Note: I did not go to the second day of Broccoli City Fest because the rainforest like conditions from Day 1 prevented me from purchasing day two tickets, respectfully (Justin La Boy voice).

1. Larry June is a star. To see Uncle Larry perform in the rain at an earlier time slot in the festival and still have the crowd engaged and constantly screaming “Yee hee” or “Numbers” was a beautiful sight to see. 

2. The amount of people wearing sandals and T-shirts on day 1 tells me a lot of y’all apparently don’t have the weather app on your phone.

3. Seeing Lil Durk perform with a band and in a festival setting shows you how far his career has come.  It just seems like just yesterday that Durk had a low cut fade and was getting into a tense standoff in the club with The Game, but now Lil Durk seems like he is hitting a new pinnacle and setting a new standard for rappers that represent “the trenches”.

4 Jeezy and Bankroll Fresh’s (RIP) song “All There” is a classic, and seeing the crowd’s reaction to it during Jeezy’s set just enforces my opinion. 

5. The guy with the American flag floaties at the Everything Legendary DJ tent shooting champagne out of a gun while Kirk Franklin’s “Revolution” blared from the speakers filled my heart with joy.

6. One of the suckier things about not going to day two was not seeing Tems.  She is the Chris Paul of the music industry right now.  Every song she gets on just gets better, even if that other artist might be the OKC Thunder.

7. Is bottle service at festivals going to become the new normal?

8.  Nardo Wick’s “Who Want Smoke” remix is one of the best remixes of all time.  I heard it over five times during the course of the festival and every time it was received by the audience with the same fervor of The Dothraki at the Battle of Winterfelll.

9. When 21 Savage said “it was cold as shit out here” during his performance, I felt that.

10.  Last but not least, it was great to see all the beautiful black faces out in the crowd.  It’s no secret that most festivals’ attendees are majority white and that they typically cater to that crowd. But Broccoli City Festival is organized by and catered to black people while in a majority black city (Washington, DC). After a two year COVID hiatus, it was a beautiful sight to see and almost made me forget about the rain. Almost.