Throughout the pandemic, hip hop has really been leading the way in finding new ways to deliver music to its fans. Almost from day one of the quarantine, D Nice turned IG Live into a respectable online venue for djs and Verzuz battles survived a few early technical difficulties to solidify itself as a platform that I'd imagine will be used well after COVID becomes a thing of the past. One area that hip hop has lagged behind other genres, though, is in delivering an actual concert. Prior to Culture Shock, which I'm going to get to in a minute, I had seen several EDM-style online music festivals and concerts, but hadn't seen anything that featured any form of hip hop.
All of that gets us to the point of this post, which is to promote the fact that my day one homie Chachi has organized an online music festival that is taking place next Monday, 12/21/2020 @ 7PM EST on Youtube. The driving force behind this concert is to raise money for his hometown, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and to do so he gathered a bunch of artists from the state to perform. Headlining the show is Flawless Real Talk, who you likely have seen before as one of the finalists from Netflix's Rhythm + Flow.
To quote the online magazine Motif, who put together a nice writeup on Culture Shock, "Performances will be live recorded sessions with acts such as Flawless Real Talk, Nova One, Joe Bruce, Temperamento, Brooxana, Jabubu, Kelce, Shokanti and Storm Ford. Culture Shock also will include interviews with the artists. Culture Shock has a wide selection of artists and genres every year, and this year it is expected to include an eclectic mix of sounds from Latin hip-hop to rap to '60s vintage rock to singer-songwriter to silky soul and R&B."
Finally, to get you all in the mood for Culture Shock, below is my all time favorite song from Chachi. I'd imagine you'll hear a song or two like this on Monday: