Despite the week-long humid weather in Chicago, the 2024 Pitchfork Music Festival was in full swing on July 19-21 with a host of exciting rising artists and spellbinding headliners, such as the Black Pumas, Brittany Howard, De La Soul, Grandmaster Flash, Jamie xx, and Alanis Morissette.
This year marked the first time some of Chicago’s best and most eclectic Black indie talents — like rap duo Angry Blackmen, folk singer Kara Jackson, and vocalist, musical director, and astrologist Akenya — hit the Pitchfork stage. In 2022, Akenya performed with Noname at the festival, but this year was her solo debut.
Pioneering juke DJ RP Boo, who has been appearing at Pitchfork since 2016 as a guest and performer, said the festival is like Harlem’s “Showtime at the Apollo” for many Chicago artists.
“Anybody who I had seen and heard play [at] Pitchfork is, like, ‘oh my God, I got Pitchfork,’ and they come to show out. They come to leave a stamp,” RP Boo said. “Chicago is very critical of things, whether they’re gonna hate you or love you. I would look at Pitchfork as the Apollo. Either you’re gonna strike or get the RP and that means booooooo.”
For Angry Blackmen, who released their second album The Legend of ABM in January, performing at Pitchfork was a long time coming.
“This is my first time being here. I couldn’t afford it before, so this is interesting that it’s my first time to play it, not just view it as a spectator,” Angry Blackmen rapper Quentin Branch said.
Brian Warren, the other half of the duo, added that all he cared about was giving 110% for his first Pitchfork performance. Despite his mild-mannered demeanor, he performed embodying the rage of Marvel superhero, the Hulk. Warren also brought his mother to the show. She’s believed in his rap talents since the beginning, he said.
“I don’t care if I mess up. I don’t care if somebody falls off cue. I just said it has to be authentic, raw, and just fun,” Warren said.





Folk singer Kara Jackson’s performance of her 2023 debut album Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?, backed by fellow indie R&B all-stars Kaina and Sen Morimoto, was a touching and bluesy affair. She sang a heartwarming cover of SZA’s 2017 track “Love Galore,” and closed with a cathartic performance of her song “dickhead blues.”
As someone who spent her teenage years attending Pitchfork and seeing her friends and favorites like Nnamdi, Noname, and the aforementioned Sen and Kaina on stage, performing here for the first time was full circle for her.
“I grew up going to Pitchfork. I’ve been going for almost 10 years as an audience member and a spectator and it’s a fun thing, communally, to see your friends get to play,” said Jackson, who brought her parents to her show as well.
Despite her worries about being the first performer on Day 3, Akenya and her band delivered one of the most outstanding sets. It felt as if she were a headliner. She masterfully displayed the full range of her vocal and instrumental talents, jumping from mic to keyboard. Her performance of her 2018 song “Decay” summed up how easily her voice can capture hearts. The crowd gradually grew and was visibly captivated.
Sultry violinist and singer Sudan Archives was one of the standout performances of Day 1. Performing on the Blue Stage, the genre-blending songstress’s hypnotic voice allured the crowd with songs like 2022’s “Selfish Soul” and 2017’s “Come My Way.”
The beloved and groundbreaking rap group De La Soul performed one of the most monumental hip-hop sets as it still felt unreal seeing the group without the late Dave “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicouer. Surviving group members Posdnuos and Maseo brought joy to the crowd as they delivered their fun classics like 1989’s “Me, Myself, and I” and 1991’s “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays.’”
They brought out Talib Kweli and the crowd lit up. He performed Trugoy the Dove’s verses. He also gave fans some of their favorites like the 2001 hit “The Blast,” a collab with Hi Tek. To follow, underground rap legend Pharoah Monch made a surprise appearance. The ground practically shook as he made his mark performing his 1999 track “Simon Says.”
At Pitchfork, for Black attendees, Sunday (Day 3) is typically said to be the most soulful of the whole weekend because of the prevalence of Black music on display. While out there, news broke that President Joe Biden, after contracting COVID-19 again, withdrew his bid for the presidency.
