Vegas Sphere Could Give Hip Hop a Home in Sin City
Las Vegas has long been a hub for all kinds of music. But for most of the city’s history and right up to today, it’s fair to say that rock and pop have largely been the dominant forces.
This definitely holds true when you look at the musical residencies Vegas is famous for. If you don’t know the term, this basically refers to an artist or band setting up shop for an extended period of time, essentially becoming a regular show in town rather than a touring one. And when you look through Billboard’s list of Vegas’s biggest residencies in history, it’s basically a rundown of mega-star pop and rock acts. Celine Dion, Elton John, Britney Spears, and J-Lo are among the highlights on the list, and not coincidentally are some of the artists most deeply associated with Vegas.
Rock and Pop dominance extends to the smaller-scale Vegas music scene as well. Plenty of the average tours passing through town fall into these genres, and at Fremont Street — an area known for sounding like a concert at all times — rock and pop are most prevalent also. For those who don’t know this corner of Vegas, it’s described in a Poker.org article on exciting Vegas activities as a place where folks can “party the night away” with free live music away from the hustle and bustle of the Strip. Sometimes that music truly is live, but sometimes it’s blasting with accompanying music video projections and light shows as part of what’s called the “Fremont Street Experience.” And more often than not, it’s either rock or pop.
None of this is to say that Hip Hop isn’t present in Vegas. Plenty of hip-hop tours pass through, and there are also some clubs in the city largely dedicated to the genre. But Vegas isn’t really a home to Hip Hop the way it is to Rock and Pop.
A new venue could eventually change that.
The venue is called the MSG Sphere, and as a profile at USAToday.com put it, it’s meant to be a game-changer for concertgoers. It’s a little bit hard to completely grasp the intent of the building, but by description it sounds as if its own interior will be a sort of dynamic video screen. Bass will be “pumped through the floorboards” as well as the screens around the curved ceiling, video and light performances will sync up with music, and the ultimate goal is for every seat to be the “best seat in the house.”
As you can glean from that description, the MSG Sphere will primarily be a fit for EDM. You can begin to imagine what it might be like to be on the inside of an all-encompassing, spherical video screen with bass coming from every angle. But if EDM dominates as the leading genre in the Sphere, it’s easy enough to imagine Hip Hop being a close second.
For one thing, this is because there have long been awesome, fan-favorite Hip Hop and EDM collaborations that would undoubtedly play well at a venue like this. That might mean Pharrell playing a show and including his collaboration with Daft Punk; it might mean a live link-up between A$AP Rocky and Skrillex (whose “Wild For The Night” is still great all these years later); it could mean a stop by Kid Cudi, whose “Pursuit Of Happiness” got a Steve Aoki remix, and whose new album “Man On The Moon III” has him primed for a post-pandemic tour.
Additionally though, Hip Hop would seem to be a good fit for the Sphere even without EDM collaboration. Purely from an audio perspective, the main goal of the Sphere appears to be to immerse concertgoers in bass to the point that they see and feel it, as much as hear it. And we know there are countless Hip Hop tracks and artists that can take full advantage of that kind of venue gimmick.
We’ll have to wait and see what ultimately comes of the MSG Sphere, and what kinds of shows thrive there. But it definitely sounds like it could be something of a hub for modern EDM and Hip Hop, going against the grain of the Vegas rock and pop scene.
