Come Sept. 9, Arizona will host the brand new IYKYK Music Festival, which will take place at the Phoenix Raceway in Avondale. On Wednesday (July 19), the organizers announced that Lil Uzi Vert will be the main headliner for their inaugural event with Metro Boomin, Denzel Curry, and JELEEL! on the supporting lineup. A flyer also blurs out what’s presumed to be a surprise guest.
Uzi’s upcoming performance will follow crowd-pleasing sets at April’s Dreamville Festival in North Carolina and June’s Governors Ball in Queens, NY. Mere weeks after the latter event, the Philly artist dropped their third studio LP, Pink Tape, a 26-song body of work with assists from Travis Scott, Nicki Minaj, Bring Me The Horizon, Don Toliver, and Babymetal. The project debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, becoming Uzi’s third album to achieve this feat. Pink Tape is also the first (and, to date, only) 2023 hip hop album to top the aforementioned chart.
In an interview for REVOLT’s “Studio Sessions,” Uzi’s engineer, Benjamin Thomas, opened up about the creation of “Just Wanna Rock,” the biggest standout from Pink Tape. “MCVERTT had sent some beats, and around four o’clock in the morning, [Uzi] sent me the beat,” he said. “We loaded it up and recorded this song in 20 minutes. And that was that. I think we did a couple of songs that night. I didn’t think much of it.”
In 2022, Metro Boomin liberated his sophomore body of work, the critically acclaimed HEROES & VILLAINS. That project saw a wealth of collaborations alongside the likes of John Legend, Future, Chris Brown, 21 Savage, Young Nudy, The Weeknd, A$AP Rocky, and the late Takeoff. This past June, he would keep his momentum going by curating the official soundtrack for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The St. Louis beatsmith even voiced a variant of the beloved main character in the animated film. Check out the flyer for the upcoming IYKYK Music Festival below.