How Broccoli City Festival is Serving Black Concert-Goers in D.C.

With their most exciting lineup and setup ever, it seems as if they’ve been forgiven – the Broccoli City organizers say they’re expecting about 25,000 people in and around Audi Field, where the lead performers will take the main stage and other activations including parties hosted by Uncle Waffles and Everyday People – and interactive sets with Kai Cenat streaming housemate Duke Dennis – lining the perimeter and indoor concourses. They’ve also found a way to keep D.C. near the heart of the festival with concerns that fewer acts from the region were making the cut. “We’re working with the Department of Employment Services to provide employment opportunities during the festival for D.C. residents,” says Williams, the only founder born and raised in the area. “Another partnership is through the D.C. Office of Cable Television, Film, Music and Entertainment. That office is actually partnering with us on a local music competition, which will allow artists from the DMV a chance to perform at BC Fest. This is a competition that we actually launched back in 2015, but it was under a different name. You have to be a DMV resident to apply.” Williams says multiple acts from the DC-Maryland-Virginia region will get to take the stage as winners of what they’re calling Broccoli Barz. 

The festival’s name is a nod to the sustainability and community advocacy that marked the organizers’ early days, when the team was hosting events in Los Angeles. “When I met Marcus, the first event that I got exposed to was this Earth Day event with CNN that was being done, and it was like the end of ’08, ’09. Just seeing how these cultures were blending and coming together, I had never seen anything like that,” says Williams. “Back in 2010, when we did [our] first block party, which was really the precursor to BC Fest, it was called Global [Cooling]. We had Pac Div, we had Don Kennedy. We had Kendrick Lamar as our opening act. We had sustainability-focused vendors and folks from LA City Council come through and speak and mingle. We saw this dynamic where they were actually able to really talk to people because they were meeting folks where they were.” 

Now partnered with Live Nation, it can look like they’ve gotten away from those roots, but they say they still keep a dedication to service alive through a volunteer platform they’ve founded that allows anyone to earn festival tickets and more by completing personal health and community support actions they provide. At the time of writing, the platform’s app, iChipN, has been out of service for an unspecified amount of time due to routine maintenance, says Williams. Its website, WeChipN, currently only offers an action on reaching out to political representatives to discuss student loans. According to Broccoli City’s promotional deck and WeChipN’s Instagram, they’ve rewarded users for doctor’s visits, signing petitions, completing surveys, working out, eating plant-based foods, and volunteering at D.C. Central Kitchen.

Here, Allen, McEachern, and Williams go deep on what it means to be a Black festival, the state of the DMV’s music scene, keeping their ethos as they expand, and listening to women.

​​So tell me, what are the service and community-oriented factors of the festival this year?
Brandon McEachern: The festival was built on the foundation of Earth Day. When we started, it was more about the vendors that would be there. It’s more than just coming to see the music – how can you support every pillar of a city? As that grew, people started asking us “Yo, how do I do my own festival?” And we’d be like, “Yo, all right, well, send me a deck or a write-up on what you want to do.” And they were like, “What’s a deck?” And I’m like, “Damn, all right, let’s go back to step one.” So, we created a conference called Broccoli Con which we have done every year leading up into the festival. That’s one portion. We’ve had all sorts of speakers from Bozoma Saint John all the way to Coach K from QC. It’s a place for brands to connect, too – you got the Hennessy bar, whatever the case may be.

During that time, as well, we realized that people can’t necessarily afford festival tickets all the time. We’re not Coachella, this ain’t Governors Ball. All due love to all those festivals, but when you think about D.C., when you think about African-Americans and the conditions that we are in, we may not have the finances. So it was like, okay, we could get people to volunteer in the community and then they can earn a free ticket to go to the festival. So you go, you do some work at the Y, boom, you get a ticket to the festival. We did that from 2017 to, shit, I want to say ’18, ’19 and then had the concept to put it in an application, like a phone app, so then you could find volunteer opportunities. We could kind of gamify it in a sense. That was the birth of WeChipN. WeChip N is a platform that we created. You can go on that joint right now and earn a ticket, not only to Broccoli City – folks earn tickets to Roots Picnic. We[‘re producing] the Tems show [in] D.C. for her upcoming tour date. People couldn’t get tickets, ’cause it sold out so quick in presale, so boom, now they can do the same thing, they can earn a ticket to see Tems. 

How many people are you anticipating? How many service tickets do you think you’ve distributed so far?
Marcus Allen: We’re expecting 25,000 a day and then from a service perspective, it’s going to be at least 600 to 800. You have to earn a certain amount of points to get the ticket, so there are going to be people who don’t earn enough to be able to earn a festival ticket, but there’s always stuff that’s coming, right? WeChipN isn’t a Broccoli City exclusive. We’ve got a bunch of stuff that is always coming down the line. We just did an integration with TicketMaster. 

