By Princess Russell |Staff Writer|
Crowds of crazy fans crammed into UC Riverside during the hottest day in April for the school’s annual Spring Splash festival.
Many felt the combination of heat and anticipation in the air for the new age Hip-Hop sounds of rap artist Kendrick Lamar and the classic R&B music of Musiq Soulchild.
The votes were split when it came to which headlining artist would be the most highly anticipated. From the time the festival doors opened, eager fans were counting down the minutes until their favorite headliners performed.
“Kendrick is the headliner,” said student Clyde Durden. “I think everyone came to see him.”
“I want to see both Kendrick and Musiq,” said CSUSB student Jazmin Jett. “It will be interesting to see how Kendrick’s set will be, since I saw him at Paid Dues [Festival] a couple of weeks ago,”
The self-proclaimed “Soul sisters,” Reyan and Noelle Warren, were heavily anticipating the performance by R&B legend Musiq Soulchild.
“We came to see Musiq. I want to hear ‘So Beautiful.’” said Reyan, referring to one of Musiq’s hit songs.
Musiq’s performance had the ladies in the crowd going wild. He opened with one of his classic hits, “girlfriend”. The audience swayed side to side and bopped their shoulders to the nostalgic tune.
Musiq wanted to “test the real Musiq lovers” by performing a few older singles from his earlier albums.
Musiq later surprised the audience with a keen knowledge of new age hip-hop by performing his own rendition of rapper Big Sean’s “Marvin Gaye and Chardonnay.”
But the ultimate crowd-pleaser was “So Beautiful.” When Musiq held the microphone out to the audience, fans beautifully belted out the chorus.
After Musiq’s soulful performance, main headliner Kendrick Lamar took over the UCR stage. As soon as Kendrick appeared, he had the entire Spring Splash audience hypnotized.
His music was enjoyably loud and the bass was bumping, opening his set with “F*ck Your Ethnicity.” Die-hard fans screamed Kendrick’s lyrics at the top of their lungs.
During the performance, one lucky audience member by the name of Abby caught Kendrick’s attention.
“Abby, do you have a boyfriend?” cooed Kendrick after stopping the performance. The curly haired beauty boldly responded with a ‘yes’ as she quickly turned away from the stage.
The crowd teasingly booed her while Kendrick set up his next performance, “Tammy’s Song,” which ironically is about a girl who cheated on her boyfriend.
“Rigamortis” had the most energy of all the songs Kendrick performed. Once the beat dropped the crowd started jumping up and down to his energetic music.
Despite the raging April heat that permeated throughout the day, Spring Splash 2012 was a huge success, giving music fans exactly what they wanted.
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