Welcome Back Concert exhibits new artists

The class of 2020, transfer students, and others new to USC had their first opportunity to attend a university-wide event at the annual USC Welcome Back Concert, which took place on Saturday in McCarthy Quad.

The show was headlined by Mike Will Made It and LANY, and there were guest appearances from iLoveMakonnen, Lil Dicky, Jeremih and Eearz.

The concert was hosted by the Concert Committee, and although the official numbers for this year have not been released, last year’s concert drew 5,000 attendees.

“[For] freshmen, this is most likely their first big event on campus,” said Concert Committee Associate Director Caitlin Harriford. “We get the opportunity to hopefully bring in an artist that they are familiar with and enjoy.”

To warm up the crowd, the first performance was by LANY, a pop band based out of Los Angeles.

They were named one of Rolling Stone’s “10 New Artists to Know.” The group performed for about 45 minutes during their set.

This year, the event was headlined by Mike Will Made It. Mike Will, an Atlanta based producer, is known as one of the most successful producers in the music industry, particularly rap. The list of collaborating artist include Rihanna, Gucci Mane, Kanye West and Future among many others.

Mike Will has also had 23 songs chart on the Billboard Hot 100, including “We Can’t Stop” by Miley Cyrus, “No Flex Zone” by Rae Sremmurd and “Formation” by Beyoncé.

During the performance, Mike Will brought out four acts to perform along with him. The first act was Eearz, who is signed under Mike Will’s record label Ear Drummer Records.

Lil Dicky followed up with a performance of his hit song “Save Dat Money.” The crowd took very well to the Philadelphia native as he ended up freestyling toward the end of his performance.

The third performance was by iLoveMakonnen, a Los Angeles-born and Atlanta-based rapper, who performed his hit songs “Tuesday” and “Swerve.” iLoveMakonnen also debuted a newer song off his latest mixtape, titled Red Trap Dragon.

Finally, Jeremih came on to perform his hit songs “773 Love,” “Don’t Tell ‘Em” and “Planez” to end the hour and a half-long performance.

Attendees such as Xavier Garcia, a junior majoring in neuroscience, were surprised by the lineup and pleased with the way the concert turned out.

“I am a fan of [iLoveMakonnen] particularly so it was great to see him for free,” Garcia said. “I was not sure who to expect since I knew that Mike Will was a producer. I heard some rumors but they didn’t turn out the way I thought.”

Others, such as Nate Repasky, a sophomore majoring in business administration and accounting, thought that bringing on lesser-known artists was a poor choice.

“I had no clue who the first artist was at all,” Repasky said. “The second was better, but we could afford better names than we did.”