Alessia Cara performing on the Pepsi stage at Lollapalooza on Friday July 29, 2016 at Grant Park in Chicago, IL. Photo by Tito Garcia
The second day of Lollapalooza at Chicago’s Grant Park for it’s 25th Anniversary brought some of the most exciting and well-rounded performances of the whole weekend so far to the Pepsi stage. Opening the afternoon set with a very amazing display of singing from what we called one of this year’s can’t miss performers at Lollapalooza, rising R&B/Pop singer/songwriter Alessia Cara had a very amazing backing band.
One that played to the Ontario, Canada native’s strong vocals really well, as she started off her set with the very amazing record, I’m Yours from her Gold-certified debut album Know-It-All before going into one of her more popular hits to date in the chart-topping Wild Things, which the crowd really went nuts over.
Cara then went into a record she said was really personal to her and one of her very own favorites with Four Pink Walls, before asking the crowd if she can slow things down a little. As she grabbed her guitar and a stool to sit down and play her very amazing record, Overdose, which really let Alessia show how much of a truly talented artist she is and why she will be around for years to come.
The rising R&B/Pop singer then got back up again from her stool, as her guitar was taken away and she sang her very amazing record Outlaw, with the crowd singing along to the very soulful record. As her backing band really made the record sound so amazing live too, before Alessia slowed things down again with a ballad of one of her more soulful records, which truly let’s the singer show her singing chops in Rivers of Tears.
Alessia really got the crowd going with her final two records she played in Scars to Your Beautiful and her very amazing chart-topping debut single, Here. With her backing band really playing well to the festival setting, Alessia even said, “It was always a dream of hers to play here (Lolla) and this just proved know matter how big or little your dreams, or wheter they are similar or not to hers, you can always do it as long as you believe in yourself.”
The singer even changed some of the most memorable lyrics to the song from, “I’m here at this party in my beanie.” to “I’m here at Lolla in my beanie!” Much to the delight of the crowd. With such her amazing performance Alessia showed like we said before that she’s a performer that will be sure to be playing at the main stage for Lollapalooza in only a few years.
Following Cara’s performance at Lolla a few short hours later, the crowd was much different for A$AP Mob member A$AP Ferg’s set, as the crowd got real rowdy and all over the place with all the moshpits and action going on in the crowd during his set.
Twista performing as a guest performer during A$AP Ferg’s Lollapalooza set on the Pepsi stage on Friday July 29, 2016 at Grant Park in Chicago, IL. Photo by KMax
With Ferg opening his set with Carnage cover WDWY before going into his very rowdy Uzi Gang and Hungry Ham records. The crowd for Ferg’s set got so out of control at one point, while he was performing Tatted Angel and Shabba that I had actually started to walk away to avoid getting hurt or anything because of how wild and out of control the crowd had started to get. I came back for a brief second for one of the best parts of the whole night though, when I heard Ferg talking about all of the great Hip-Hop artists that we had or still have here in Chicago like Kanye West and Twista.
While Kanye moved and everybody knows him, Ferg talked about how OG Chicago Hip-Hop legend and veteran Twista, who has stayed in Chicago over the years was somebody he would like to bring out as a guest performer and it was only right to do, being in Chicago. So Twista then came out and procedded to go into one of his biggest hits to date that I ironically made a small cameo in the video for years ago, Overnight Celebrity. After he was done performing that Ferg talked about how Twista was in the Guiness Book of World Records for the Fastest Flow and let him do one of his very amazing lyrical displays of his record-setting rapid fire flow. Being such a huge Twista fan myself for years it was so great to see this moment happen too and why the second day was my favorite of the two days at the festival so far. With plenty more to come in these final two days it should be a lot more fun and excitement to come.