Former First Lady Michelle Obama is teaming up with the 13th Annual Roots Picnic music festival to get people registered to vote.

The Philadelphia festival was originally set to take place at the Mann at Fairmount Park on May 30. But due to COVID-19 restrictions, it will now be a virtual fest on June 27. The music lineup includes H.E.R., SZA, Musiq Soulchild, Roddy Ricch, Snoh Aalegra, Kirk Franklin and Da Baby. The digital fest will also be a voter registration drive with Obama's When We All Vote. 

Questlove and Black Thought will co-host the event that will also feature appearances from Obama, Tracee Ellis Ross, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kerry Washington and others. 

RSVP for the event at WeAll.Vote/RootsPicnic

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Music festival season doesn’t begin or end with Coachella. Festival fever brings millions of revelers to and across the United States annually for events that cater to every taste, style, and budget.

While Coachella, with its big-name lineups and a magnet for celebrities and influencers, often takes the lion's share of press and social media attention, plenty of smaller festivals equally capture the hearts of attendees who make it a tradition to return year after year.

2024 introduces an exciting array of new music festivals across the U.S., many highlighted in our guide below. Whether you want to see your long-time favorites or discover fresh music acts, there’s a ton of talent to consider. Beyond the music, these festivals offer top-notch people watching and other experiential joys that make this kind of creative and communal culture important to people across generations and backgrounds.

Sol Blume

May 3-5, Sacramento, California

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California’s state capital is home to the now three-day Sol Blume, a festival so laid back that its mascot is a skeleton chilling on its side, throwing up a peace sign. This year’s Sol Blume is headlined by Snoh Aalegra, SZA and Kaytraminé (producer Kaytranada and singer Aminé). 

It’s still at Discovery Park, but now Sol Blume is a day longer than last year’s event, the stages are bigger and there are more food and drink options. There’s also a dedicated wellness area, with daily yoga classes, meditation sessions, and tension release workshops — should you get a little bit too worked up by the whole mass musical experience.

Lovers & Friends

May 4, Las Vegas, Nevada

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Once again, Lovers & Friends is set to bring a monster lineup representing the heights of ‘90s R&B, hip-hop, pop, and boy bands to Las Vegas for the third time. It’s hard to overstate the megawatt, dream team, TRL-like quality of this festival. After all, headliners Janet Jackson, Usher, Backstreet Boys and Gwen Stefani have all carried arena tours on their own.

Like many of its single-day festival colleagues around the country, the Lovers & Friends lineup appears to fit what could be at least a couple days of performances into just one, so there may be schedule conflicts that prevent attendees from seeing all of the sets that they might want to enjoy.

Cruel World

May 11, Pasadena, California

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A family-friendly, all-ages music festival with a predilection for nostalgia with a dark edge, Cruel World returns to the world-famous Rose Bowl’s Brookside golf course for the third year. This year’s fest features a top billing performance from Duran Duran, plus appearances by Interpol, Blondie, Simple Minds, Placebo, Soft Cell and Adam Ant. The latter rescheduled from last year’s canceling due to a health matter, so he’s just as anticipated as the top acts this year.

Speaking of 2023, a freak electrical storm cut several performances short last year, and a bonus makeup event was held the next night with Iggy Pop and Siouxsie Sioux. The skies should be kinder this year, and those who don’t get their musical fill can return to the same spot the following weekend for a festival called Just Like Heaven with The Postal Service, Death Cab for Cutie, Phoenix and more.

Movement

May 25-27, Detroit, Michigan

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Launched in 2000 as the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and renamed in 2003, Movement remains the world’s pre-eminent event dedicated to techno music, a style created in Detroit and imitated all over the world. This year’s event features VIP pop-ups, classic record label showcases and veteran artists from Detroit and beyond such as Kevin Saunderson, Stacey Pullen, Delano Smith, Masters At Work, Richie Hawtin, Fatboy Slim and. . . Ludacris? Sure, why not — there’s always a hip-hop twist or three happening here, too.

