ONE Musicfest founder J Carter shares his top 10 favorite moments from the festival as the 10 year anniversary approaches:
2010 — “Common performed and De La Soul as well. Common was supposed to perform for like 45 minutes and he probably performed for close to 90 minutes, interacting with the crowd, doing freestyles. That year we only had like 2,500 people there in the hot parking lot.”
2011 — “We combined the festival with a shrimp and crab fest. We had Chrisette Michele and The Pharcyde. We had Phife Dawg [RIP] and Tribe Called Quest was the host. Having Phife as a part of that the festival was a moment.
2012 — “Santigold, Big K.R.I.T. then we had the hip hop old school set with Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick, Doug E. Fresh, MC Lyte [and] MC Shan. I didn’t realize that never happened before. Santigold was on my wishlist for a while, so getting her and Big K.R.I.T. on the same bill, was a moment.”
2013 — “We had the Goodie Mob reunion. So Goodie Mob had spit up and it was rumored that they were trying to get back together. They reunited for the first time in years and performed at ONE Musicfest.”
2014 — “That’s when we moved to Lakewood. My favorite artist of all time, Nas, was celebrating his 20 anniversary of Illmatic. So he performed live. We had Kendrick Lamar as well that year and Kendrick kinda backed down to Nas and said, ‘You should headline. This is your year.’ So big ups to Kendrick.”
2015 — “Lauryn Hill was 2015. We had The Roots. Big K.R.I.T came back. We had SZA. We had the Internet, Raury. That was the year before everyone kinda popped.”
2016 — “We had the Dungeon Family Reunion. We didn’t know Andre was going to show up until the day of. He showed up and it was a spiritual moment for folks in Atlanta. To see the collective together and they had been riffing for years, the smiles, the hugs, the tears, the high fives, and everyone’s trying to get the whole synergy on stage… It was a moment.”
2017 — “We had Migos, Kaytranada, Jill Scott, Yasiin Bey — Most Def. Jill Scott gave us one of the best shows I’ve ever seen her do. She was very raw — a hell of a performance. So to see her and Migos on the same stage, that just does not happen.”
2018 – “Last year there were too many moments. Crunk Fest — it started raining right on cue and nobody moved. It didn’t affect anything. Nas and 2 Chainz had amazing shows. Big Boy had an amazing show. I’m an Omega and we had George Clinton last year and all the Ques jumped on stage. It was too many moments last year, too many moments. … I think collectively … 2018 was just a moment [in] itself.