Akenya said she predicted this outcome while doing the festival’s birth chart before the festival. During her interview with The TRiiBE on Friday, she said that the news of his departure from the election is happening during one of the most astrologically intense weeks of a uniquely “crazy” year that’s astrologically reminiscent of 2020.
“The election is interesting,” Akenya said on Friday, two days before Biden’s announcement and performance on Sunday. “And I thought something was going to happen with his health when the Mars-Uranus conjunction happened and he got COVID. You just get used to tracking the patterns and what they mean and go back in history to see what was happening with that too.”
Hence why the messages from artists who performed on that same Sunday — such as Akenya, Maxo, Grandmaster Flash, Brittany Howard, and Alanis Morissette — provided the musical healing balm that encouraged faith and humanity.
Hip-hop’s pioneering DJ Grandmaster Flash promoted love throughout his incredible genre-blending set, which consisted of a mix of East Coast and West Coast rap: Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.,” LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out,” along with his groundbreaking 1982 hit “The Message” with The Furious Five. Cutting and mixing like the grand master he is, he transitioned from hip-hop to country, disco, R&B and pop music.
While he beautifully succeeded in rocking the multicultural crowd, it was a bit disappointing that he didn’t incorporate any Chicago music in his mix compared to Saturday’s headliner Jamie xx who, for a moment, played a unique blend of house and juke music during his set. Regardless, experiencing Grandmaster Flash in Union Park was an unforgettable moment in history for all involved.













Afterward, Alabama Shakes frontwoman and Grammy award-winner Brittany Howard channeled the ghosts of guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during her glorious set. With guitar in hand, she delivered a show that was so compelling that the dancers and crowd alike were in tears.
“I believe that there’s great people on this planet that want to create bridges to each other, that want to heal and do wonderful things. They want to promote peace. They want to promote growth. They want progress. They want better. We know we can do better,” she proclaimed.
Legendary Grammy award-winning singer, songwriter and women’s rights activist Alanis Morissette proved to be the most appropriate headliner amid the coincidently chaotic political news of the day: that the U.S. could possibly see its first Black woman president. The empowering feminist messages in her music crossed color boundaries. The crowd was filled with white and Black women alike.
Xariah Blu, a singer who was amongst the crowd, said Morissette’s music connects to all women, across racial and cultural lines, because she affirms that it is OK for women to be who they are and that the rights of women matter.
“I think, for all women, she means that it’s OK to be vulnerable and emotional because that’s how God made us. And it’s okay to be a woman, and women should be protected,” Blu said.
The alternative rock icon delivered an incredible set with powerful urgency. She went through a laundry list of her classics: “Uninvited,” “Ironic,” and other hits from her era-defining 1995 album, Jagged Little Pill. As she performed, digital graphics of statistics highlighting financial inequity amongst women were on display behind her. One of them, a sobering statistic, stated “81% of women reported some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime.” The number comes from a 2018 online survey by a nonprofit called Stop Street Harassment.
While the Pitchfork Music Festival continues to include a musically diverse lineup of Black artists locally and abroad, fest organizers still have a ways to go. The festival continues to exclude stars from genres across the Black and Latin diaspora, including reggae, bachata, grime, reggaeton, dancehall, and the rising Afrobeats.
They have had artists like Jamaican singer and songwriter Koffee in 2023 and legendary Ethiopian bandleader Hailu Mergia in 2024, but the diaspora has always been a minority at Pitchfork and similar music festival settings compared to the number of alternative rock and pop acts. It’s high time that a future installment of the Pitchfork Music Festival was headlined by Afrobeats artists like Tems, Davido, the Nigerian giant himself, Burna Boy, or even a Latin artist like Romeo Santos.
More modern Black Chicago legends should also be considered to either perform or headline at Pitchfork to give out-of-towners the full spectrum of Chicago music: such as Jennifer Hudson, King Louie, Lupe Fiasco, DJ Wayne Williams, Common, Twista, Carl Thomas, DJ Terry Hunter, Bump J and Syleena Johnson, to name a few.
In more ways than one, this year’s edition of the Pitchfork Music Festival should be remembered as an emblematic changing of the guard, from a cultural and social angle. And with more inclusion, its future seems to be promising.
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