Movement is still the best time to be in Detroit each year in order to celebrate the musical innovations of the city. Beyond the festival, there are a host of official and unofficial afterparties and alternatives to check out. Some people travel to the area to party and never even make it to the main festival, for all the other events happening at all hours.

La Onda

June 1-2, Napa, California

This year, a brand new festival La Onda will debut the weekend after the annual BottleRock festival at Napa Valley Expo with the same event producers. La Onda’s music headliners are Maná, Fuerza Regida, Alejandro Fernández and Junior H. The other acts booked represent a wide variety of Latinx sounds, including regional Mexican, Spanish rock, Latin pop, reggaetón, mariachi, rap, norteño and cumbia.

Read more: 11 New Music Festivals To Attend In 2024: No Values, We Belong Here & More

The Napa Valley Expo is big enough to hold such a large festival with different stages, but it’s not too exhausting to walk back and forth between the areas. And BottleRock amenities like the silent disco, spa treatments, and adult refreshments will be there for La Onda guests to check out as well. 

Roots Picnic

June 1-2 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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The annual Roots Picnic takes place in Philadelphia, the original home of The Roots, and is always a passionate tribute to the City of Brotherly Love (see last year’s highlights). This year, there will also be a big tribute to New Orleans performed by Lil Wayne, Trombone Shorty, PJ Morton and more. 

The festival lineup, which is curated by the band, features musical friends like Jill Scott, Nas, and Victoria Monét as well as a special performance by André 3000, who has been touring the country playing improvisational, flute-led music inspired by his recent solo album New Blue Sun. Tickets to that show alone have been tough to get on other dates, and it’s part of the glorious Roots Picnic.

Pitchfork Music Festival

July 19-21, Chicago, Illinois

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Chicago’s Union Park has been home to the three-day Pitchfork Music Festival since its inception in 2011. The annual event, an extension of the acclaimed music publication, attracts about 60,000 people — see the standout sets from last year to get a good idea of the diversity of this mainstay. Artists bringing the heat this year include Black Pumas, Jamie XX, Alanis Morissette, De La Soul, Brittany Howard, Grandmaster Flash and Carly Rae Jepsen. 

Pitchfork Music Festival is a scorching experience for more than its hot lineup — you can also expect high summer temperatures in the Windy City. Pitchfork’s editorial staff was recently reduced and merged into the men’s magazine GQ by Condé Nast, so the festival’s future shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Fool in Love

Aug. 31, Inglewood, California

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Like Lovers & Friends, people questioned whether this new one-day fest’s heavy-hitting R&B and old-school soul lineup was fake when it was first released. Lionel Richie and Diana Ross take the top tier of the flier, followed by Nile Rodgers & Chic, Al Green, Santana, Charlie Wilson and Gladys Knight. And this festival has more levels of enduring talent booked, including stages headlined by George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic and Clinton’s hero, Smokey Robinson. 

It’s been criticized on social media for booking bands that may not have many or any surviving original members, but that has been a very standard part of certain touring legacy acts for decades. Both the multi-generational lineup and the people-watching promise to be legendary.

Bumbershoot

Aug. 31- Sept. 1, Seattle, Washington

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An all-ages event that began back in 1973, Bumbershoot is one of the country’s staple music and arts festivals. After beginning as an independently-produced fest, AEG Live ran it for four years until 2019. Bumbershoot was relaunched in 2023 by Third Stone and New Rising Sun with Seattle Center, the expansive indoor/outdoor venue where it still takes place.

Last year’s 50th anniversary event brought music acts like Brittany Howard, Sleater-Kinney, Jawbreaker and the Descendents. This year’s music lineup will be announced in May, and a full slate of visual programming and activities such a half pipe skateboard program, roller skating and even pole dancing are on the official website now.

