Rolling Loud California 2025 rolled into Hollywood Park adjacent to SoFi Stadium this past weekend and it was quite a rollercoaster.
Less than a month from being acquitted of two felony assault charges, A$AP Rocky returned to SoCal for a ticketed event for the first time since performing at Smoker’s Club 2022. Performing the first couple of songs atop a mock helicopter, including the live debuts of some new material, Rocky was an hour late to the stage, though that was a common theme with the main stage on the first day of the festival. But he also cut his set short at 45 minutes long, which is way too short for a main stage festival headliner to be performing.
Rocky incorporated a lot of his real-life adversity into the show, referencing his arrest in video production elements and later in his own words. “I’m gonna come clean, y’all don’t even know how happy I am to see y’all,” Rocky said towards the back half of his performance. “Shit got real sticky real quick and I just can’t believe I’m really in front of y’all doing what I love to do.”
Though it felt like a victory lap for Rocky given all he’s been through, fans around me definitely were unhappy that the performance was so brief and also relied so heavily on new material they were unfamiliar with. A high point of the performance was when Skepta came out for a shortened version of “Praise the Lord (Da Shine)” and when Rocky shouted out the late A$AP YAMS, who passed at the age of 25 ten years ago. Rocky made it clear he wouldn’t be where he’s at if it weren’t for YAMS, and longtime fans of the A$AP Mob were happy to hear him shouted out.
Playboi Carti delivered in his Sunday headline performance in celebration of his recently released and long-awaited new album Music. Featuring appearances by The Weeknd and Skepta, it was a big way to close out the two-day festival. Carti and The Weeknd performed “Rather Lie” from the new album as well as their previous collab “Timeless,” while Skepta joined for the song “Toxic”.
Carti managed to fit pieces of 35 different songs into his set, and the heavily Gen-Z crowd fully embraced all the new material.
A favorite performance of mine was Peso Pluma’s set on Saturday night on the main stage. While a lot of the performers at Rolling Loud California 2025 don’t fit into my old-ass wheelhouse, Pluma brings a certain level of production to his shows that was unmatched. I’m not knowledgeable about narcocorrido music in general, nor were many of the people near me who were just waiting for A$AP Rocky. But that didn’t keep people from respecting his charisma and performance chops. He had some dancers with him and some live strings on stage and there was an easy to follow narrative to the performance even if you didn’t speak Spanish. Whereas many other Rolling Loud performers just rapped over tracks that had the vocals on the tracks, Peso Pluma was more of a performance.
Sexyy Red was the first main stage performer to be more than 30 minutes late and though she did a great job of throwing ass and getting the crowd hyped, her live vocals were hard on the ears for me. It didn’t seem to matter to the rest of the crowd, though. Gen-Z seems to be more about the vibes than performance chops of the artist.
Rolling Loud California 2025 really impressed me with their brand activations — they know their audience well and catered to the kinds of things they are into. I thought the layout of the festival could’ve been much better. There were long waits for merch and the signs to get you to the merch weren’t accurate. I walked in a circle twice following signs for merch but didn’t find it following those signs. But minus some minor things, I’d say Rolling Loud California delivered. I may be outside the targeted age group by at least a decade and was unfamiliar with more artists on this lineup than probably any festival I’ve ever attended. But there was definitely a cohesive vision to the festival that seemed to hit just right.
Main photo by Cory Grimes
