| rev:text
| - Going to Downtown Las Vegas' Life Is Beautiful Festival, now in its second year going, you are likely to be told the festival's name an uncountable amount of times. You'll be told that you are beautiful, that music is beautiful, as is the food, art, learning, and expression is beautiful. It's not a exactly a difficult concept to get people of all ages on board with, and for the most part, this amazing event does its part to convince that the world is indeed a beautiful place, filled with beautiful, inspiring people. And when I mean people of all ages, I literally mean anyone from in diapers to old couples jamming out together. It's amazing to see so many types of people gathering in one place and enjoying it like they were a kid all over again.
At its best, it is a place of community and shared experience to discover new music and appreciate old favorites. But at its worst, it is also an endurance challenge, fighting the elements of weather, crowding, and mass-appeal bookings to somehow squeeze pleasure out of the act of survival. For its part, Life Is Beautiful softens the blows of many music festivals' sharpest edges. Its downtown landscape provides tons of shade from the sun while water refilling stations and air-conditioned cooling stations made the 100-degree heat as bearable as possible.
As I arrived on Sunday, I saw nothing but creative and unique decorations covering the streets of downtown. People dressed up in many different styles and unique cultures. I went with a group of friends and went straight to the edm stage who had Mercer playing then Tchami soon after which were both very exciting djs to watch. Kygo was who I saw next and I can say hands down he was the best DJ there and is now my favorite dj of all time. He intertwined a tropical feel into his music that just made you happy and want to dance and my friends and I enjoyed him tremendously. After that was knife party which I didn't get to watch all of it because we left to get a good place for the Last performance Kendrick Lamar, who emerged with a live band just before midnight as the full moon had fans worked up. I found it so crazy how he incorporated rock and rap together because there isn't a lot of artist that can do that successfully. His band incorporated the many electric guitar solos, drums, and the bass. It felt as if I was at a rock concert with a surprise rapper as the guest. 28-year-old Lamar launched right into good kid, m.A.A.d city's "Money Trees" and featured a surprise appearance from Top Dawg Entertainment emcee Jay Rock. From there it was a wild romp through his earlier career including the soulful "Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe" and "Backseat Freestyle." Things didn't t slow down much as the rapper's show-stealing verse on "F-cking Problems" had every single person in sight including myself shouting back "Halle Berry, Hallelujah" That was followed by one of everyone's favorites "m.A.A.d city" as giant red and blue balls showered the crowd as he cracked a few inappropriate jokes and has everyone singing along. Most of his songs have a fast tempo and many lyrics. Upon its release, his album debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and was later certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Lamar has said: "You really can't categorize my music, its human music." Lamar's projects are usually concept albums. Lamar's album, To Pimp a Butterfly, incorporates elements of funk, spoken word poetry and jazz.
But it wasn't only the high energy that had Kendrick Lamar delving into deeper album cuts including "The Art of Peer Pressure" and the first half of "Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst" that drew praise from fans. Nevertheless, Lamar has once again proven why he is on the top of his game as he left the crowd in high spirits courtesy of his single "Alright" before promising Las Vegas that this would certainly not be the last time he rocks the 702 area code. He had such a great performance and made that night one to remember for me.
The festival footprint was rather-friendly stages in close enough proximity that it didn't feel like you were hiking a country mile to make it to see each act, which were all scheduled, by the way, in a manner that didn't present much conflict.. I thought it would be impossible to follow a year where Kanye West, Foo Fighters, Skrillex, Arctic Monkeys, Outkast, and The Weeknd topped the bill, but this year, I feel like they stepped it up a whole level. Not only with the lineup but the stages and décor, everything felt alive. Insomniac had a big part in this because they teamed up with them this year hence all the edm djs. But that didn't take away from the attendance, in fact, the opposite with all acts able to draw a significant audience to their individual performances. Nearly 120,000 people came this year and I think a big part of it is because insomniac teamed up with them. It gained a lot more diversity and different cultures around the world coming to this
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)