Music at the Intersection

Sept. 14-15, St. Louis, Missouri

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Music at the Intersection in St. Louis celebrates the lineage that exists between blues, jazz, soul, rap, R&B and rock, and where that takes us into the future. Hosted by Kranzberg Arts Foundation, this year’s edition of the ambitious two-day, all-ages festival features a stacked lineup of talent including Chaka Khan, Big Boi, Black Pumas, Esperanza Spalding and Samara Joy. There’s even a Gospel Brunch on Sunday in partnership with the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

As you may have noticed now, music festivals are thriving around the country in 2024! Wherever your flavor of fest takes you this year, may it be safe, fun, and offer the thrills of familiarity, discovery, and friendship.

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Presidents and politicians aren't the first people usually associated with GRAMMY season, but surprisingly, several of them — and first ladies, too — have added golden gramophones to their collections of awards.

In fact, at the 2024 GRAMMYs, former First Lady Michelle Obama claimed her second GRAMMY, for her bestselling memoir, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. Four years earlier, her first bestselling book, Becoming, which documented her rise from Chicago's South Side to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, also won a GRAMMY (more on her and husband Barack later).

Obama's latest victory is one of several political GRAMMY wins and nominations that date back to 1965. At the 7th GRAMMY Awards, the late former President John F. Kennedy and former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson — who ran for president twice — each earned nominations for their contributions to The Kennedy Wit, a compilation of Kennedy's most famous and humorous anecdotes. The audio version was nominated for Best Documentary, Spoken Word Or Drama Recording (Other Than Comedy).

And though those nominations didn't turn into wins, there have been a few political figures who have won the coveted trophies. This Presidents' Day, we salute the former presidents, their spouses and even some would-be presidents who sit among the ranks of GRAMMY winners.

Jimmy Carter

Leading the pack is the 39th U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, who has three wins out of nine nominations to his credit, making him the most honored politician in GRAMMY history. All of his wins and nominations are in the Best Spoken Word Album Category.

The prolific Carter won his first GRAMMY at the 48th ceremony in 2006 for Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis and his most recent for Faith: A Journey for All at the 61st telecast in 2018. He also won in 2015 for A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety.

Carter earned his first GRAMMY nomination in 1997, 17 years after leaving office, for the audio adaptation of his 13th book, Living Faith. His other nods came in 1998, 2001, 2007, 2009 and 2014.

Bill & Hillary Rodham Clinton

Former president Bill Clinton earned two terms in 1992 and 1996, but Hillary Rodham Clinton, his first lady, beat him to GRAMMYs glory. Not long after he won re-election in 1996, Hillary won her first GRAMMY for It Takes a Village, which won Best Spoken Word Album at the 39th ceremony in 1997. Her album Living History landed a second nomination in the Category in 2004; though she didn't take home the GRAMMY, Bill was a winner that year. He won Best Spoken Word Album For Children for his role in Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf/Beintus: Wolf Tracks

The following year, at the 47th GRAMMYs, Bill won in the Best Spoken Word Album Category for his memoir, My Life. Additional nominations followed in 2007 for Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, and in 2012 for Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy, both in the same Category.

The Clinton administration also (sort of) had a claim on Best Spoken Word Album at the 51st GRAMMYs in 2009, thanks to Cynthia Nixon's audiobook reading of the bestseller An Inconvenient Truth, written by Al Gore, who served as vice president under Clinton during both terms.

Barack & Michelle Obama

The Obama family may not have penned as many books as Carter (at least not yet), but collectively, former president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle outpace him with four GRAMMYs, two apiece. 

Barack's two wins are both in the Best Spoken Word Album Category for audio adaptations of two books published before his presidency: the memoir Dreams from My Father in 2005 and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream in 2007. His third nomination in the Category came at the 64th GRAMMY awards in 2022 for "A Promised Land."

As previously mentioned, Michelle Obama is two for two with her GRAMMY nominations. She first won for her 2018 memoir, Becoming, which took home Best Spoken Word Album at the 62nd GRAMMYs in 2020, and four years later, she won Best Audio Book, Narration, And Storytelling Recording for The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times. (And before any of her nominations, in 2019, Michelle was part of a girl-powered surprise intro segment alongside Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Jada Pinkett Smith and then-host Alicia Keys.)

