At 5:20 p.m. on May 11, Hull Gate faced a throng of college students dressed in shorts, bikini tops, and Hawaiian-print tees. Fresh from the darties across campus, students were ready for Summer Breeze. This year’s performance featured indie rock singer-songwriter Indigo De Souza, new wave band COIN, and rapper NLE Choppa. Their variety and talent brought the full spectrum of students to Hutchinson Courtyard for an exhilarating night of music.
Beginning her set around 5:45 p.m., Indigo De Souza played for a sparse crowd. However, her musical talent and stage presence enraptured the barricade holders and early arrivals that crowded around Hutchinson Courtyard for her set. De Souza introduced her performance as playing “sad songs for forty-five minutes,” and that description held true to the set’s character. The artist may have been soft-spoken, but her solo performance was packed with a depth of emotion that carried across the outdoor stage. De Souza’s music draws on deeply emotive themes of nature, mental health, and death. This set pulled at the heartstrings of the early birds in attendance.
After De Souza’s set came a rush of students ready to watch COIN. The band’s 2017 album How Will You Know If You Never Try had been a hit for students during their middle school years. Since then, they’ve released three further albums. However, it was clear that their 2017 hits were what drew the crowd. Lead singer Chase Lawrence commanded the entire stage for the performance, dancing, singing from atop the drum set, and even climbing the stage’s support beams. Drummer Ryan Winnen, guitarist Joe Memmel, and touring bassist Matt Martin accompanied Lawrence. COIN taught the audience call-and-response lyrics and encouraged engagement from the crowd, an aid for past fans and those audience members just waiting for NLE Choppa.
The band has been playing together since 2012. Their songs are dance-worthy, high-energy jams that contain deep emotional complexity. From the rebuttal of materialism in “Cemetery” (“He had it all / but he couldn’t buy love”) to the themes of technology and disaffection in 2022’s Uncanny Valley album, the band inflects each song with deeper critiques of society. Lawrence clearly wrote stories true to his heart. At the culmination of “Youuu,” after pleading a partner to never move on from him, the singer stood still, his loud, ragged breaths the only sounds. Balancing intense lyrics with infectious rhythms, COIN’s set provided a perfect transition from the soulful music of De Souza to the fiery songs of NLE Choppa.
In the hour-long interlude between COIN and NLE Choppa’s performances, students entered in swarms, growing the crowd from a comfortable cluster to a mass of students pushing towards the barricade. After an extended wait, NLE Choppa came on to boisterous applause. In a matter of seconds, I was pushed from my barricade position to the sixth row by screaming students. At only 21 years old, the rapper is an instant sensation. In only a matter of years, he’s delivered hit after hit—from the danceable “Shotta Flow” to the viral “SLUT ME OUT.”
His performance can only be described as an out-of-body experience. Hundreds of bodies became one mass, hungrily responding to the rapper’s prompts to light up phone torches, shoot middle fingers at other audience members, or throw bras on stage. NLE Choppa, as well as being a rising musical talent, has a unique Gen Z unseriousness. Mid-set, the rapper laid down on a mattress, tucking himself under the covers. “Wake him up!” his hype man yelled into a microphone. Only after the crowd exhausted their vocal cords yelling did he finally rise. The rapper brought his parents, known by fans as Momma and Poppa Choppa, to perform his iconic “slut walk” dance, threw his shirt into the crowd, and brought a security guard onstage to freestyle dance.
After an incredible hour of music and revelry, NLE Choppa danced offstage with the same swagger that permeated the entire set. The crowd rushed out of Hutchinson Courtyard with the same urgency that they streamed into it. As students returned home in the warm night, they could spot a group of girls running across the quad with NLE Choppa’s muscle tee, students sharing bagged tamales, and groups of frat brothers rapping, “School of hard knocks, let me take you to class,” a lyric from NLE Choppa’s song “Camelot.” Thus was the culmination of an unforgettable Summer Breeze.
