Quite possibly the only festival to rise from a mispronunciation in a lyric will return in 2023, as T-Pain’s Wiscansin Fest will hit the Rave on June 10 for what the Tiny Desk maestro is calling “Escape from Wiscansin Fest.”
The second (annual?) event sounds like it’ll be as star-studded as the original, which counted Lil Jon and Juvenile among its 20 acts. For 2023, Chance The Rapper and Nigerian rapper Tobi Lou will co-headline, with 19 more artists yet to be announced.
ESCAPE FROM WISCANSIN 🛸 This summer, your space gets INVADED starting at the second annual @WiscansinFest on June 10 in Milwaukee! The Invasion will be spreading in select cities across the country 👽 Presale starts Thursday and tickets are officially on sale Friday… pic.twitter.com/8bSFOIKIR9
— T-Pain (@TPAIN) April 11, 2023
Although Wiscansin Fest didn’t exist until 2022, its roots run deep — all the way back to T-Pain’s 2008 track “Can’t Believe It.” In addition to the vocal manipulation he was known for at the time, T-Pain also did some pronunciation manipulation to pull off a rhyme in the first verse:
I can put you in the log cabin, somewhere in Aspen
Girl ain't nothing to the pain, ain't trickin' if you got it, what you asking … for
Put you in the mansion, somewhere in Wiscansin
Like I said, ain't nothing to the pain, we can change that last name, what’s happening?
Ten years later, we got Wiscansin University, which appears to still be up and running (sadly not the case for all our local institutions). Then, finally, came Wiscansin Fest — a curated concert event featuring a two-hour performance from the host and an official proclamation from Mayor Cavalier Johnson declaring June 11 T-Pain Day in the city of Milwaukee.
After all that, how could we not do this again in 2023? Tickets will be available later this week, first via an internet presale that starts at 10 a.m. Thursday and then to the general public at 10 a.m. Friday. You can find more information on The Rave/Eagles Club website.
