Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) announced the headlining artists for this year’s Spring Stampede: T-Pain and Jai Wolf.
Faheem Rashad Najm, more commonly known as T-Pain, is a two-time Grammy award-winning rap artist from Tallahassee, Fla. He is best known for his songs “Buy U a Drank,” “Up Down” and “Bartender.”
And Sajeeb Saha is the creator of the indie-electronic Jai Wolf project. Saha, originally from Bangladesh and currently based in New York, created a series of official remixes of songs by artists including Melanie Martinez, Dirty South, Alesso and ODESZA before dropping his debut single “Indian Summer” in 2015.
Box the Oxford, an indie surf-rock band composed of Cal Poly students, is set to open Spring Stampede on June 4 after having won Battle of the Bands. The group is composed of drummer and electrical engineering junior Eric Osborn, lead vocalist, guitarist and mechanical engineering junior Andrew Krippner, bassist and mechanical engineering junior Davis Muxlow and guitarist and computer science junior Colton Stapper.
Box the Oxford is set to release its first album this coming October, according to a previous Mustang News article.
Business administration junior Ryan Viggiano, the musical entertainment coordinator for ASI, said he’s excited to see the high contrast in genres coming together at one venue.
“I think it’s going to be a great show,” he said. “It’s going to give students a chance to reminisce from from when students were in high school or middle school — because that’s when T-Pain first took off — but also see newer artists … so it’s going to have this element of having a really cool dynamic.”
There had been some discrepancy regarding the ticket price. This year’s ticket is set at $10, while the cost of last year’s admission was $5.
Viggiano explained the jump in price was set in place so they could attract bigger-name artists, and was something that students had agreed to in a survey several months prior.
“People were willing to pay upward of $20 to $30, so we’re hoping a $5 increase isn’t too dramatic,” he said.
Because students seemed to generally support hip-hop and EDM in interest surveys, Viggiano said ASI will likely continue to look for similar artists.
“We’ll definitely try to incorporate that in our selection,” he said. “But if that’s not what people want, we encourage … for people to go on and vote so people have a voice in who comes to Cal Poly.”
