Reading Festival 2017 Was Another Year of Triumph [Review]

Reading Festival as always brought hoards of festival goers over to the Richfield site. Still clinging onto to it’s Rock roots, the festival now also caters to pretty much all music tastes from Grime to Hip-Hop, Indie, House and Drum & Bass, it’s a festival where no one can adhere to one genre.

 Arriving quite late on the Friday, we managed to catch a bit of Sub Focus, Shy FX and Mist over at the NME, Dance Stage and BBC Radio 1Xtra stages. Sub Focus had the stage packed dropping their own classics such as ‘Endorphins,’ whilst Shy FX as always impressed with his D&B sounds playing his own classic bangers including ‘Feelings,’ and Congo Natty’s ‘Junglist.’ Mist smashed his performance full force with his hit single ‘Karla’s Back’ amongst others.

 

Saturday began in the BBC Radio 1Xtra tent watching South London artist Cadet who hyped the crowd up with his DJ first then exploded onto the stage with a mad energy. 67 were up next and the crowd seemed to know all of the lyrics to the Brixton Hill rap crew’s tracks.

The highlight though of Saturday night had to be Major Lazer on the main stage and of course Eminem. Major Lazer brought a pure carnival theme to their set for everyone who was missing out the fun at Nottinghill over the weekend. As darkness descended we were treated to their full electronic party sound, which had all of the fields of the outdoor Main Stage dancing whilst the lights flashed across us. The dancers on the stage gave festival goers extra ammunition to party harder too.

 Around 80,000 people flooded to the Main Stage to watch Eminem the headliner of Saturday night. He got everyone to chant ‘Fuck Trump’ before playing a quite large set list including ‘White America,’ ‘Solider,’ ‘Real Slim Shady,’ ‘Stan,’ and much more. He walked off stage and some people left, whilst others are crying for him to reappear which he did ending his set on ‘Lose Yourself.’ The rap icon will never disappoint.

Sunday began with Birmingham Grime emcee Jaykae at the BBC Radio 1Xtra stage who impressed us with his energy and passion at his early set of 1.30pm. He performed his well-known tracks ‘Pull Up,’ and ‘Toothache,’ which was recently featured on TV show Power.

The king of Sunday had to be Giggs though who performed on the Main Stage at 5.30pm. He opened with ‘3 Wheel Ups’ spitting his verse of the Kano tune and JME’s ‘Man Don’t Care’ getting the crowd really buzzing. Then out jumped Drake for ‘KMT’ and more people had run across the field to catch the Canadian star. It was a big moment, but Drake hopped off the stage letting the main man Giggs take care of his set that led onto his old skool tracks ‘Look What The Cat Dragged In’ and ‘Talkin The Hardest.’

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