Notable Nominations

Thirteen years after John F. Kennedy earned the first presidential GRAMMY nomination, former President Harry S. Truman was nominated for "The Truman Tapes," in the Best Spoken Word Recording Category (which is the same as Kennedy's Best Documentary or Spoken Word Recording (Other Than Comedy) Category, and is now known as the Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording as of press time) in 1978.

Former President Richard Nixon earned a nomination in the same Category the next year, for his televised interviews with journalist David Frost, packaged as The Nixon Interviews With David Frost.

In 2015 — five years before her 2020 presidential run — Sen. Elizabeth Warren earned her first GRAMMY nomination for the adaptation of her bestselling book, A Fighting Chance, in the Best Spoken Word Album Category at the 57th GRAMMYs.

U.S. Senator and two-time presidential candidate Bernie Sanders earned a nomination in the same Category in 2017, for the reading of Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In. Like Michelle Obama, he earned his second GRAMMY nomination at the 2024 GRAMMYs, in the same category as the victorious former first lady (Best Audio Book, Narration, And Storytelling Recording) for his book It's Ok To Be Angry About Capitalism. 

With two GRAMMY nominations (and one win) in 2024, it's clear that, even nearly 60 years on, political figures will continue to be prominent in the GRAMMY sphere. 

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Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

Looking for more GRAMMYs news? The 2024 GRAMMY nominations are here!

He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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By the time she released The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1998, singer and rapper Lauryn Hill had already scored two GRAMMY Awards for her work in the hip-hop trio Fugees. Her debut solo album — and only one to date — generated another seven wins, including Album Of The Year and Best R&B Album, which brought rapping to the mainstream in a way previously unseen. And in a male-dominated genre, this feat was achieved by a strong woman.

"This is crazy, ‘cuz this is hip-hop music!" Hill exclaimed when Whitney Houston presented her with the golden gramophone for Album Of The Year at the 41st GRAMMY Awards in 1999.

Hill set a number of records with Miseducation: The lead single "Doo Wop (That Thing)," released two weeks before the album, immediately went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Rap Songs chart. As a woman solo artist, she set long-held records for both charts with "Doo Wop (That Thing)." The album also entered the Billboard 200 chart in the top position, which no other debut from a woman had achieved before.

Miseducation contains 16 songs and is over 77 minutes in length — a long album by modern standards, yet fitting for Hill’s magnum opus. The album features guest appearances by Carlos Santana ("To Zion"), Mary J. Blige ("I Used to Love Him") and D’Angelo ("Nothing Even Matters"), bringing listeners back to the classroom for interludes where Hill schools the world on what a vanguard looks like.

And Lauryn Hill was at the vanguard in many ways. Several women who were popular in mainstream hip-hop at the time favored scantily clad outfits and scandalous lyrical content, but Hill projected the opposite in songs about love, faith, fortitude and empowerment. Throughout Miseducation, Hill talks to God and to the world, while simultaneously issuing warnings for those who have mistreated her.

Twenty-five years later, Miseducation still sounds vibrant, alive and current. That’s a testament to how influential Hill’s work continues to be not only in popular music, but in pop culture and womanhood — especially for Black women and single mothers.

"I think the piece as a whole communicates my personality, it is the culmination of my experiences, the sum total of what I had gone through at a certain point in my life," Hill told The Guardian in 2013. "To me it's like driving in a storm, it's hard to see where you're going. You're just praying to get out of it. But once you get out of it, you can look back and say; ‘Oh man, thank god!’ Give thanks, 'cos that's what I came out of. That's what that album feels like to me."

"Doo Wop (That Thing)," "Ex-Factor" and "Everything Is Everything" were each accompanied by masterful music videos that showed Hill as a woman who transcends the ages.

Speaking To Women

For women who were faithful hip-hop fans despite a prevailing tide of misogyny and death, as well as those facing single motherhood, Miseducation demonstrated a positive and empowered way forward. Instead of catering to the male gaze, the songs spotlight the joys and the struggles of women with rugged beats and lyrics that highlight her pure skill as an MC.

