“Rolling Loud is hip-hop Disney,” is a bold statement to make, but it’s exactly what you’d expect from the festival’s co-founder, Tariq Cherif.
It’s also not that far off from the truth. 2025 marks the completion of the festival’s first decade; since its inception in 2015, it has grown by leaps and bounds — first within its native Florida, then expanding to iterations in California, New York, Portugal, Thailand, Toronto, and more.
Along the way, it has become the premiere festival for not just the Florida-grown brand of thrash rap for which it’s been known for the last few years, but also for millennial blog rap of Kendrick Lamar and Kid Cudi, the Atlanta trap of Future and Young Thug, and now, the música Mexicana purveyed by this year’s Rolling Loud California headliner Peso Pluma.
The festival returns to California this weekend, once again taking over the Hollywood Park area surrounding the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood with a lineup featuring ASAP Rocky, the rumored debut of Playboi Carti’s long-awaited new album I Am Music, along with the above-mentioned Rolling Loud debut of local hero Peso Pluma.
Talking to Uproxx via Zoom from his South Florida home, Cherif broke down the Rolling Loud “secret sauce” that has kept the festival at the forefront of hip-hop’s youth culture for the past decade, the delicate balance between feeding your base and adapting to the times, and what the future holds as he and his partner, Matt Zingler, keep the party rolling into its next decade.
We last spoke in, I want to say, it was like 2021, 2022. We were talking about the LoudPunx NFTs.
We still build the LoudPunx Lounge, which is a lounge that they can exclusively access, and yeah, the community’s still alive and well and strong, and it’s cool. I always stop by the lounge and talk to the people and hang out with them a bit, take some pictures. They’re always having a good time. It’s dope.
What’s the significance of the new flyer format? Because you guys went a completely different direction with the flyers this year. They’re very moody. You’ve been using the same flyer format for a decade, and suddenly you’ve got this new thing. I’ve been obsessed with it for months.
For years, like you said, we were doing the same type of flyer, the cartoon with the cityscape at the bottom, but what we started seeing was literally everybody started copying our flyer. Across all types of genres of festivals, everybody was doing the same shit, cityscape at the bottom, cartoon or drawing with similar color palettes, and with the lineup.
And then another factor, too, is our biggest line item on the festival is the talent budget. We spend the most amount of money on the talent, so why not have the flyer reflect what we spend the most amount of money on, so you could really see all the artists? I’m not saying that I’m married to it, but I think it represented a step in the direction of minimalism and maturity and sticking to our core value of providing this top-tier entertainment for our fans in an aesthetically pleasing fashion that’s nice on the eyes.
Something you just said was simple, but it was deep. “The biggest line item is the talent.”
People don’t know how much we pay artists. And I can’t sit here and tell you how much I pay any individual artist, but the budget is around $16 million.
Jeez! Let me get on the bill! What do you consider Rolling Loud’s secret sauce that … I remember you talked with Big Boy about trying to book Drake for the whole weekend, but Wireless Festival did it instead, then what you just said about people jacking the flyer. What do you consider to be Rolling Loud’s secret sauce that everybody is constantly trying to duplicate you guys?
Our secret sauce isn’t that we could throw the biggest budget, because any big company, any promoter with money can book the biggest rappers, right? That’s not the hard part. There’s eventually a number you’re going to agree on that they’ll do the show. But our secret sauce is knowing — because we are fans of, and we participate in hip-hop culture, and we are a part of it — we are constantly in tune with who the next wave of artists are, the underground artists, the up-and-coming critical darlings, the people that are able to sell out a small, 100-person show or the ones that are just starting to bubble up, or the ones that might be worth 1,000 tickets. When you see an artist finally make it onto a multigenre festival like a Coachella or a Lollapalooza or anything like that, they’re already big as f*ck by then.
But our secret sauce is we’re booking way more niche than that. So we’re booking artists that they might go do a tour in 300-person rooms, and we just constantly have our ear out, looking for these newer artists. We’re always on the internet, we’re going to shows, we’re producing small shows, everything in between, so that we’re hip to the 1900Rugrats and the Nettspends and the Osamasons and the Chow Lees and the Benji Blue Bills and the Homixide Gangs and all these smaller artists that aren’t even on other people’s radars, the EBK Jaaybos, the Rio da Young OGs, just these more niche, subgenre, or yet-to-be-mainstream rappers that you really got to be in this sh*t to know about.
I’m looking at the flyer and a couple of names jump out at me. Obviously Peso Pluma. That’s I think the biggest maybe departure from what we all know and love Rolling Loud for. What is the mental calculus of like, “Okay, we want to branch out, we want to spread, start to broaden the horizons of the festival a little bit.” Why is Peso Pluma the correct person to start stretching your wings, so to speak, with?
I think it’s important to note that hip-hop culture reaches far beyond just the music. If you look at the NBA or the NFL, what are the athletes listening to in the locker room or walking out to the game in their headphones? It’s hip-hop. What’s the lingo they’re using? It’s hip-hop. What are the dance moves they’re doing? It’s hip-hop. What are the Fortnite emotes based on? Hip-hop.
And so Peso Pluma, you catch him? He’s wearing a f*cking du-rag. His subject matter is very similar to the subject matter of a lot of rappers. He’s very influenced by hip-hop. Peso Pluma himself is working with a lot of rappers. He’s got songs with Rich the Kid and Quavo and a whole bunch of rappers. But again, my main point is the culture thing. He’s so clearly influenced by and a member of hip-hop culture based on what he chooses to wear, what he talks about, and what he’s into that I think it’s just like, “Hey, man, come talk that talk over here, man. We welcome you over here too. You don’t got to only do Hispanic, Latino festivals. You can come rock your show over here too.”
