As I sit here typing this, as a 20-year-old junior in college, I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I somehow made my way to Rolling Loud Miami when I was just 13 and in eighth grade.
I was a very Type A kid, for some reason. Maybe it’s because my mom always said “If you present me with a full plan, I’ll consider it,” and I took her offer seriously. With that, it only makes sense that when I somehow got an ad for Rolling Loud Miami in April 2018, I immediately started planning in hopes that my mom would say yes.
If you don’t believe me … see for yourself.
And somehow, after showing my mom that outlined plan on the notes app of my phone, she agreed. On one condition: I find a friend to come along with me. Yeah, my mom wasn’t going to go with me to the festival … but as long as someone else did (knowing that my friends were all around the same age as me), it was okay.
You would think that my plan would fall through after that, because who lets their freshly-teenage daughter fly to another state for a rap music festival? My mom apparently, but still.
Well, somehow Michelle’s dad was cool with it too. It was too easy!
I’m imagining 13-year-old me right now, sitting in her room figuring out what to wear to Rolling Loud. I can see myself talking about the festival with my 14-year-old friend.
I’ll admit, the weekend I spent in Miami for the festival was not at all like the glitz and glamour you usually see out of music festival goers. I wore the same spaghetti-strap tank-tops I would get dress coded for in class to the festival.
We walked to Denny’s because the Sonic was out of cheese. I ate steak and corn off the cob.
We sat on the curb of a Walmart eating powdered donuts and drinking Sunny D while waiting for my mom and her friend to pick us up.
We destroyed our phones on the third and final day of the festival because it was pouring rain.
We bed rotted in our hotel and ordered $40 worth of Pizza Hut, rather than exploring Miami or going to the beach.
Best of all, though: we had an unforgettable time. This is one of those experiences that I’ll hold onto forever.
Would I do it again? No way. The following summer, I went to Lyrical Lemonade’s Summer Smash, so I got it out of me once more and called it quits.
Would I go back just to relive it, though? Definitely.