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You Might Catch Me At Governors Ball 2022 With J. Cole, Kid Cudi, Jazmine Sullivan & Shaq

blame it on Meka May 17, 2022

While the state tried its best to curtail the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (which, mind you, is still going on at the time of this post), eventually New York had to reopen like the rest of the country. Prior to that, however, virtually every huge concert, showcase, and festival here was a dub for over a year until one of New York’s pissant government officials allowed us to come outside again, punctuated with events like Rolling Loud’s NYC stop in October.

Governors Ball is making its return to the Big Apple on its normal June schedule for the first time in three years, following a 2021 which saw multiple false starts (due to multiple spikes in cases and variants) ultimately resulting in what kinda felt like an abbreviated version of it in September 2021. The festival now takes place at Citi Field, moving from its longtime home of Governors Island which, TBH, I’m not mad at. It almost always rains around the day of the festival; on top of multiple artists having their sets pulled because of cancellation, nobody really wants to trudge through the mud for multiple hours… except those white girls who never met a clean pair of white Uptowns that they liked, but that’s another story.

Some of the lineup did catch this writer’s eye. Alongside festival usuals like J. Cole, Kid Cudi, Migos, Jack Harlow, Halsey, and the like, there were a few other artists I’d actually like to see as well. Jazmine Sullivan will be there, and not only was her album perhaps my favorite release of 2021 usually the most fun I have at festivals is during R&B sets (my edges are still growing back after Wongo and I caught Janet Jackson at the late Panorama Festival in 2018). Kaytranada always looks like a good play. I low-key work with beabadoobee (no, seriously). YG and Roddy Ricch cater to my Cali roots. Hell, I would definitely catch Diesel, aka the artist formally known as Shaquille O’Neal, too.

Governors Ball 2022 kicks off June 10-12. Hopefully like in previous years there will be a livestream too, because, again, we’re still in a pandemic and I’m on a two-year “I haven’t caught the roni yet” winning streak that I don’t plan to break soon, so if my anxiety of being in large crowds starts anxiety-ing (which even happens during my deejay residencies) I’ll either catch you with my mask on outside, or in the chat section of its Twitch/Youtube page.