Splash 2010

 

Splash 2010 has been a blast !

Situated in the beautiful landscape of FERROPOLIS – a renaturalised mining area surrounded  by the Gremminer Sea in the east of Germany between Leipzig and the capital Berlin – it is one of the biggest hiphop festivals in Europe. The line-up was quite promising with US superstar Missy Elliot, dancehall mastermind Mr Vegas and german rap superstar Samy Deluxe along with aspiring artists like US rapper Fashawn.

We – my photographer and I – arrived on early friday morning. Check-in and press registration was fast, easy and comfortable. The tent (yes, no hotel) was set up fast and we used the very practical but sometimes overcrowded shuttle to the festival site. Entering the site was easy too, slick security, no nagging. With one main stage and short walks between the 2 smaller stages (one directly on the gritty shore of the sea) and a mere dozen of beverage and food stations the festival site was well designed and ready to be rocked.

We tried to see and hear as many acts as possible but got a bit distracted by the skateboard, freestyle and dance contest.

The best performance delivered the following acts:

+ Missy Elliot (the lady at its best)

+ Blumentopf (likely intelligent hiphop, everbody was there and everybody was jumping)

+ Exile (with Fashawn who´s still aspiring, but this time his DJ rocked the crowd)

+ Kool Savas (evil and bad guy attitude, everybody was there and jumping too)

+ Casper (the emo rapper with band, quite aggressive but intense)

Worst performance:

– Nas & Damian Marley (Nas was bored, me too)

Conclusion – the Splash was definitely worth a travel and hopefully I´ll get the chance to be back in 2011. My photographer did a whole bunch of pictures. Due to stipulation I can´t show you all, but I´ve added some of them to the gallery. Enjoy !

(This article is an edited and shortened excerpt. The full story was published in the september edition of the American HipHop Magazine.)