The billowing cloud of smoke known as The High Road Summer Tour 2016 featuring Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa wafted into Austin on Sunday, August 21st to a nearly capacity crowd at the Austin 360 Amphitheater. As the 26th of 33 total dates on the tour, the well-packaged rolling carnival was in its Texas leg before wrapping things up in the recreational havens of Oregon and Washington State in September. Equal parts stale blunt smoke and high-tech marijuana advertisements, the event was a place for friends to come together, light up their greenest, and sing along to hip-hop anthems and future classics.
The young crowd, where the oldest person was probably in diapers when Snoop dropped Doggystyle, began streaming in around 7 p.m. — passing vendors hawking Snoop merch, blunt wrappers, and popular plastic necklaces that held LED-lighted marijuana leave-shaped pendants. With a name like the High Road, the tour was deliberately aimed at the cannabis-smoking subculture which is increasingly becoming mainstream. Although not yet a legal state, Austin loves their marijuana just as much as Snoop and Wiz. Just go to any concert in town and you would think you were in a legal state. At this point in his illustrious rap career, Snoop Dogg has become more of a brand than a musician, even launching his own marijuana media company Merry Jane, in addition to Leafs By Snoop, a cannabis retailer in Colorado. Putting out albums like 2016’s Coolaid is a way for him to show face in public and to put on events where the screens are filled with commercial after commercial endorsing up-and-coming artists and marijuana-related products.
Kicking off the lineup of quick 30-minute sets was Casey Veggies, a 23-year-old rapper from Los Angeles, who recently released his debut studio album Live & Grow in 2015. With cut-up blue jeans, a Wiz shirt, and a ball cap, the young artist got the vibe going, only to be killed by the lack of music between transitions leaving a lot of people scratching their heads and then grabbing another beer. Come on Snoop, with multiple DJs on stage, the music should never stop!
Veggies was followed by fellow Californian, R&B artist Jhene Aiko. If the first- or second-hand smoke didn’t stain your clothes by that point in the show, then the bubbles from her set probably did. It was refreshing to see Aiko backed up a live band — a welcomed trend in the hip-hop world.
As the sun began to set, the crowd began to gather tighter in the pit as they waited for their favorite artists. Kevin Gates, a Wiz Khalifa protégé, quickly worked the crowd with his deep vocals, literally spitting out tunes from his 2016 release Islah, “Really, Really” and “2 phones,” while the strobe lights blinded the crowd.
During a long drawn-out intermission where the “green” room was probably stretched to its limits, fog machines went into high gear almost completely obscuring the stage in a misty haze. All of a sudden the massive monitors showed a cartoon skit featuring a bobble-headed Snoop and Wiz. Then, one of the smoothest men in the business, Snoop D-O-Double-G, took the stage with the longest blunt I’ve ever seen in my life, a 10-inch-long cigar wedged between his bony fingers. He swaggered to the front the stage with the blunt in one hand and a gold microphone in the other and took a moment to survey the crowd. After a long toke, he put his leg up on a speaker and blew it out at his followers. Throughout the night, Snoop delivered hit after hit, including “Smoke Weed Everyday,” “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang,” “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” along with covers of Notorious B.I.G and 2Pac.
After Snoop made his presence known on the first two songs, the next generation of hip-hop weed enthusiasts, Wiz Khalifa, appeared, running from one side of the stage to the other performing “Bake Sale” to a pumped up crowd. Sure, Snoop and Wiz both love to blow smoke, but the foil between young versus old rapper and laid-back versus high-energy made this duo really work. Wiz’s hits “Ink My Whole Body” and “Kush Ups” resonated with the young crowd, and it was clear that Wiz is advancing the foundation that Snoop has laid over the years. During their nearly 90-minute set, the duo had fun smoking blunt after blunt, making it rain dollar bills, and throwing props like six-foot-long inflatable cigars into the crowd. While Wiz left a tear in many a bloodshot eye with his hit “When I See You Again,” the anthem “Young, Wild, & Free,” brought the vibe back up, ending the show with euphoric high.