MINNEAPOLIS _ The biggest music festival in the Twin Cities for many years and usually the biggest all-hip-hop fest in the country, Soundset has been surprisingly called off for 2020 as its organizers at Rhymesayers Entertainment hope to instead focus on their upcoming 25th anniversary celebration.
"We made the difficult decision to call this year off in order to assess what Soundset will become in the new decade," Rhymesayers representatives said in a press release with co-promoter Rose Presents.
Attendance slipped from about 35,000 people to around 25,000 people at last year's Soundset, with a lineup featuring Lil Wayne, Run the Jewels and G-Eazy alongside local hosts Atmosphere. That organizers were even able to get the notoriously unreliable Lil Wayne to take the stage _ and even nearly on time _ underlined the festival's impressive reputation, as did the previous year's feat of bringing all the Wu-Tang Clan members together again.
A sign of how long Soundset has dominated Memorial Day weekend in the Twin Cities, the one-day, three-stage festival was first held in the parking lot outside the long-demolished Metrodome in 2008.
That inaugural festival drew about 12,000 fans with a lineup mostly made up of Rhymesayers-branded acts, also including Dilated Peoples, Aesop Rock, Brother Ali and Eyedea & Abilities _ the latter of whom's Mikey "Eyedea" Larsen was memorialized in one of the festival's more standout years, 2011, seven months after his death at age 28.
Soundset grew in size nearly every year and relocated twice, first to Canterbury Park Festival Field in Shakopee _ an unlikely host city location that earned a sarcastic shout-out on "Saturday Night Live" _ and then to the fairgrounds' sprawling midway area in 2016.
Along the way, Soundset became an early booster to some of hip-hop's biggest names before they broke big, including Lizzo, Macklemore, Logic, Travis Scott and Wiz Khalifa.
"Together, we created something special," the announcement continued. "To our fans, artists and hometown, we invite you to join us as we begin the next chapter in the Rhymesayers story."
The Minneapolis-based record label _ co-founded in 1995 by Slug and Ant of the duo Atmosphere along with president Brent "Siddiq" Sayers _ hosted a big 20th anniversary celebration in December 2015 with most of the artists who've been on its roster. Stay tuned for details on its silver anniversary plans.
Slug relayed the announcement to fans via Twitter with this message, which had more of an air of finality to it: "The sun sets on Soundset. Thanks to the community for making a dozen parties with us!"
Atmosphere's longtime tour manager, Jason "J-Bird" Cook, became the behind-the-scenes force who made Soundset go every year as Rhymesayers' chief operating officer.
Unreachable for comment Friday, Cook explained to the Star Tribune before the very first Soundset how the festival was modeled after events of the same name hosted by Rhymesayers at First Avenue in the late-1990s, when Minnesota indie-rap was still a new and largely novel idea.
"I think it's cool to use the Soundset name again," he said in 2008. "It shows how far Rhymesayers has come in 10 years, and hopefully we'll keep using the name and build it up even bigger."
A Forbes article on the festival in 2016 singled out Cook for creating "ever-increasing success at a time when many other similar-sized festivals have either gone defunct or are plagued with cancellations."
Rhymesayers also staged Soundset every year with the help of concert vets Randy Levy and Gene Hollister of Rose Presents, who promoted many of the Warped Tours, Ozzfests and other big outdoor bashes in or near the Twin Cities over several decades.
Coincidentally or not, Levy was also a co-founder of the country music camp-out We Fest in Detroit Lakes, which for decades ran as the biggest music festival in all of Minnesota. But We Fest has gone through ownership changes and slumping attendance figures in recent years and has also been called off for 2020.
