a list of hits as long as Jay's, it was difficult to say which tracks got the biggest reaction, but "Big Pimpin", "Dirt Off Your Shoulder", "Hard Knock Life", and "N****s In Paris" were all close contenders. He could have ended on any of those tracks for a momentous finish, but his choice to end with a particularly emotive version of his Linkin Park collab "Numb" was both touching and inspired.

Chance The Rapper stole the show on Saturday with an (almost literally) electrifying set that owed much to the Gospel tradition of rousing vocal harmonies and emotionally stirring melody. Chance is first and foremost an astonishing showman, but he's also an incredible team-player, backed as he was by Donnie Trumpet, The Social Experiment and a Gospel choir. Of course, we got all the hits including a lot of his blockbuster collabs ("Ultralight Beam", "Father Stretch My Hands" and "I'm The One" proved to be expectedly big-hitters), as well as his solo bangers like "No Problem", "Angels" and "Sunday Candy". Despite the entire crowd of thousands claiming to have all been day one Chance fans, this was also a prime opportunity to get familiar with the deeper cuts and lesser known works from the Chi-town rapper. It's also worth noting that even though Chance's set clashed with the Chili Peppers, he still commanded a crowd of tens of thousands.

His wasn't the only set to floor the crowd on Saturday. Gangsta rap titan Ice Cube took to the stage as the sun went down for a masterful walk through his extensive back catalogue. Sure there were some lesser known cuts for the real heads, but Ice Cube, like Chance, was here to unite the crowd and bring in those who might not typically be rap fans. As the heat reached almost unbearable levels, Cube ran through all the classics, "Straight Outta Compton", "You Can Do It", "Express Yourself", "Check Yo Self" and even some deeper cuts while we all struggled valiantly with the red hot Texan sun.

As Sunday rolled around, we brushed off our hangovers and summoned what remaining energy we had for a third day at ACL. Things kicked off early with Danny Brown at 3.50 and DRAM at 4.15, leaving no time to recover and a difficult choice to make. From there, Run The Jewels ramped the energy levels to a million with a set thick with RTJ3 bangers and plenty of classics from the two preceding albums. If you've yet to catch the NY/Atlanta alliance live, you'd be forgiven for thinking they were inspired by UK bass music and rave culture. Mike and El's rapid fire delivery backed by chest-rattling bass had as much in common with early jungle and hardcore as it did the low-end swagger of ATL and the South. Again, seeing a Southern artist rock up in Texas (regardless of which southern state they're from) really was something to behold. Even casual rap fans went nuts for Killer Mike's silky smooth southern drawl.

Then, as the light faded and the festival reached its close, Damon Albarn's Gorillaz hit the stage for an educational jaunt through their 17-year back catalogue. A raft of stars also joined them on stage—including Del The Funky Homosapien, DRAM, Kilo Kish, Anthony Hamilton (who made an impressive turn as stand-in for the late Bobby Womack), Zebra Katz and more—for a mix of big hits and deep cuts. At times, mesmerisingly somber and at others playful and whimsical, it was everything we could hope from the animated hit-makers in the dying lights of Austin City Limits.

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