The first time I saw him, he was wearing a Nike sweatsuit. Doing corridos tumbados but looking like mandem. I said, “Oh yeah, he’s one of us.”
I think it was Central Cee who took credit for the Nike tracksuit, and some people were all up in arms about it, but I’m not really mad about it. Because it’s like every rapper should take credit for the Nike tracksuit becoming as popular as it is. Because dammit, every rapper made that shit popular. Every rapper, anything that’s popular in culture for young people these days, or even a decade ago or two decades ago, as far as I can remember, the cool sh*t, the fly sh*t, the hip sh*t, the relevant lingo came from hip-hop, man.
You guys have also managed to keep a top line of veteran, older, maybe, I hate the term lyrical, but cats that would appeal to the upper range of your target demo. You got Larry June on here, you got Dom Kennedy on here. I noticed on each day there’s a “California cool guy” set. I love that.
Because there’s all this talk about hip-hop being youth culture, but hip-hop is also 50 years old. There’s like three generations of people that grew up on hip-hop now, and another one that is growing up on hip-hop, they’re about to come of age with hip-hop being the most dominant style of music. So why has it been so important to you guys over the last 10 years to make sure that you stay in touch with that older, more serious, maybe backpacker vibe? And has there ever been any challenges in balancing that with the younger guys coming up? Because other festivals like Paid Dues and Rock The Bells have tried it, and it didn’t necessarily work that great.
Part of it is just being a fan of that. Well, first of all, you mentioned Paid Dues, shout-out to Murs. I always thought he was f*cking cool. And shout-out Rock the Bells and Paid Dues and everybody before us. They were from that era, so that’s all they booked.
And then I think we came up on this more DIY, underground, punk rock-influenced rap. It’s lit, it’s mosh pit time, that was our bread and butter. But what we realized is like, yo, hip-hop is a genre with multiple subgenres and it’s important to cater to all of them if for no other reason than I know as a human, I’m a fan of multiple subgenres of hip-hop.
I will listen to J. Cole just as quick as I’ll listen to Playboi Carti. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a lyrical miracle. Sometimes I want to get real introspective. Sometimes I want to kick back and listen to some Curren$y, Larry June, Dom Kennedy-type sh*t. And sometimes I want to listen to Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, Yeat, and just f*cking rage, you know what I’m saying? The human experience is complex. It’s not monotone. And the soundtrack to life should reflect that.
And so I think that as a hip-hop festival, it’s important that you cater to all the subgenres in some type of way. You want to really be on beat with what’s hot right now, but you also, you got to realize anybody going to a festival, they’re probably going to want to go with their friends, and you’re going to have a bigger group of friends going if it caters to more sh*t that the friend group likes.
There’s always debates among friend groups like, “Nah, man, bro, this the best rapper right now.” “Nah, nah, nah, bro, you’re tripping. This is the best rapper right now.” Man, have that argument at Rolling Loud. Why would I only side with one of the friends? So I think it’s important to have the more kick back, laid-back, lyrical guys and girls. I mean, we got Kamaiyah too. I think it’s important to have that vibe on the festival because in any friend group, you’re going to have somebody that’s really rocking with that type of stuff. And they’re still going to be friends with somebody that’s rocking with the more A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti side of the equation.
Sorry for the long-winded answer!
That’s a good answer, man. I love the long-winded answers. They’re the best ones because it means you actually care. It means you’re thinking about this. So, what do you see for the next 10 years of Rolling Loud? We don’t know the future. We don’t know how things are going to pan out or what subgenres will crop up or who’s going to blow up or whatever. But what’s your guiding principle for making sure that Rolling Loud survives into the 20th, 30th year of its existence?
They say the music you hear when you’re 15 to 17 years old, you can never be a fan of other music or feel other music as much as that, because it connected with you at that right time for it to influence your life forever. But I’m trying to not have that be the case, and I just try to keep a open mind, and just allow music to make me feel something, and just let that gut feeling keep guiding the way.
The data’s important, but that gut feeling, you can’t replace it. And I’m just trying to keep that gut feeling, that inner ear, just open and open-minded and willing to hear new sounds and evolve with the genre. Who knows what direction the genre will go in the next 10, 20, 30 years, but it’s up to us to evolve with it. Because what we do know is that if you don’t evolve, if you stay stagnant, if you only keep doing the same thing, that’s the quickest way to die.
As always, you do a lot of interviews, I do a lot of interviews. I always ask the same questions, you answer a lot of the same questions. But are there any things that you would love to say or talk about that nobody has ever asked you about? If you could ask the question, what would you ask and what would the answer be?
I would say a two-part thing. I would say I would like to see fans of artists maybe give their artists a little more, not be so cutthroat on your artists. I feel bad for my boy Playboi Carti, he’s trying to get this album out and I know it’s coming, but the fans are just being so hard on him. This is art at the end of the day, and you can’t rush greatness.
And I remember when Whole Lotta Red dropped, I loved it. And the whole internet was hating on it, but look how it evolved and it became a trend-setting album for hip-hop. So I would just say, people on the internet could maybe just chill out a little bit, stop being so hateful on each other.
And then my other thing is I would love to see a slight return to activism within hip-hop culture as far as within the music. You think back to Public Enemy, Fight the Power. I just think that there are genocides happening in the world, there are severe power imbalances happening in the world, there are oppressed people in the world.
I love rappers talking about fly shit, don’t get me wrong, but there was also a time when we had popular rappers talking about injustices of their day. And I would love to see more of that. I think it’s a cultural responsibility to … Don’t worry if you’re going to lose a brand deal because you spoke the truth. We need fearless artists.
