Macklemore to headline Little 500

When ESPN College GameDay came to IU Feb. 2 for the Michigan men’s basketball game, each commercial break ended with a familiar song: “The Heist” by hip-hop duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.

Now, the pair is headed to Assembly Hall for the official Little 500 concert April 17, presented by Union Board.

“Assembly Hall is a place where people are used to celebrating and having a great time,” said Doug Booher, director of the IU Auditorium who helped Union Board organize the event. “We’re going to move it from a place where everyone loves to watch basketball to a place where everyone can enjoy a great concert.”  

Rapper and Seattle native Macklemore has gained recent popularity for his songs “Thrift Shop” and “Same Love,” written in collaboration with producer Ryan Lewis. Macklemore and Lewis recently performed on Saturday Night Live and are currently on tour promoting their debut album, “The Heist.”

“We’ve been surveying for over a year now on the kind of music students want to see, and the overwhelming majority came back with hip-hop,” said Erin Brown, director of external affairs for Union Board. “We felt very strongly that we were answering those requests by bringing a top 40 pop and hip-hop crossover.”

Two other hip-hop artists, 2013 Grammy nominee Wale and longtime underground rap artist Talib Kweli, will also perform.

“In terms of bringing the hip-hop genre, we hit all corners with the three artists we decided on,” Brown said.

After studying recent attendance numbers of Macklemore performances, Union Board and IU Auditorium directors determined that Assembly Hall, which seats about 15,000 for a concert venue, would be optimal not only to draw in high attendance numbers but to keep ticket prices low.

“If an artist costs $100,000, and we only have 3,200 tickets to sell to make that money back, tickets are going to be very expensive,” said Asher Wittenberg, Union Board concerts director. “To put Macklemore in the auditorium would have been unfair to students, because prices would have had to be well over $100 just for us to make back our initial investment.”

IU Auditorium, which seats 3,200, was the venue for last year’s Little 500 concert featuring Sublime with Rome. After receiving generally negative feedback from students, Wittenberg and Brown said they feel this year’s choice will be more appealing.

“In terms of Sublime with Rome, we ran into a few issues with that,” Wittenberg said. “Their average draw across the country is 1,200 per show, and I think they might not have been the right fit for this campus.”

Though Wittenberg is optimistic that Macklemore will draw in high ticket sales, he said the inability of the past Union Board to book an artist earlier in the year made finding a popular act so late in the year difficult.

“Because Union Board directors switch in January, there’s a gap of getting to know your situation,” Wittenberg said. “It takes me a month to getting used to being an actual director, and that’s a month that could be used to plan a show. Not to say that the past concerts director did a bad job, but this is how it’s gone in the past. I want to change that.”

Since spring is a common time of year for musicians to tour overseas, Union Board’s options of available artists were limited.

“Our top five weren’t in the United States, so we had to go back to the drawing board several times, which is why the announcement came so late,” Brown said. “We were lucky to find an artist as popular as Mack at the last minute.”

While Union Board is working with less funding than past years and still living under the shadow of the highly popular Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj Little 500 concert from 2011, Brown and Wittenberg hope this year’s lineup represents a successful, yet realistic, booking.

“If we want to bring in someone like Kanye West, and it’s coming out of our budget, students are going to pay at least $100 for a ticket,” Wittenberg said. “If they don’t want to pay that much, they have to understand we’re doing all we can to make it affordable.”