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If you were looking forward to rapper Tkay Maidza or jazz-rockers BadBadNotGood, sorry - both acts canceled last minute because of visa issues and illness, respectively. Like half of my notes on dawn richard are in all caps and this is why /ZFECni1OC4- JUST IN: Curto July 16, 2022 Minutes later, she returned to give even more, performing an encore in a lit-up, crownlike headpiece that soon fell off from her vigorous dancing. “I gave you every piece of me,” Richard declared on her final song, “Heaven,” but that still wasn’t enough. And the former Danity Kane member showed that her versatility extended far beyond dance music, as when she wailed the Cranberries’ “Zombie” into a sparkling, auto-tuned mic while kneeling in front of her soloing guitarist. Dance anthems off her 2021 album, Second Line, including “Bussifame” and “Boomerang,” became even more powerful live and were punctuated by stunning choreography and an interpolation of No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak.” With a red wig that nearly hit the floor and backup dancers on either side of her, Richard looked the part of a headliner as she danced, rapped, and belted her way through her set, she acted it too. When I arrived a few songs into her midevening set at the small, tucked-away Blue Stage, the audience was already moving.
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It’s hard to get a crowd of music nerds to dance, but that didn’t stop Dawn Richard. WHOA: Dawn Richard was the real headliner. Wiki’s producer Subjxct 5 proved equally integral, especially when he dropped a fantastic and jittery new track off their upcoming collab, Cold Cuts (which Wiki accurately described as “the disco era and the Memphis era in one”). Then there was underground New York rapper Wiki, who had all of that and more as he animatedly reflected on his roots in his trademark nasally sneer. Thankfully, this year brought nine rap acts to the fest, which provided a little something for everyone: thoughtful bars from Noname and Earl Sweatshirt, blasts of energy from CupcakKe and Monaleo, endless grooves from the Roots and Pink Siifu. When 2021’s lineup featured a pitiful three rappers, I wondered if Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash and Lollapalooza were pricing Pitchfork out of rap bookings in Chicago. (It also led Earl Sweatshirt to assure the audience his music wasn’t fit for moshing.) The downpour eventually made a massive mud pit at one of the stages Sunday, where no fans dared to step. But every time it seemed as if the rain would let up on Pitchfork, it kept going - especially on Sunday, when it wasn’t even forecast to rain. Sure, complaining about inclement weather at a festival is nothing new. But the biggest reason to show up when the gates opened? Chicago raunch rapper CupcakKe, whose bravado was so contagious she was able to lead a crowd of thousands to shout about sucking dick at 2 p.m. Aside from those chill kickoffs, there were some early big draws, including a sweats-clad Ethel Cain, whose “Family Tree” sounded like a dark incantation in the rain. The same went for Saturday, when guitarist Jeff Parker and his jazz collective, the New Breed, opened with a jam session, and Sunday, when rapper Pink Siifu crowded the stage for a smoke-filled, laid-back celebration of southern music. The soothing voice of Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab floated through a rainy Union Park on Friday her beautiful, meandering ballads were the perfect way to ease into the festival. HIGH: The early festivalgoer was rewarded. Ahead, some of the best (and worst) moments of Pitchfork 2022. I saw all of it over three days - and much more, from astonishing side-stage performances to lots of rain and mud. And each one had more than enough reason to leave happy. You could practically envision the type of music lover who’d attend each day: the millennial indie guy ready to rock to the National and Parquet Courts on Friday the extremely online fan hungry for the catharsis of Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, and Lucy Dacus on Saturday the old and young hip-hop head uniting around Earl Sweatshirt, Noname, and the Roots on Sunday. But this year’s event added a dimension of fan service to the equation. Pitchfork Festival tends to be one of the better-curated weekends of the summer - especially compared with Chicago counterparts such as Lollapalooza - thanks to its emphasis on music discovery.