While a lot of attention has been lavished on Rolling Loud as the premiere hip-hop-oriented festival (and rightly so), Lyrical Lemonade’s Summer Smash, which takes place annually in the Chicago area, is quickly carving out a chunk of that regard for itself. It probably helps that Lyrical Lemonade is the brainchild of Cole Bennett and has produced music videos for just about every notable name in rap right now (as well as Jack Black, whose “Peaches” song from The Super Mario Bros. Movie is an inescapable earworm).
So it makes sense that the 2023 lineup for Summer Smash includes a great many of those notable names, including headliners Future, Kid Cudi, and Playboi Cart, along with “a very special Chicago guest” which probably means Chance The Rapper (or a hologram of Juice WRLD, you never know. As long as it ain’t Kanye). Meanwhile, the three-day festival — which takes place at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, IL on June 23-25 — also includes heavy hitters like Vince Staples, Ice Spice, GloRilla, Freddie Gibbs, Ski Mask The Slump God, G Herbo, Cordae, Juicy J, Trippie Redd, Lucki, Central Cee, Lil Skies, and Rico Nasty, and that’s just the top line of each of the three days.
Tickets are already on sale at TheSummerSmash.com