GW students will get not one, but three, big-name performances at this year’s Spring Fling Saturday.
Sage the Gemini and Matoma will co-headline the show, and hip-hop artist Isaiah Rashad will open, the Program Board announced Monday.
Sage the Gemini, Dominic Wynn Woods’stage name, is best known for club hits like “Red Nose,” “Gas Pedal” and “Now & Later.”
Matoma is a Norwegian-born DJ known for his single “All Night” with The Vamps and his covers of songs by artists like Notorious B.I.G. The DJ also has a song in the upcoming Angry Birds movie that will be released in May.
Isaiah Rashad, the rapper behind the album “The Sun’s Tirade” that hit number 17 on Billboard’s Top 200, will open the show. Rashad has toured with ScHoolboy Q and was named to XXL magazine’s Freshman Class with Chance The Rapper and Ty Dolla $ign in 2014.
This will be the first time since 2013, when Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Walk the Moon took the stage, that a student has not performed as the opening act.
Maddy Daley, the Program Board’s executive chair, said this year the group put out a survey in the fall to gauge what genre of artists GW students were interested in seeing perform at Fall Fest and Spring Fling. A majority of students voted for a rap artist but many students also expressed interest in an EDM artist or DJ, specifically for Spring Fling, she said.
“We did the survey because we really want to give the students what they want to hear,” Daley said in an interview.
Last year, the Program Board originally scheduled rapper Action Bronson to perform at Spring Fling. After widespread criticism from students for the rapper’s misogynistic lyrics like in his song “Consensual Rape,” Program Board promoted local rapper GoldLink from the opener to the headliner and brought local DJs Lean Quatifah, a current senior at GW, and DJ Manila Killa, a former George Mason University student, to the stage instead.
Doors to the free concert open at 4 p.m. in University Yard where the Program Board will be offering food from vendors like Domino’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and Roti. The three musical acts will start performances at 6 p.m.
