Events

Music festival rocks Midtown

Against Me! headlined Houston’s first BestFest this weekend, along with Cake, Toadies, Chamillionaire and Bun B. BestFest is Houston Press’ latest weekend-long music festival and was held downtown Saturday and Sunday. | Photo by Ryan Russell/Big Hassle Media

Against Me! headlined Houston’s first BestFest this weekend, along with Cake, Toadies, Chamillionaire and Bun B. BestFest is Houston Press’ latest weekend-long music festival and was held downtown Saturday and Sunday. | Photo by Ryan Russell/Big Hassle Media

Houston Press hosted its first annual Best of Houston “BestFest” music festival, highlighting local and national acts this past weekend.

Houston Press publishes a Best of Houston issue anually giving praise to local businesses, musicians and restaurants. The ridiculously long list recognizes everything imaginable in the metropolitan area from “Best Bar Bathroom” to “Best Cemetery.”

The two-day festival was hosted at the Midtown “Superblock” off of Main St. and Travis and started promptly at noon on both days.

Although BestFest was advertised as a “music, food and arts festival,” the main attractions of the event were clearly the bands and rappers who headlined the weekend full of music.

Local booths and vendors surrounded the five acres of land where the festival grounds, and the interior was decorated with two stages on opposite ends facing each other.

Day one of the festivities was noticeably dominated by Houston rap favorites Chamillionaire, Slim Thug and Bun B.

Chamillionaire was the only rapper out of the three who was given the Joffe MediCenter main stage to perform on and it was refreshing to see his new appearance — clean cut and without the braids — live in action again.

The rapper did not perform any brand new material as he has not had an album released in more than four years now, but he was still able to entertain the crowd as he ran through past hits “Turn It Up” and “Ridin’.” The audience also seemed to enjoy his brief commentary and crowd interaction between each song.

On the smaller C&D Scrap Metal home brewed stage, Slim Thug had special guest Mexican-American rapper Baby Bash open up his set for him.

It was a nice surprise and the South Park Mexican affiliated rapper performed his R&B softened tracks “Suga Suga” and “Baby, I’m Back.”

Slim Thug’s hype-assisted set served as a nice warmup to the headlining rapper of the night, Bun B.

Bun B’s performance drew many rap-along fans from the crowd and he displayed grief, passion, and pride in his performance.

“One Day” was played as a tribute to the late Pimp C, the other half of UGK, and the raw emotional from Bun B was felt on the stage. Punk rock band Against Me! crammed as much of their music catalogue into their set as possible which created an all-out jam session from the group.

The band’s energy never slowed down and was fueled by the drums throughout the entire performance bringing the day long event to a close.

Houston Press’ BestFest was not as festive as the annual International Festival nor was it as grand as Free Press Summer Fest, but its effort is worth noting.

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