Hip-hop is more than a genre; it’s a global phenomenon.
That is what the creators of Rolling Loud, Tariq Cherif and Matt Zingler, bring to the table when they mount large rap-centric music festivals in spots around the globe. With their unsurmountable passion for hip-hop, Cherif and Zingler took the electricity and power of this culture and manifested a place of its own in Rolling Loud Thailand.
Initially meeting as children in the fourth grade, the power tandem have been attached at the hip ever since. As they were slowly introduced to the growing hip-hop culture back in their high school, the two would curate house parties for their friends, blasting rap CDs. Eventually conceiving their potential to turn this into a bigger phenomenon as a whole, the two began arranging a number of smaller concerts, growing their number of attendees from a humble hundred to crowds of thousands.
Five years into their journey, Cherif and Zingler found the potential to create a bigger stage for their “parties” — which is where we find Rolling Loud as it is today. Originating in Miami and Florida, then eventually washing up on the shores of Thailand, Rolling Loud has become a global phenomenon.
Expansion was always a core goal of their projects, Matt claimed in an exclusive interview with Billboard Philippines. The two sought to widen the scale of Rolling Loud as a brand: “It was very tough to kind of get to this point in our career, and we’re very fortunate that we’re here now, and a lot of that’s due to the artists and the music, and how large and influential hip-hop became.”
Of course, bringing the sensation of Rolling Loud to the climate of Thailand did not come without its respective hurdles, “I think one of the biggest hurdles that we faced when we came to Thailand initially, was one: informing the artists of where we are in the world and why it was important to come here and expand their brand. It’s convincing the talent to travel out here. ” Matt detailed, further explaining, “… Also, it’s dialing in the site with limited resources. We needed the local partner to handle a lot of the government issues, police, fire, and permitting, and then once you kind of get through that red tape of like talent and the local side of things.”
In contrast to its current status quo in the United States, hip-hop culture in Asia is still in early development with rising artists sprouting across different countries. In this light, Rolling Loud Thailand offers a platform for these growing emcees in the Asian scene, as musicians from Japan, Korea, Thailand, and more nations star in these groundbreaking lineups.
What Rolling Loud offers is a platform on which Thailand can become a mecca for hip-hop culture — at least for a week a year. For Matt, their Thailand festivals have been an eye-opener to the growing interest in Asia. He expounds, “It’s opened the ability for us to potentially expand the brand to multiple locations in Asia, engaged a lot of interest in talent in the region — China and Japan and Korea, etc. I think it opened a lot of other entrepreneurs’ eyes.”
More than a platform to highlight artists, Rolling Loud Thailand is a place for hip-hop enthusiasts of all kinds to gather, regardless of race, age, and the like. Matt further highlights this point: “I think that this festival is really just a melting pot of just anybody in the region that is close enough to catch a flight, that really enjoys hip-hop, to come and be able to enjoy themselves.” And as an international brand, he states, “Rolling Loud is a name and it’s going to stand for something greater than concerts and festivals. It’s going to stand for rolling a lot of records and dropping music and combining music with different artists.”
Amongst the hurdles and roadblocks setting up a major music festival in a foreign country can entail, Tariq Cherif and Matt Zingler of Rolling Loud jumps past these obstacles and makes it into reality. At their hands then becomes a large gathering in which everyone from casual listeners to members of hip-hop communities from all around the globe can be part of a hallmark of the growing international culture that only music can curate.
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