Photos by Jenny Watts
Thursday, hundreds of fans stormed Club Elan in anticipation of one of its biggest performers yet: Waka Flocka Flame. He was scheduled to begin at midnight, but when he didn’t show, the crowd started to get restless and impatient. 50 minutes later the energy that was almost nonexistent until seconds later he suddenly blew through the roof.
Despite his fashionably late arrival to the stage, there’s no denying the energy a performer like Flame brings out of a drunk and exhausted crowd. Hands reached out to tussle with the long locks that shook back and forth as if the power of his music depended on it. He spent the majority of the first song greeting and shaking hands with a lot of the fans instead of actually rapping. A trade-off I’m sure no one had an issue with.
He got even closer to the edge of the stage where more people could reach him. When it couldn’t get any wilder, he jumps down the stage into a mosh pit right in the middle of the crowd. It lasted for at least a few songs, which more than made up for the lateness.
I enjoyed seeing fans that could recite every word to his songs, girls that screamed their lungs out if they got to touch his forearm, and even the crowd surfers that clearly never practiced crowd surfing. Any concertgoer that knows nothing of Flame’s music wouldn’t be able to fight the urge to jump up and down.
The Atlanta native is a Top 100 Billboard artist who has worked other major artists such as Lil Wayne and Ne-Yo, so imagine my surprise when I learned that he was the one to contact Club Elan about performing there. I found it odd that a hip-hop artist would make an effort to perform at a club that mostly plays electronic dance music (EDM), but according to Jay Trikha, who handles promotion for the club, Flame is in a transitional phase between hip-hop and EDM. This explains his breaks of electronic music in between his own sets.
Trikha has high hopes for the future of the club.
“Club Elan is becoming a really important name right now. Ever since more and more popular artists come to perform here,” said Trikha. “We plan on having one of the top 10 DJ’s come later in September, but that’s classified for now.”
This, of course, paints an even brighter future for the club itself, which is celebrating it’s one year anniversary at the end of May. Flame’s performance followed an already impressive string of performers since the club opened.
“We started with TJR. Then we had MakJ, a few Latin artists, DJ Capone, and of course, Wocka Flocka right now. Saturday we’ll have K Theory, and they’re one of the most popular trap artists right now,” said Trikha.
Apparently, the club has no plans of slowing down.
For more information on these upcoming events, visit Club Elan’s website or Facebook page.
Nile Pitts is a Writing major from Atlanta, Georgia. He spends most of his free time writing music, creating content for his YouTube channel and researching ways to one day become Spider-man.
