[Photos] HARD Summer Celebrated Its 10th Anniversary with a Barrage of Hip-Hop Heroes

^{All photos by Molly Adams}

With ten years of hybrid festival-raves under their belt, the folks behind HARD Summer Music Festival (HSMF) threw themselves a wild anniversary this past weekend and invited some of hip-hop’s top dogs to join their packed lineup of party-friendly DJs. The genres really make sense together, when you think about it. It’s all the music you’d want to hear in a club, but under one open sky. Can you think of a better mash-up than A-Trak opening Mobb Deep’s set with a tribute track to Prodigy?

On top of electronic music powerhouses like Bassnectar, Cashmere Cat, Justice, A-Trak, and Zeds Dead, the 10th edition of HARD featured Migos, Rae Sremmurd, Mike Will Made It in his first festival slot, plus a very special set by Snoop Dogg, in which the legend performed 1993’s Doggystyle in full for the first time in years. “Can we have a moment of silence for this small chronic break?” Snoop asked the crowd at one point.

MERRY JANE was there supporting our beloved proprietor/Doggfather, as well as giving out green-friendly gift bags to the performers, including canna-products from Bakked, Korova, Dr. Norm’s, Sprig, Venice Cookie Company's Cannabis Quencher, Yummi Karma, Remedy Plus Edibles, and Satori Chocolates. VIPs got treated real nice, to say the least.

We also sent photographer Molly Adams to document the ripper, and she had this to share with us after being barraged with strobe lights and thundering bass for two days:

At the festival, I noticed that during DJ sets the party was going down in the crowd. When the rappers performed, though, shit went wild on stage. From Problem inviting “all the girls” to join him up there, to Chief Keef and Lil Jon making cameos during Mike Will’s set, to Snoop Dogg doing his damn thing, the hip-hop heroes brought the real noise.

See her photos from the festival below, and stay tuned for a series of interviews Molly conducted with the performers later this week!