I couldn’t immediately tell if any of the artists on the lineup are from the DMV. Are they?
Jermon Williams: Not on the main at the moment. We’re going to be announcing more acts and some other DMV flavor, but no, not on the main. It’s not that you go into it thinking, okay, first and foremost, who’s from here? You want to see who’s sort of slated to have a big year or new material. Last year it worked because Fat Trel, he had some new music out. Brent Faiyaz, who’s from here, he headlined. Then the year before that we had Wale, [he] had some new material that was coming out. It’s a delicate balance for sure. But the DMV is unlike any other place. They want to make sure that they’re represented.

Why do you think that right now, it doesn’t seem like there’s a big, newer star from the DMV? 
Jermon Williams: That’s a great question. I know that there are various theories out there, a lot of them, negative. Folks feel like the DMV can’t stick together. I beg to differ. I see folks moving and grooving. I do think we have stars. I think because of D.C., the DMV can be territorial at times, we don’t call out those stars when they hit the way we should. Such as, what’s the kid from Woodbridge… Tommy. He’s got the-

Oh, Tommy Richman?
Jermon Williams: Tommy Richman. He’s from Woodbridge, Virginia, right? And he’s got one of the biggest songs out right now. Shaboozey is a star right now.

He’s from Northern Virginia, right?
Exactly. I think there’s anxiety because we haven’t really hit on this massive scale like Atlanta did. I do think anxiety plays into it, where it’s like folks are happy, but it’s like, “But listen to my music.” And it’s like, no, we need to pull together a coalition behind the folks who are in. 

You guys are partnered with Live Nation, who the Justice Department is suing, accusing them of holding an illegal monopoly over the events industry as Ticketmaster’s parent company. What is your perspective on working with this conglomerate that’s being accused of eliminating competition in the music space and the issues that come with that?
Marcus Allen: I mean, obviously that shit is really above our pay grade, but I would say that what they’ve done is vertically integrated, no different than most top companies, like McDonald’s. McDonald’s doesn’t buy meat, they produce their meat and all their products, and then they vertically integrate it throughout all their stores. I think the thing that is probably missing in this, is that Live Nation can’t control the prices of the talent, you know what I mean? 

What you’ve seen post-COVID is an increase in talent fees that is ridiculous. From a competition perspective, it has gotten so tight. Who has the capital and the resources to be able to compete and still sell tickets to make money? There are a lot of shows that don’t make money – that if Live Nation didn’t own the venue, they wouldn’t make a cent. From a ticket perspective, the price of the talent is so expensive that there’s a certain level where consumers just won’t buy it anymore. And so once it reaches that level in which the talent cost is so expensive and the tickets can only go but so high, where is the money to be made?

So you’re saying if the venues were independent, they themselves might not be able to host these artists?
Marcus Allen: They wouldn’t. Live Nation has the resources to actually be able to book the talent. There’s almost like an entire industry adjustment that needs to happen, right, where it really starts with the cost of the talent. The cost of the talent cost has to come down for this to become more competitive. Right now, it doesn’t matter if it’s Live Nation of AEG, with the cost of the talent, there are only so many people who can come in and play in this world. To me, it’s a natural lack of competition. It’s not forced.

You do have huge stars on the lineup, like Megan Thee Stallion and Gunna, who’ve done massive tours this year. How are you guys accommodating these high-level productions into your festival?
Brandon McEachern: So obviously a lot of those semantics change when they’re doing different festival shows. It’s communication. Like with Ebonie [Ward, who manages Gunna], we have those conversations, we’ve been talking for a minute. “Yo Gunna, you can’t bring all that shit, homie.” You know what I mean?

Y’all actually made a really funny and earnest bit of content around some complaints that people had about the festival last year, tell me about the critiques that you’ve gotten over the years and how you’ve risen to meet those challenges.
Brandon McEachern: Listening, we be listening to cats too. We ain’t too proud.

Marcus Allen: Out of all the major festivals, we’re the only festival that, in mass quantity, a twenty-seven-year-old Black woman would be there. Over Covid and coming out of Covid, there were a lot of first-time festival goers, so people got a chance to go to their first festival, maybe 2018, 2019, and then right after Covid, I think that people got a chance to identify what it is they like and don’t like about music festivals. And there’s a lot to like and dislike, one thing being that, anytime, even if you got VIP, even if you got great credentials, they be long days, especially for a two-day festival. The parking, the walking, the need to sit down, just the whole thing of it. We knew that people liked the [festival moving to late July], but one of the biggest things that we realized was that with a lot of the complaints that relate to the on-site experience, there was no way for us to solve them in the parking lot at RFK. 

