Bonnaroo Announces New All-Night EDM and Hip Hop Stage

Bonnaroo unveiled its full 2017 lineup (save, presumably, for the Club Stage bands) earlier this year, featuring the likes of U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Weekend, Chance the Rapper, Lorde, The xx, Glass Animals, Tegan and Sara, Car Seat Headrest, The Front Bottoms, The Orwells, White Reaper, Cage the Elephant, Margo Price, and many more. And, last month, revealed the comedy slate and daily lineups, which already have us plotting out our weekend while we wait for the full schedule. So far, things for this year’s fest have been pretty par for the course, settling into the routine we’ve come to know for many years running (last year’s “big change” was permanent bathrooms and infrastructure improvements, plus an added parking fee, if that says anything).

Yesterday, however, the long-running fest shook things up with a pretty major change, and first to a stage in years: The Other Tent, one of Roo’s three main “tent” stages, is being converted into a whole new experience, simply called “The Other.” As the press release states, they’re “pulling down the tent and cranking up the bass in this newly expanded stage & area dedicated exclusively to the best of dance, electronic and hip-hop. Dance your heart out all night at this fully loaded new stage, and experience mind-blowing visuals, earth-shattering bass, and the kind of late night sets that you’ll remember for years to come.” This shouldn’t really come as too much of a surprise to those paying attention to recent years’ lineups, which have increasingly skewed hip hop and EDM, likely in a bid to capture a younger audience. The Kalliope pseudo-stage had already become an immensely popular late night destination, so it only makes sense that Bonnaroo would want to capitalize on that by curating a whole bigger-scale, late night refuge for hardcore EDM and hip hop fans. It’s not immediately clear if The Other will replace the Kalliope, but it seems likely.

The Other will will feature acts Marshmello, Big Gigantic, Yellow Claw, D.R.A.M., Matoma, Louis The Child, Borgore, NGHTMRE, Getter, Snails, Skepta, Illenium, Claude Vonstroke, G Jones, OOKAY, Herobust, Ganja White Night, Rezz, Goldfish, San Halo, Haywyre, Vanic, Unlike Pluto, Barclay Crenshaw, Innanet James, Jason Huber, DJ Mel, and Case Bloom, and we’ll have a better idea of how it’s slotted and whether we can expect additional acts when the full schedule arrives.