Atmosphere, De La Soul And Stephen Marley Walked Into A Reggae Festival. The Genre Lines Didn’t Survive.

The Tempe festival put Atmosphere, De La Soul and Yelawolf on the same weekend as Stephen Marley, Steel Pulse and Rebelution. The crowd treated the crossover like the most natural thing in the world. Because, historically, it is.

The Reggae Rise Up Arizona festival took place April 17 to 19 in Tempe, with Rebelution, Stephen Marley, Dirty Heads, SOJA, Protoje, Slightly Stoopid and Steel Pulse among the many acts slugging it out in the blistering hot Sonoran Desert.

It didn’t start off as planned, at least not for me. Flying out of Denver, we were hit with a blizzard and forced to wait on a plane from Vail, so my flight was delayed four hours. I finally landed in Phoenix around 4 p.m. and was scheduled to interview Jamaican reggae star Protoje at 5:30 p.m., but they were en route to their hotel and asked me to meet them there. I obliged and drove to the address they provided. After observing the toothless front desk woman, lack of a bathroom in the lobby and various shopping carts filled with junk outside, I had an unsettling feeling.

My first thought was, “Did they really put Protoje up in this place?” That was followed by, “Wow, you truly don’t know what life is like as a touring musician.” After a pit stop in a random Burger King bathroom (an employee had to buzz you in), I went back and waited. Nobody came.

As suspected, they had sent me to the wrong hotel. We rescheduled the interview for Zoom a few weeks later. By the time I cleared media credentials at Tempe Beach Park and pushed through the wall of weed and cigarette smoke at the gate, it was already 6:30 p.m.

Then the music started, and everything else stopped mattering.

The bill that shouldn’t have worked

Atmosphere was scheduled at the Vibe Stage, one of three hip-hop acts on a bill otherwise built on reggae royalty. I stepped into their trailer (ahhh, air conditioning) and chopped it up with Ant and Slug. I’ve known them since 2008, when I was a runner for one of their shows in Santa Fe. We’ve done many interviews since, and reconnecting with the Minneapolis duo is always a good time.

Atmosphere, who regularly sells out the historic Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado, brought the boom bap to the reggae party. Slug was somewhat surprised to learn there were other hip-hop acts on the bill. “We used to get clowned for that,” he told me.

But as Saturday’s Vibe Stage headliner Yelawolf explained, a previous tour with Friday’s main stage headliner Dirty Heads gave him the confidence that hip-hop, specifically his brand of it, can fit in anywhere.

“When I went up with the Dirty Heads, I didn’t know what to expect. I was like, ‘Man, we have a rowdy show.’ But when we did our set, it went off really well. I started to realize that, ‘Oh, we’re kind of like hip-hop rock relief.’ I understand that festival style because it reminded me of seeing Rage Against the Machine and then seeing Method Man and Redman. There’s a certain universal rock ‘n roll style that we have that I think bleeds into all genres.”

Yelawolf

Though Wolf admitted “this was new,” he said for him it was about “tipping a hat to certain vibes.”

De La Soul was another anomaly on the bill, but their D.A.I.S.Y. Age aesthetic and songs like “Potholes In My Lawn” and “Me Myself & I” kept the reggae spirit alive. Slightly Stoopid shut down Saturday night with special guest Chali 2na of Jurassic 5, whose booming baritone voice could be heard all the way on the other side of the park.

That day, I rolled up with “Bust A Move” rapper Young MC, who lives in the area. The last time I was in Arizona was for his 2024 wedding. He and Maseo of De La Soul shared a moment from the stage that I’ll never forget. Maseo paid his respect to Young MC, and Young MC returned it with not much more than a few simple gestures.

Back on Yelawolf’s trailer, I introduced Wolf, his manager Edward Crowe and DJ Klever to Young MC. Hearing them banter about songwriting and lyrics was surreal. As a kid, I would have never imagined I’d be the one facilitating a moment like that. Yelawolf later got on stage and told the crowd about it.

