This morning the North Coast Music Festival announced the lineup for its ninth year, headlined by self-described “future funk” outfit Jamiroquai. The British band played their first U.S. show since 2005 last month at Coachella, where they appeared on Friday’s bill a few notches below headliner the Weeknd. Jamiroquai booked a handful of stateside performances in support of their first album in nearly a decade (last year’s Automation), and their timing is great: boogie, modern funk, and other postdisco subgenres that overlap with Jamiroquai’s sound have recently emerged as vital underground forces on an international scale. North Coast’s other headliners are R&B star Miguel and former Swedish House Mafia members Axwell & Ingrosso. As usual, the festival is in Union Park; it runs Friday, August 31, through Sunday, September 2.
North Coast 2018 continues the festival’s history of booking rappers, jam bands, indie-pop acts, and electronic producers—it’s always put more weight on its artists’ ability to move a crowd than on their stature with the industry’s arbiters of cool. This year the lineup includes several acts associated with Soundcloud rap, a scene that’s either “cutting edge” or “a horrible trash fire” depending on your point of view: they include Lil Xan, Lil Skies, Lil Gnar, and breakout Chicagoland MC Juice Wrld. (Fortunately, there’s no sign of alleged abuser XXXtentacion.)
North Coast has also partnered with local music promoters and companies for mini showcases at the festival. As part of Friday’s schedule, Aux Cord DJs (whose monthly party invites Chicagoans to play music off laptops, phones, and other devices scorned by serious DJs) have put together a lineup that features DJ sets by the Cool Kids and Fat Tiger Workshop Vic Lloyd and a performance by pop duo Iris Temple. Chicago hip-hop blog turned multimedia company Lyrical Lemonade has assembled Saturday’s showcase, which includes rappers MadeinTYO, , and Warhol.SS. And for Sunday, Chicago’s Most Wanted have paired electronic acts with DJs in “versus” Bently Dean versus Steve Gerard, Porn & Chicken versus 2Fac3d, and Ron Carrol versus Diz.
The full lineup is below—in alphabetical order, though, not broken down by day. I’ve linked names to Reader coverage where relevant. Tickets are available at North Coast’s website now.
Apollo XO vs. DJ Simone Axwell & Ingrosso Babes Only Barclay Crenshaw Beak Nasty Bentley Bean vs. Steve Gerard Bryce Vine Cashmere Cat Cofresi
Cool Kids Cousin Stizz Crywolf DJ King Marie DJ Snake Drezo Duffle Bag Buru Dvsn Edamame Esquire Getto Blaster vs. Jerome Baker Gramatik Iris Temple Jacob Banks Jamiroquai Juice Wrld Kaina & Sen Morimoto Kami Knower Landon Cube Lil Gnar Lil Skies Lil Xan Lwky Maddy O’Neal MadeinTYO Marty Mars Midnight Midnight Conspiracy Miguel Monte Booker Moon Taxi Mulatto Mura Masa Nombe Pachanga! Polish Ambassador & the Diplomatic Scandal Porn & Chicken vs. 2fac3d Qari Rapsody Revivalists RJ Pickens vs. Phil Rizzo RL Grime Robert DeLong Ron Carroll vs. Diz
Smokepurpp Snails Steven Cannon Strumbellas Tauk Too Many Zooz Two Friends Vic Lloyd Vulfpeck Warhol.SS Yellow Claw Yheti