There’s only so much AC that we can provide in a parking lot. There’s only so much water that we can provide if people are not willing to drink and stay hydrated. The biggest thing that we really wanted to do was just listen to the consumer, and understand what it is they were looking for. They really were looking for Beyoncé, right, they were looking for a stadium show. They were looking for infrastructure and real bathrooms and shade and VIP suites with air conditioning. And really, they were saying, “You know what? We don’t want to be in this fucking parking lot no more.” [But] we didn’t want to turn Broccoli City Festival into a stadium show.

We wanted to figure out the hybrid model of, not just production, but in terms of even programming. That’s really what we’ve done, taken the best of all worlds. It’s really going to be kind of an award-style setup, where it’s content driven. We’re going to have cameras backstage, “Oh, Meg just arrived,” you know what I mean? Like, “She’s heading to our dressing room.” That whole backstage [look that] you see at the Grammys, you see the red carpets.

That’s cool. What was it like getting artists’ buy-in for that?
Marcus Allen: I mean, we pay good. We don’t nickel and dime. Obviously, we got some pushback, but people were receptive to it. I do think that being in the stadium helped that ask, you know what I mean? ‘Cause people were like, “Oh, this is something different.” I think being in a new venue helped those asks for sure.

Brandon McEachern: Also just who we are as well. We have relationships with Issa Rae. We have relationships with AMP. That helped us to be able to get close to them and touch them as well. 

Marcus Allen: Yeah, she just coming to have fun. I think it’s really for her. One of the things that we did that helped get this deal done was that she’s got a couple of brands that we’re integrating with. She’s got the new Prosecco, so that’ll be integrated into the weekend, as well as her haircare line. I think this demo fits right into who she’s trying to reach from her brands, and so being able to integrate her into it and have her brands be there, she’s able to kind of turn the festival into a giant commercial, have people try it, have people see it. That’s a lot of what we’ve been doing, is trying to create a platform for some of these people for their products, the other things that they may be working on.

Tell me about how Black women under 30 have been identified as the demographic you serve. Why do you think it looks like that?
Brandon McEachern: Our life is Black is women.

Marcus Allen: Everything is around Black women.

Brandon McEachern: I wouldn’t even be dressed without [Black women], you know what I mean? Considering my Queens in my dome. I don’t know, that’s just us, who we are, and the attendees. And obviously the data reflects it as well. It’s always queens around us, I feel like Black Panther, dude, you know what I’m saying? Shout out to our team too. Jacqueline Auston, who is our chief of staff. 

Jermon Williams: Carmen, who runs our social, excellent. But like they said, a lot of it was leaning into the way things just naturally progressed. We started seeing the data and [weren’t] running from it.

I think it’s so funny that that also doesn’t necessarily translate to a woman-heavy lineup. There are a lot of women on the lineup but it’s not 50/50.
Marcus Allen: It’s not a women’s event, we curate the event with women in mind. And because we have so many women on our team, they always keep us balanced and make sure that we don’t go too far in one direction. ‘Cause there’s definitely been talent, I’m not going to say no names, but there’s been talent that me and Brandon were like, “Yo, this would be a perfect headliner.” And they done came in, from a woman’s perspective like, “Y’all better not do that.” And be deadass standing on it. When you have women around you that’s willing to stand on their positions for certain talent, you got no other choice but to respect that and listen, right? If they feel that strongly, usually there’s a lot of other people that feel the same way. And we have definitely seen, in many cases, they have been completely right.

Jermon Williams: Part of the understanding also allowed us to see that, hey, at the end of the day, as a reminder, we all know this, but Black women are not a monolith. They don’t just want one type of artist – you got some women that want to turn up, you know what I mean? 

Marcus Allen: I do believe that in this next period of Broccoli City, we will separate ourselves from the pack in terms of who we have identified ourselves as being for. I think that over the years, it’s been kind of convoluted. I feel like people have looked at all the festivals and a lot of the events and just said, “Hey, they’re for Black people,” It’s just assumed that the same person that goes to Afro Tech is the same person that goes to the Roots Picnic, the same person that goes to Broccoli City. As Black people, we understand that that’s not the case.

I think that finally, for the first time, brands are starting to identify that there are levels and types of Black individuals and that you have to identify them as such. I think the other thing that’s important is that brands are starting to understand that just because it’s a hip-hop or an urban festival doesn’t mean it’s about to be Black people in the audience. I think there’s been a lot of investment that has happened over the past few years that has been around hip-hop and R&B and what they would consider “urban” culture. Then, when their brand teams and their partners and their executives get to the actual events, they’re like, “Wow, okay, this is definitely hip-hop, but this is not who we thought was going to be here touching our brand.” And so I think that you’re going to see Broccoli City assert itself over the next couple of years as being, really, the go-to partner for a lot of these brands because we are clear exactly who it is that we reached and we do that well.