A Day at the DMV Summer Jam Fest
I went to a festival to relive my past and ended up seeing the future.
It was 4:05pm according to my overheating iPhone, and as the 101-degree D.C. heat weighed upon my shoulders and usurped the little energy I had left, I wondered what brought me to the inaugural DMV Summer Jam Fest. I was subsisting off of gas station coffee and a six-inch Subway buffalo chicken sandwich consumed in haste before parking at a metro station on the outskirts of the city and taking the train into Washington’s Navy Yard, where the festival took place. The irony was not lost on me that a collection of the city’s most organically popular performers was taking place in the most gentrified neighborhood in town, but it did make for an easy park-and-ride one stop away on the southeastern banks of the Anacostia River. It was one of those days where the maximum A/C in my car felt like an ineffective novelty; the hour-long drive down from Baltimore was spent reckoning with the idea that I was about to spend seven hours of my Labor Day in this sweltering heat. All hopes of the river breeze cooling off the festival goers were squashed upon arrival, when I realized the venue— The Bullpen, an open-air courtyard— was flanked by carbon-copy high-rise apartments from every side, like a deep serving bowl made of searing asphalt. This day was not for the weak-willed.
I came to believe that my renewed interest in festivals and shows was a product of aging. I vowed silently to myself to never do a full day at a festival again several years ago, but something pulled me back. I’m getting older, and being able to see artists while they’re on the rise is elusive and fleeting. I don’t want to spend all my time thinking of the things I used to do— I want to keep doing them. When I agreed to attend the festival, I did so with brazen confidence; it felt like I was taking life by the reins, but really I was just agreeing to a fun holiday event without checking the weather forecast.
My conviction in my decision faltered almost immediately upon arrival. Due to an organizational oversight, the group I came with sat in limbo outside the gates of The Bullpen for about 15 minutes before my wonderful friend, HipHopDX editor, and viral D.C. rap connoisseur Josh Svetz worked the organizers to the point of letting us in. I hadn’t been at the festival five minutes before I abandoned my plan to notate everything in my handheld leather notebook on account of my moist, sticky fingers, instead dictating time-stamped voice memos into my phone.
As the first acts rolled on stage— I was pleasantly surprised at Tuffy Doee’s performance, albeit an hour late, mostly because it’s rare to see a local rapper utilize live bands anymore— I looked around, feeling less like a part-time journalist covering a scene he’s passionate about and more like an alien solely affected by the heat, while everyone else in the building sipped vodka lemonades in skin tight Mike Amiris and waxed Purple denim. Sometimes I forget that the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region turns into the deep south in the summer; Michigan, my home state, is never this oppressively hot. I trudged over to one of the beverage stands surrounding the perimeter of the venue and ordered a three-dollar bottled water which was given to me for free before I could even pull out my wallet. It must have looked like I needed it.
The festival’s opening hours moved like molasses, but later in the afternoon, the crowd (myself included) started to hit a flow state. The one good part about being surrounded by ticky-tacky McApartments is that the sun drops behind the buildings earlier than usual. The heat persisted, but I was in the shade by about 4:30pm, finding solace in the knowledge that I had made it through the worst. I sat, perched in the back of The Bullpen’s second level, snapping wide angle pictures on my Sony point-and-shoot digital camera I picked up before the show, realizing the display screen was half-shot, making all my photos wild guesses at best. At this point I noticed the worst problems of the festival seemed to be in the past. The speakers, which gave out during Pinky tha Rapper’s earlier performance, were mostly under control. Fans were starting to fill out the venue and there were no slow-moving lines in sight. TOB was on stage, playing jubilant Go-Go renditions of pop songs in true D.C. fashion. The deliberate swaying crowd of the torrid heat gave way to a deep late-afternoon groove, and the underlying tension around the event’s kickoff began to melt away.
Around 5:30, popular DMV artist Lil Dude played an eventful fifteen-minute set which included one fire hazard warning for an excess of people on stage and at least 15 “RIP Goonew” ad-libs. Goonew, a frequent collaborator and friend of Lil Dude’s, was shot and killed in Maryland’s Prince George’s County last year. The constant tributes during this set provided a sad reminder and a departure from the joy of the moment, an unspoken truth looming; Goonew likely would’ve been performing at this very festival were he still with us today.
As 6:00 approached, the crowd filling out the venue started to pack the stage area instead of milling about. The bigger, more vaunted acts were about to come out and the Summer Jam organizers only had about two hours left on the bill. These were some of the most exciting performances of the night: Big Flock, 3coMMa$, Xanman, YG Teck, and Fat Trel, who helped organize the festival. (Editor’s note: For those who claim that Baltimore is not a part of the “DMV” region, the DMV Summer Jam sure included a lot of Baltimore acts.)
The pinnacle of the entire event came when KP Skywalka took the stage in between Xanman and YG Teck. His performance, slated for 6:50pm and set to run for 10 minutes, was the act I was most looking forward to, and I soon discovered I wasn’t alone. My finger on the pulse of D.C. rap isn’t what it is in Detroit, where I was dutifully enmeshed in the scene as a writer, photographer, and fan. As removed as I am, I’ve always seen KP, who is at least a few revolutions around the sun from his 20th birthday, as the apex of hip-hop in the capital region. His effortless blend of soulfulness and bounce provides singularity to his sound, while still maintaining the chaos, drollery, and tempo that’s unmistakably D.C., and seeing him perform on stage in his hometown was vindication in its purest form.
KP still has a ways to go as a live performer, but in this arena, under the descending summer sun in our nation’s capital, it was a moot point. A raw performer, KP Skywalka clocks a higher register than a traditional MC’s voice, and struggles to pierce the backing vocals and the hum of the crowd, who was at this point on the brink of losing their collective mind. As soon as he stepped on the stage, donning black jeans, a hoodie and a vintage basketball jersey that read “SHOOT OUT”, flocks of teenaged girls rushed towards the barrier, thrilled at the mere opportunity to be near their favorite rapper.
What he lacks in sound, KP makes up in stage presence. As soon as the opening notes played to “Inna Mix”, his most popular song, cameras came out en masse— hundreds of hours of footage must be accumulated in Snapchat’s data archive. When the beat dropped, KP flashed a smirk to the horde of teenagers in the front row, who subsequently argued amongst each other for the rest of the set about which of them the smile was directed at. The energy at The Bullpen ebbed and flowed all day, but it hit its undeniable peak when KP was on stage. Aside from the boy band-esque devotion from teenagers, he demanded attention from the whole venue. All the media had their cameras rolling, and in the VIP tent several other artists peeked out, watching the coronation. In that moment, for the only time at the 2023 DMV Summer Jam, the only thing that existed was the man on stage.
This isn’t to say YG Teck and Fat Trel’s ensuing performances weren’t quality in their own right, but it was abundantly clear who the crowd showed up for. On some level, this told me that KP Skywalka has a real audience on lock, but mostly it reminded me why I came to the festival in the first place. I didn’t just come for the music, and God knows I didn’t come to be outside on this hellish day, but I came to experience real rap culture and watch something transpire greater than myself. And I saw it. Everything started to make sense, and hundreds of people showing up in deadly heat suddenly seemed like a foregone conclusion. As fun as KP’s show itself was, the moment felt anthemic, like we were watching something historic: the first Summer Jam culminated in the future of DMV rap.
I sweated out several pounds, could only stomach one Coors Banquet, only a few of my photos turned out, and I left more confused than I came as to what the actual borders of the “DMV” region are, but I wouldn’t have spent Labor Day any other way.