Dope Entertainment Presents Their Second Rolling Loud Hip-Hop Festival In Miami

Dope Entertainment is hosting its second-annual Rolling Loud hip-hop festival on May 6 and 7 at Mana Wynwood, 2217 N.W. 5th Ave., located in the heart of Miami’s Wynwood Art District.

The line-up boasts some of the hottest names in hip-hop with Future and Young Thug headlining, along with performances from Lil B, Curren$y, Kodak Black and many more.

Tickets can be purchased at http://www.rollingloud.com/

The two-day festival will be an all-day indoors and outdoors event with simultaneous performances on three stages. With fans planning to attend from all over the world, it is expected that the number of attendees will double from last year’s show and bring in approximately 11,000 guests.

The preparation and organization for this year’s show began months in advance. The venue contract, sponsors, and the headliner, Future, was booked since December, allowing ample time to adjust if any obstacles arose. The remainder of the acts on the line-up were booked after Future, based on the their availability and whether they fit the brand’s objective to book musicians from the new school, new era hip-hop.

The founders of the company, Matt Zingler, 27, and Tariq Cherif, 26, put emphasis on Dope, Delivering Outstanding Professional Entertainment to fans, with no two experiences being the same. Rolling Loud was the company’s first official festival taking place on February 28, 2015 at Soho Studios.

Between booking artists, finding a venue, rescheduling and securing sponsors, the duo were able to pull of an extraordinary line-up, including artists such as Schoolboy Q, Juicy J, Travi$ Scott and A$AP Ferg.

“Everyday we were adding artists and we had never done this before, so everyday there were challenges like permitting with the city, our occupancy, and police, and the fire marshals, and all this stuff we just never dealt with before that you have to deal with when you do a festival,” Cherif said. “But it was a rush, it was scary, because it was our biggest event yet and a million things could go wrong, and a lot of things went wrong, but even more things went right.”

Although last year’s event was complicated by an unexpected thunderstorm, and performances were cut short to allow all acts to perform, it was still deemed a success.

Dope Entertainment has been a major influence in cultivating Florida’s music scene, catering to the rap and hip-hop market. Zingler and Cherif met at Pine Crest school and have been friends since the fourth grade. After attending college for a while, they both realized that school wasn’t for them, but knew they would need to find a way to provide for themselves. In 2010, they saw a void in the market for quality hip-hop events. Since no one was booking their favorite rappers, they established Dope Entertainment.

“We took a chance and were like hey, let’s try to create a business and book shows because we saw people doing it, and realistically it worked, but it was just a lot of losses entailed and tied in with the development of our company,” Zingler said. “We were in college, we wanted to be guaranteed to have something, we always aspired to be young entrepreneurs. Like we were always selling t-shirts in high school or throwing parties to make money, and it was just something we were good at.”

However, in the beginning it was challenging for the company to build their brand and find an artist willing to take a risk on them. They booked Rick Ross for their first show at Tallahassee in October, but got a small audience because another company falsely promoted they would have Ross at their event. Losing all of their money, they went back to the drawing board.

“We could’ve quit after that but you know ‘the true measure of a man is not what they do when they’re up, it’s when they’re down. So we got up and did what we had to do to get money back up and we went back to our original plan. We didn’t want to do after parties, we wanted to do concerts. We’re not party promoters.”

Then, they booked Curren$y for three shows and began building solid connections with artists and venues. With each show, Dope Entertainment gained more fans and grew as a company.

In August 2015, they produced Take Off Landing Festival, a multi-media, multi-venue festival in Tampa to rival the likes of SXSW. Later that year in September, they announced their first nationwide tour, Year Of The Savage, starring Robb Bank$, hitting 21 cities.     

Statistically, Dope Entertainment has grown 75 percent in the past year. The company currently manages artists with intentions to expand their roster, offers PR services for individuals aspiring to do music, as well as produces concerts. In the future, fans can expect more Florida shows, more nationwide tours, more festivals, and Dope Ent. California edition.

To find out more information about Dope Entertainment and upcoming events, visit http://www.dopeent.com/