Future, Kehlani, the Dungeon Family and more One Musicfest Day 1 highlights
One Musicfest began Saturday in Midtown, returning to Piedmont Park after last year’s move to the smaller Central Park. The two-day festival of hip-hop, R&B, soul and gospel music features three stages of performances.
Saturday’s lineup began with acts like Rasheeda and Ray J and concluded with The Roots and Future, with lead-up shows from the Dungeon Family, Kehlani, Wale and Boosie.
Sunday is Day 2 of One Musicfest, and will feature Chief Keef, Tweet, Leon Thomas, Jazmine Sullivan, Clipse, Jagged Edge and closers Doechii and Ludacris.
Here are the biggest highlights from Day 1’s notable acts:
Southern Ladies
The festival kicked off at noon, and one the first performances was a set celebrating Atlanta’s female rap reign — with help from Houston rapper KenTheMan. All the other performers were straight out of Georgia: Bankroll Ni, Flippa T and Rasheeda.
The show was the first collaborative set of the day. Each artist performed roughly five songs to a modest crowd.
KenTheMan was first to take the stage at 1:54 p.m., as fans rapped along to the hard-hitting bars of “He Be Like” and “First.” Atlanta’s Bankroll Ni was next to perform. The budding rapper began her set with her hometown anthem “I’m So ATL.” She performed newer songs too, but those didn’t capture the same momentum as her breakout hit. Flippa T, a Griffin native, had infectious energy while performing her popular song “Affirmations,” but the crowd didn’t seem enthused for her other songs.
Rasheeda was last to perform. The rap veteran and “Love & Hip Hop Atlanta” star, backed by six dancers and her hype man/husband Kirk Frost, took the audience back to 2000 with her debut song “Do It.” She also rapped fan favorites “Marry Me” and “My Bubble Gum,” songs that have recently gotten the Gen-Z stamp of approval thanks to social media.
“People like to make mockeries of me, but I get compared to real Atlanta legends,” Rasheeda said during her set. — DeAsia Paige
R&B 2000
Just after the Southern ladies of rap set, a group of male crooners hit the stage for some throwback hits.
Ray J, Sammie, Bobby V and Pleasure P — announcing themselves onstage as the supergroup RSVP — delivered short, two-song performances during their hourlong show. Kicking off the set was Ray J (wearing a red, devil-horned baseball cap), with the Neptunes-produced hit “Wait a Minute,” followed by Sammie with his hook from Soulja Boy’s 2008 hit “Kiss Me Thru the Phone.”
Bobby V, who gave the most polished performance of his cohort, played keyboard during his live rendition of “Slow Down” and had one of the set’s strongest moments with his chorus from “Mrs. Officer.” The Lil’ Wayne song received far more audience love than the Atlanta native’s brief, a cappella version of Mista’s 1996 jam “Blackberry Molasses,” which the crowd didn’t seem to remember.
Pleasure P was a crowd favorite, particularly when singing songs from Pretty Ricky’s catalog like “Grind With Me” and “On the Hotline.” Brandy’s little brother, Ray J, may have been the most entertaining of the quartet, but less for nailing his popular single “One Wish” and more for antics like calling himself single over the loudspeakers while admitting to having a wife in the same breath. — Mike Jordan
Greg Street 30th Anniversary set: Trinidad James, Trick Daddy, Project Pat, Rich Kidz
Showing love to the streets, V-103’s DJ Greg Street and Atlanta mixtape legend DJ Jelly teamed up on the One Musicfest stage to spread underground Southern hip-hop love.
Trinidad James opened the set with “All Gold Everything,” dressed in a red bodysuit with an attached mask that almost completely covered his face. Next on stage was Atlanta group Rich Kidz, which had a late-aughts run with regional hits like “My Partna Dem,” which the crowd received enthusiastically. Project Pat came next, with “If You Ain’t From My Hood” and “Ooh Nuthin’” before leading a tribute to deceased Atlanta rappers like Shawty Lo and Rich Homie Quan.
Pat also gave the crowd one of Saturday’s most interesting moments when he led the crowd on a two-minute call-and-response prayer that had audience members repeating phrases like “I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross, and went to hell in my place …” Then, just after closing out the prayer, Pat immediately jumped into his cult classic “Chickenhead.”
He was followed by Trick Daddy, who kept the crowd bouncing with cuts like “Shut Up,” “I’m a Thug,” “Naan” and “In the Wind,” his 2002 collaboration with CeeLo Green and Big Boi.
Plies didn’t appear despite being billed to perform, but in his place the crowd got a brief and extremely low-key show from Warren G, who went through a rushed, two-verse version of “Regulate.” — Mike Jordan
Kehlani
Over a decade after she debuted, Kehlani is having a breakthrough year. Her recent single “Folded” became her biggest hit to date, spawning remixes from Brandy, Toni Braxton and Tank. Fittingly, she opened and ended her One Musicfest set with the R&B song.