“I was telling him what a phenomenal songwriter he was, which is a very hard thing to do in hip-hop because it’s easy to be slick with all the metaphors and the quick wordplay, but writing a great song is very hard to do, especially in hip-hop,” he told the audience. “It demands high lyricism and I think Young MC is a genius at what he does. Thank you, Young MC, wherever you are. Thank you, brother, for the inspiration. De La Soul, thank you for your inspiration. I told Young MC one of my favorite songs coming up is probably the reason I started writing.”

From there, he went into an a cappella verse of Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day,” a reminder that music is transcendent, a thread that ties us all together, no matter what genre.

From Kool Herc forward

On Sunday, the hottest day of the weekend, people still came out in droves to see Steel Pulse, Collie Buddz, Stephen Marley and Rebelution. Reggae Rise Up Senior Marketing Manager Abby Gerald picked me up in a golf cart and whisked me to the very cold media offices, then to the artist compound to interview Rebelution singer Eric Rachmany. We talked about modern reggae, Rebelution’s place in it and why a reggae festival booking hip-hop makes sense in the first place. After all, Jamaican DJ Kool Herc first brought “toasting,” Jamaica’s form of rapping, to the Bronx in the 1970s.

“I think hip-hop has influenced reggae and reggae has influenced hip-hop, and rock has influenced reggae and reggae has influenced rock. There’s just so many crossovers and that’s so true with the Rebelution sound. It’s not a surprise to me that bands like De La Soul or Atmosphere can be associated with the Reggae Rise Up festival.”

Eric Rachmany, Rebelution

Rebelution has toured with the West Coast hip-hop collective Living Legends as well as fellow Bay Area natives Hieroglyphics and Zion I. Rachmany also has a side project with Zion I producer Amp Live called Unified Highway, a rich amalgamation of rhythms and sounds. While hip-hop factors into his music, Rachmany’s deep respect for Jamaican music is at the forefront.

“For one, I’m just a big fan of it,” he said. “I really like the music from Jamaica. I like reggae music from all over the globe, but there’s definitely something about the reggae coming from Jamaica that I’ve really admired, whether that’s roots, ska or rocksteady. I also really love dancehall. I was a big fan of the reggae revival movement that happened about 15 years ago with Chronixx, Protoje and Kabaka Pyramid. It just keeps growing.”

Though it didn’t happen at the festival, I eventually did speak to Protoje via Zoom. His latest album, The Art of Acceptance, came out the day of his Reggae Rise Up Arizona performance. He’s another reggae artist who’s been weaving together a colorful tapestry of eclectic sounds throughout his career, though he described the new album as closer to traditional reggae than previous projects. Still, his foundation is built on both hip-hop and reggae.

“I grew up on hip-hop,” he told me. “That’s where I really learned how to write songs and vibe on that level. If you listen to my music, naturally, you can hear the influence of hip-hop as well. And then you have to remember the history of Jamaican culture and hip-hop culture is very intertwined, from Kool Herc to so many Jamaican influences. It’s a good bridge. I remember in the ’90s, there were always dancehall crossovers in hip-hop like Buju Banton. It’s an easy vibe. It’s just music coming from the same place. Obviously, the messages are different in reggae music, but there’s always a place for collaboration there.”

When the sun set on Stephen Marley

Stephen Marley took the stage as the sun went down on Sunday. Old concert footage of his father, Bob Marley, played on the screens behind him as he covered “Jamming,” “Three Little Birds,” and other Bob Marley staples. The crowd, baked from a long, hot day in the desert, found a second wind. Voices rose. Hands went up. People who had been sitting on blankets stood and stayed standing. By the time the band rolled into “Three Little Birds,” it was more sing-along than concert. Stephen Marley didn’t try to compete with his father’s image. He let the legacy do the work, and the crowd let him.

The Wailers frontman, who has inspired countless reggae acts to follow in his wake, routinely sang about racism and other social injustices while focusing on themes of peace, love, unity and Rastafarian spirituality. The messaging was just as important as the music, and it’s just as important now.

“When I look at the world today, it’s an absolute shit show,” Rachmany said. “It’s really important to bring some positivity. It makes me really happy to be around this festival, for instance, because I think most of the people here are talking about really positive things that you don’t see too often.”