Katie Bain | Billboard

HARD Summer is returning to downtown Los Angeles in a big way. On Tuesday (March 7), the festival announced a 2023 lineup featuring a back-to-back set from Skrillex and Four Tet (fresh off their sold out February Madison Square Garden show with Fred again..), along with b2bs from Kaskade and John Summit (who’ve previously worked together via Summit’s remix of Kx5’s “Escape”), and longtime pals Diplo and BLOND:ISH.

HARD Summer is the most hip-hop-focused event from producer Insomniac Events, and in 2023 will feature performances by genre legends Kid Cudi, Ludacris, 21 Savage and Fat Joe. The lineup will also feature Dillon Francis, Bicep, Jungle, Giolì & Assia, Mija, Boys Noize, Black Coffee, Ninajirachi, The Martinez Brothers and many more.

The festival takes place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Exposition Park and BMO Stadium in downtown Los Angeles Aug. 5-6. Tickets go on sale this Friday, March 10, at 10 a.m. PT.

HARD Summer 2023 marks the festival’s return to its original home in downtown Los Angeles after a decade in the Inland Empire. HARD launched downtown in 2008 as an underground warehouse party from longstanding electronic events producer Gary Richards, then growing into downtown’s L.A. State Historic Park amidst the height of the EDM explosion, drawing huge crowds and headliners including Skrillex, deadmau5, Justice and many more.

As electronic music gained a bad reputation in Los Angeles and beyond amidst a flurry of drug-related deaths at electronic festivals including HARD, dance events were pushed events out of the city, with HARD relocating first to Whittier Narrows, then the Pomona Fairplex, then to sites in Fontana and Bakersfield.

HARD Summer is now produced by Insomniac Events, also the producer of Electric Daisy Carnival. This latter festival that also has roots in downtown Los Angeles, with the first major iterations of EDC happening at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. This location changed following the death of a 15-year-old girl at Electric Daisy Carnival at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 2010, and the indictment of founder-promoter Pasquale Rotella on felony charges in connection to the venue, sparking EDC’s move to Las Vegas, which has become its spiritual home over the last 12 years. (Rotella was cleared of all felony charges in 2016).

The return of a major dance festival to downtown, and to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum specifically, marks a new era for dance music in Los Angeles.

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