The Mercury Prize-winning artist is putting on one hell of a show next summer
He’s already an MC, producer, designer, director, and DJ, and now Skepta is adding festival organiser to that list because he’s putting on his very own music event in 2024. Big Smoke Festival will take over Crystal Palace Park for one day in July, with two stages featuring a multi-genre line-up of artists curated by Skepta. As well as performing live himself on the Big Smoke stage (his only live date in the UK for the whole of 2024) Skepta will be joined by the likes of The Streets, Mahalia, JME, and The Den featuring Frisco, Flowdan, Sir Spyro, Infamousizak, Manga, Thafirst. He’ll also be linking up with Jammer on the Más Tiempo stage for a set, which’ll also play host to Loco Dice, Uncle Waffles, Syreeta, Kitty Amor and more.
Proving that they can do more than grime, Más Tiempo is the pair’s new house-focused label designed to add a new flavour to the genre and to give producers a platform to move into that space. The pair sold out the Más Tiempo show at Drumsheds back in December, so this festival is gonna be another hot ticket.
Announcing the festival on Instagram Live, Skepta said, “I’m gassed to finally announce that Big Smoke Festival is official. I’m so excited, it’s been a wild one to do this. I just want to say thank you to all the supporters, it’s been a couple years that you didn’t see me on a stage. I know a lot of people have been wondering when they’ll see Skepta at a festival and I really wanted to save all that energy and put it into something that was for us, by us. There’s going to be a live stage all your favourite acts – anyone you know that’s affiliated with Skepta. There’ll be a live stage on one side and the Más Tiempo stage which will also be a full lineup. I might bust up one stage, fly over to the other one and link with Jammer. It’s gonna be crazy.”
Sat 6th July 2024
Crystal Palace Park, London SE19 2GA
bigsmokefest.london