The singer’s beautiful melodies floated over songs like “You Should Be Here” and “Nunya.” But it wasn’t long after that the Oakland, California, native revealed she recently experienced vocal issues.
“About an hour and a half ago, sound wasn’t coming out of my mouth,” she told the crowd, saying she enlisted the help of vocal coaches for Saturday’s set.
It paid off.
Though her vocals were slightly subdued, it was hard to imagine she’d just experienced any issues with her voice. Kehlani, backed by a band, performed each song like the original version, adding riffs and runs that showcased her range. Before leaving, she told fans that her new album is almost done and will honor her R&B roots.
“Ten years deep into my career, and it’s all because of you guys,” she said. — DeAsia Paige
Dungeon Family
The only Andre that showed up for the Dungeon Family reunion was Mayor Andre Dickens, who introduced the Atlanta rap supergroup’s 7 p.m. set. In fact, pretty much all the original affiliates put together by Rico Wade showed up except André 3000.
Ten minutes before showtime, the crowd in front of the P&G Stage had already swelled far beyond earlier shows, as everyone seemed to be wondering the same thing: Would he show up? There was reason to believe: Just four months ago André and his flute popped up around the city in, among other places, a southwest Atlanta parking lot where members of the Dungeon Family showed up to support him.
Despite no Three Stacks appearance, the DF gave Atlanta its collective all, beginning with a rare Cool Breeze appearance. The “East Point’s Greatest Hit” emcee kicked off the show with “Dirty South,” before Witchdoctor gave a rousing performance of “Holiday.”
Big Gipp delivered his three “Black Ice” verses, and there almost seemed to be lingering hope when the DJ cut the record before Big Boi’s verse, since anyone watching Big’s social media days earlier this week saw him rehearsing for the DF show. But next it would be all four Goodie Mob members, who tore through “They Don’t Dance No Mo’” before Sleepy Brown slid through “I Can’t Wait.” The moment of truth arrived with “Ms. Jackson,” when Sleepy delivered the chorus in André’s place.
From there, despite a mood-rejuvenating Killer Mike performance of “Never Scared,” and Big Boi and Sleepy carrying “So Fresh, So Clean” and “The Way You Move,” the sentiment of the set suffered.
When Dré’s opening verse from “International Player’s Anthem (I Choose You)” played, the DJ cut the music and the crowd recited his famous “Keep your heart, Three Stacks; keep your heart” lyrics. It showed how much Atlanta misses André, and how nice it would have been not only for him to show up for his brothers, but Atlanta itself.
Also, maybe it’s time to give Big Boi credit for holding down the Outkast brand for all these years, and leave any belief that Outkast is everlasting in the past. — Mike Jordan
The Roots
Saturday’s second-to-last act of the night hit the One Musicfest stage right on time. For over an hour, the legendary Philadelphia band guided the crowd through sets for Mobb Deep, Busta Rhymes and Mary J. Blige. The live instrumentation paired with classics like Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones” or Busta Rhyme’s “Touch It” or Mary J. Blige’s “Real Love” made the set feel like the ultimate hip-hop celebration. — DeAsia Paige
Future
Before Future graced the stage around 9:30, a video montage honored recent Atlanta rap deaths: Young Scooter (Future’s longtime friend and collaborator), who died in March; and Rico Wade (Future’s cousin and Dungeon Family founder), who died last year.
Future’s stage design also featured a replica of the famous Dungeon Family home, which also served as the cover art for the rapper’s latest project “Mixtape Pluto.” He opened the show with his hit “March Madness” for thousands of fans who rapped along to each word. The Atlanta rapper performed at least 20 songs, including “Stick Talk,” “Like That” and “Plutoski,” as fire emitted across the stage and fireworks periodically blasted in the sky — an IRL showcase of how Future can make any party lit.
Throughout the set, it was hard to tell whether Future lip-synced most of it. But that didn’t matter to the many screaming fans who stayed until the very end as Future closed Night 1 of the festival. — DeAsia Paige
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About the Authors
DeAsia is a music and culture reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She focuses on the intersection of arts, culture and diverse communities, as well as how emerging social trends are being expressed through the lens of the Atlanta aesthetic. DeAsia's work can be seen in Pitchfork, Essence, Teen Vogue, Elle and more.
Mike Jordan is senior editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Black culture brand, UATL. A longtime culture journalist, his work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, National Geographic, Rolling Stone and others. Jordan won the James Beard Foundation’s 2024 Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award and was a 2023 finalist.
