Mission Creek, the annual Iowa City fest among several downtown venues + Hancher Auditorium is upon us! On Thursday, the fest is entirely housed at Hancher, and then for the next two days it moves to the Ped Mall for shows at Gabe's, Riverside Theatre and The Englert Theatre. If you're coming to this fest to discover your new favorite hip-hop act, be prepared to spend a lot of time at Gabe's. Tickets are still available for $65 for students and $120 for non-students.
Before we get into the music, if you're headed into Iowa City from out of town and feeling lost about where these venues are in relationship to each other, where you can easily park and walk, and where you can grab a bite, "expand map details" and save our Mission Creek Map to your phone!
Hanif Abdurraqib
Thursday, April 4, 6:00 p.m.
Hancher
The preeminent tastemaker of our generation, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib finds beauty in everything: his hometown of Columbus, OH, basketball and music of all sorts, writing eloquently about everyone from A Tribe Called Quest to Carly Rae Jepsen. While he’ll likely be spinning tales of love and basketball from his newest release There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension on the first day of Mission Creek, we’re holding out hope Hanif will share his thoughts on some of the many great musical acts in town for the weekend. Long an explorer, scholar and critic of music, Abdurraqib found himself at the center of it last year: providing narration for McKinley Dixon’s 2023 album Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?. “I’m his first [feature], that’s what he said, besides his self-made mixtapes that he was making,” Dixon said of his friend at during an interview at last year’s Mission Creek. “He might be on the next [album]. Honestly, I might just keep it going, it’s a cool thing.”
Strangers of Necessity
Friday, April 5, 7:30 p.m.
Gabe’s
An exciting, rare appearance from veterans of both the Iowa and Chicago hip-hop scenes, Fooch the MC and CoryaYo, AKA Strangers of Necessity. This pair manages to keep the old school happy while continuing to innovate in the boom bap space, some ten after the release of their seminal 2014 album Tangerine Avenue, which paid homage to luminaries like Black Moon (“Dunk$ (He Got Props)”), A Tribe Called Quest (“Bonita’s Dream”) and J Dilla (everything). The duo’s 2020 album Vibe Theory, released during the thick of the pandemic, is massaged with Memphis-style spices and plenty of love for Three 6 Mafia.
Armand Hammer
Friday, April 5, 10:45 p.m.
Gabe’s
When you think about it, Armand Hammer is a truly Mission Creek-ass booking. They’re off-the-beaten-path, rugged and wholly unique, penning bars that sound like they were quilled onto ancient parchment. It’s industrial rap, but it’s also epochal, often times majestic and morbid. We at Studio One are dying to meet the gruesome twosome behind game-changing albums like Shrines, Haram (produced by The Alchemist), Paraffin and Rome. E L U C I D and billy woods’ critically-acclaimed, fifth studio album We Buy Diabetic Test Strips was deemed by many a hip-hop head: the best album of 2023. Judge for yourself on Friday when the New York noisemakers turn up the Gabe’s stage, following fellow hip-hop duo Strangers of Necessity at 7:30 p.m. and Iowa City rocker Anthony Worden at 9 p.m.
YXNG RASKAL
Saturday, April, 6, 2:30 p.m.
Trumpet Blossom Cafe
Kicking off music on Saturday, Iowa City’s YXNG RASKAL will break in the Trumpet Blossom Cafe. Her debut album, and only release to date, SPLIT/TING is a hyperphonk headf-ck for the terminally online. Pumped to see “LiNDSEY GRAHAM,” “FEEBEE BRiDGERS,” “ACiD_ADVENTURE.mp3” and “BiTCHMADE” performed in the real world, but even more excited at the prospect of hearing new music from the hottest new avant-garde punk rapper outta IC. Mostly looking forward to seeing staff try to go about business-as-usual at the cafe as if YXNG RASKAL isn’t doing “PRETTY BOY SH-T” in the middle of the lunch rush.
Nadah El Shazly
Saturday, April 6, 8:45 p.m.
Riverside Theatre
This one’s for the producers. Though not explicitly hip-hop, one’s mind can’t help but wander listening to Nadah El Shazly’s bendy Mediterranean soundscapes — thinking up ways to slice and chop the Egyptian sound artist’s vocals and cinematic scoring for rapper ears. Exciting, eerie, entrancing - anyone with a MIDI keyboard or an unquenchable thirst for adventure must surely find a seat.
Sqvce
Saturday, April 6, 9:00 p.m.
Gabe’s
We’re no stranger to Space here at Studio One. His out-of-this-world FlySpace III performance with fellow Us Vs. Them rapper FlyLife on the IPR stage at 80/35 last year was just one of Space’s many 2023 achievements, in addition to the release of his second solo album bad news and the long-awaited UVT group tape UVT4EVER. He’s also no stranger to Mission Creek, where he joined FlyLife on the Gabe’s stage just last year. Clearly the audience and festival team liked what they saw. The uber-chill Des Moines hitmaker will surely keep the Saturday 9 p.m. crowd at Gabe’s bumping ahead of Mission Creek weekend’s final act, Canadian techno experts Pelada at 11 p.m.