"Lost Ones" asserts her split from Fugees with the bravado of the best wordsmiths, while "I Used to Love Him" with Mary J. Blige samples the very macho "Ice Cream" by Wu-Tang Clan rappers Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Method Man and Cappadonna. And songs such as "Doo Wop (That Thing)" and "To Zion" showcase her powerful abilities as a singer, a potent accompaniment to her rhymes.

"Lauryn was a breath of fresh air, a hope and — unrealistically — a solution to what was wrong with hip-hop and its representation of women at the time," Joan Morgan, author of She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, said in a 2018 interview with VIBE. "I think people hold dear to it as a really exciting possible moment of change, which in some ways wore itself out and in some ways didn’t. It does more work than just an album…It’s like running into an old friend that you don’t necessarily keep in touch with all the time, but one you have really fond memories of."

"It wasn’t until much later that I realized how many women and girls were changed by the album," Thembisa S. Mshaka, who worked as the senior advertising copywriter for Sony Music during the album’s release, told Okayplayer. "I was shocked to learn how many of the women I’d meet throughout my career still had point-of-purchase flats of the cover, or posters, or ads ripped from magazines like Honey and VIBE on their walls. Lauryn was that role model for the hip-hop generation that Diana Ross was for the Motown generation."

The Pressure

Hill immediately faced monumental pressure from fans and the music business to produce more music after Miseducation. She later shared that the squeeze was taking a toll on her art. 

"I had to step away when I realized that for the sake of the machine, I was being way too compromised," she explained in a 2006 interview with ESSENCE. "I had to fight for an identity that doesn’t fit in one of their boxes. I’m a whole woman. And when I can’t be whole, I have a problem. By the end I was like, I’ve got to get out of here."

Though fans keep hope alive, Hill has never released another album, which makes Miseducation even more significant with the passage of time.

"People need to understand that the Lauryn Hill they were exposed to in the beginning was all that was allowed in that arena at that time," she continued to  ESSENCE. "There was much more strength, spirit and passion, desire, curiosity, ambition and opinion that was not allowed in a small space designed for consumer mass appeal and dictated by very limited standards."

Hill gave Miseducation her everything, and while she hasn’t released more albums, she has performed songs from the album live countless times over the years. She keeps the material fresh for herself by constantly creating new arrangements, tempos and vibes for the songs, and fans will be able to check that out when she celebrates the 25th anniversary of the album with special performances of the work at Roots Picnic in Philadelphia (June 3-4), Wolf Trap near Washington, D.C. (June 9), Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, IL (June 17) and ESSENCE Festival in New Orleans (June 29-July 3).

"People can be disappointed that we haven’t had more music from her, but I don’t know if they can blame her or be angry," Morgan added in her VIBE interview. "We’re not entitled to another album — I think audiences forget that," she remarks. "You can’t be angry with someone because they only gave you one of what you wanted." 

Responding To Persisting Controversy

A 1998 lawsuit filed against Hill by Johari Newton, Tejumold Newton, Vada Nobles and Rasheem Pugh alleged that the star didn’t credit their musical contributions to Miseducation. The suit was settled out of court, but accusations outside the legal arena have persisted over the years.

In 2018, Hill posted a written response to pianist Robert Glasper’s claims that she uses work from others without crediting them. In it, she acknowledged that it took the work of others to bring her vision to life, but asserts that she is the nucleus, and that she hired musicians to execute her specific ideas. 

"The album inspired many people, from all walks of life, because of its radical (intense) will to live and to express Love," she countered in the response, which was posted to Medium. "I appreciate everyone who was a part of it, in any and every capability. It wouldn’t have existed the way that it did without the involvement, skill, hard work, and talents of the artists/musicians and technicians who were a part of it, but it still required my vision, my passion, my faith, my will, my soul, my heart, and my story."

A quarter century later, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill remains timeless. It has been prominently sampled by major artists who followed, including Drake, Cardi B, Lizzo, H.E.R. and J.Cole. The beauty of this iconic album is that it may well spark the brain of the next musician who will make as much of an impact on music and humanity.

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