After raining for the majority of the week, the clouds covering New Orleans gave way to a beautiful, sunny Friday the 13th, and at promptly 2:30 p.m., The BUKU Music and Art Project opened its doors for the first of two days at Mardi Gras World, the tourist attraction where the floats for Mardi Gras are built.
I knew I had come back to the South, because every single person at the festival was super-friendly. From the sweetest staffers to apologetic moshers, BUKU was just a friendly festival. Featuring free water, which is quite a luxury for an outdoor festival, and a huge cargo hammock, the people running the festival knew just the right amount of Southern hospitality to add to the mix.
New Orleans native Big Freedia, also known as the Queen of Bounce, opened the main stage, named the Power Plant Stage for its industrial backdrop. Dressed in an all-white fringed outfit, Big Freedia was backed by her group of dancers, also dressed in white. The crowd was small, as the gates had only opened 30 minutes earlier, but that didn’t stop them from bouncing to the groove Big Freedia was putting out, with twerking featuring prominently.
[ READ MORE: Friday at the Buku Music and Arts Project ]
Highlights from earlier on the Friday schedule include Robert DeLong’s digital-dance party and the wild ruckus put on by Yung Lean and the Sad Boys. Zomboy dropped a bass-heavy set that caused the Float Den Stage to boom and rattle from the low end.
STS9 played the sunset shift at the Power Plant, putting on a smooth set that was well-received by a good portion of the crowd. Slower than most of the music being played during the day, it was a nice time to take and relax before the rest of the wild evening unfolded. With the Mississippi River to the left of the stage and the sun setting behind the power plant to the right, the beauty of the South was juxtaposed with an industrial behemoth, leaving quite the view for festival attendees.
After the sun had set, there were four incredible sets, including those from electronic heavyweights Flosstradamus and RL Grime at the Float Den, and A$AP Rocky and Empire of the Sun closed out the Power Plant.
A$AP Rocky at The Buku Music and Arts Project
A$AP Rocky was accompanied by the A$AP Mob and gave a raucous performance, with songs off his album Long. Live. A$AP, some newer tracks, as well as a few A$AP Mob songs. Rocky was much more humble than I was expecting, considering the rap star is known for his “Wild for the night, f— being polite” mentality, commenting how appreciative he was for all of the fans who came out to party with him that night.
A$AP Rocky’s set wasn’t the highlight for rap Friday at the BUKU Music and Art project, however. That title went to South African Zef crew Die Antwoord. The crowd was buzzing with excitement. One guy, clad only in boxers got a little too excited, ramming through the mass of people and hitting me and my camera. Needless to say, the rest of the crowd didn’t take to kindly to this and promptly removed him from the vicinity.
DJ Hi-Tek of Die Antwoord came out, playing his theme, getting the crowd pumped for the main attraction. The bass boomed, and was contrasted by the petite voice of Yolandi Visser, one half of the Die Antwoord front for the song “Fok Julle Naaiers.” Both members were dressed in head-to-toe neon orange jumpsuits with the Die Antwoord logo. This garb was stripped later on, leaving Visser in gold shorts and a white top, and Ninja, the second half, dressed in Pink Floyd boxers (which his character wears throughout the new movie Chappie.)
The electricity that the duo sent into the crowd was so live that the power dropped out twice on them, leading Visser to do an acapella preview of a song off their unreleased album Rats Rule. The crowd chanted their names, bringing the duo back to the stage.
“Sometimes, we just go so hard the venue can’t handle us,” Ninja said before coming back to finish the set. Featuring a dancer dressed in practically a gimp-suit (as in Pulp Fiction) to Ninja donning a pitbull mask (for the song “Pitbull Terrier”), the performance was as crazy as I’ve come to expect from the group. Performing some of their best songs throughout the night, the set included “Ugly Boy,” “Baby’s On Fire” and “Happy Go Sucky F—y” and closed with an encore of their first major hit, “Enter the Ninja.”
New Orleans proved itself an extremely welcoming host in the first 12 hours of the BUKU Music and Art Project. A live gallery was set up next to the Float Den, giving spray-painting artists the opportunity to paint huge murals that would then be auctioned off for charity. Pop-up performances by the BUKU breakdancing crew and a marching band kept the spontaneous nature of New Orleans pumping throughout the festival and solidified the Friday night of BUKU as an incredible night for all attendees.
