Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, Chris Brown, Wale, 2 Chainz, Fabolous, Miguel & Wu-Tang Clan To Perform At Summer Jam

Most concerts soar on greatest hits — but Summer Jam soars on greatest disses.

For the 20th year, radio station Hot 97 will host a show featuring the most boldface names in current hip hop and R&B. This year’s installment — Sunday at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium — has roped in Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, Chris Brown, Wale, 2 Chainz, Fabolous and Miguel, along with the same headliner that topped the very first Summer Jam back in 1994, Staten Island’s own Wu-Tang Clan.

Yet for all that musical talent, expect the next day’s headlines to center as much on put-downs and stunts as beats or rhymes.

“If you want to start a beef or get the upper hand, this is the audience you need to speak to,” says Jermaine Hall, editor of Vibe.

“Summer Jam is the Super Bowl of hip hop,” concurs Rap Radar CEO Elliott Wilson. “It’s the place for drama.”

That has held true ever since the very first show, according to Courtney Brown of TheSource.com.

“The group called Arrested Development had this positive thing going, and the headliner was Wu-Tang, who had a very new style,” she says. “All you heard was the crowd booing Arrested Development. That was a moment in hip hop, a time when you knew things were changing.”

In the years since, many of the most dramatic events came from a man who was positioning himself, in part with these shows, to become the king of rap: Jay-Z. In 2001, he advanced his career by advancing a beef with Mobb Deep and Nas in the pivotal track “The Takeover.”

“He dissed them in the show and he was off and running,” Wilson says.





It only made Jay more unstoppable that, in the same show, he brought out Michael Jackson as his special guest. Such cameos have been a staple of Summer Jam from the start, with unexpected appearances by everyone from Drake to LL Cool J. But the Jackson coup remains the most jaw-dropping.

“That was the biggest surprise it could be outside of bringing the Beatles on stage,” Hall says. “It also showed how calculated Michael was. He wanted to reach the Summer Jam audience.”

Nas aimed to have his revenge on Jay the next year — and he came up with a doozy. He intended to bring out an effigy of Hova to hang, but Hot 97 would have none of the theatrical lynching and nixed Nas from the lineup. Nas complained on the station’s rival, Power 105, and footage of the provocative stage act leaked out, further extending the controversy.

Jay’s history of one-upmanship doesn’t end there. He used the festival to perform his then-new song “Death to Auto-Tune” right in front of T-Pain, the man who spread that very effect through the music industry like smallpox.

“That was so embarrassing” for T-Pain, says Brown.

In yet another talked-about moment, 50 Cent stormed off the stage in disgust when told that his 2004 set was running long — but not before taunting police to come up and make him leave. The station then banned him “for life.”

While 50 Cent’s meltdown threatened to end in violence, Summer Jam has remained largely free of it.

“All of the friction has always been kept to the music and antics on stage — nothing behind the scenes,” says Hot 97 program director Ebro Darden. “MetLife Stadium is a state-run facility and I don’t care how tough someone thinks they are; the Jersey State Troopers and their dogs are much tougher.”

Still, some feel all the hijinks and put-downs can distract from the music. “As a fan I think it can make a mockery of the music,” Brown says. “It’s about what happened as opposed to how good the artists were.”

Darden begs to differ. “The ‘disses’ are about the music, or the songs are the ‘disses.’ ”

In fact, fans head to Summer Jam waiting for the conflict.

“It’s similar to a Broadway play or the climax of a really good movie,” Hall says. “It’s the big happening that people look forward to.”

Even, it seems, if the big happening is a nonhappening. Last year the loudest chatter was about Nicki Minaj, the show’s headliner, who refused to play after station DJ Peter Rosenberg dissed her pop-oriented single “Starships,” calling it “bulls—” right on stage.

At that point, all the stars associated with her label (Lil Wayne’s imprint) bailed, including DJ Khaled and Mavado. The result gave fans something to talk about for weeks.

“If you missed it, you missed it,” says Brown, nailing a lot of Summer Jam’s essential draw.

Still, Darden insists the festival is also a showcase of great musical moments — like when Lil Jon brought out Fat Joe and got the whole stadium to do the “Lean Back” dance. Or when Kanye performed a remixed version of “Diamonds of Sierra Leone” and Jay-Z came along to add a new verse. Or the time Swizz Beats and Kanye West staged their own surprise beat-battle.

Whether it’s those musical elements, or the dicier kind, all of them play into keeping Summer Jam hot.

“Stars who come now want to create their Jay-Z moment,” Wilson says. “The new generation wants to make a legacy of their own, and this is where they can shape it.”





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