The iTunes festival heads into Day 19 today as Kendrick Lamar and his Black Hippy brethren Schoolboy Q take the stage. Lamar's debut album "Good Kid, m.A.A.d City" launched him into consideration among top MCs, and more recently, a tossed off guest appearance on Big Sean's song "Control" broke the ice beneath the feet of rappers everywhere and unleashed a flood of diss tracks for the tongue-in-cheek trash talk it aimed at his friends and rappers from New York City. ""I think [rappers] just took it as a challenge," Lamar said recently in an interview with Arsenio Hall. "But you know the whole point of the thing is not just the challenge for the moment, challenge for the whole extension of this Hip Hop culture. Not just off the hype, but what we going to do after, what we going to do to challenge ourselves, how we're going to make better records, how we're going to push forward and innovate the next generation coming up rather than just sticking in the moment of the verse. That was the whole point of the joint and I hope everybody really gets the idea behind it."
Tomorrow, September 20, Primal Scream and Skinny Girl Diet will bring their alternative and riot grrrl noise to the iTunes stage. But there's a whole host of other can't-miss performers on deck in the days following that. Performances for the rest of the month include: September 21 (HAIM); September 22 (Ellie Goulding); September 23 (Jessie J); September 24 (Robin Thicke); September 25 (Pixies); September 26 (Tinie Tempah); September 27 (Dizzee Rascal); September 28 (John Legend); September 29 (Justin Timberlake); September 30 (Katy Perry, Iggy Azalea, Icona Pop).
With a whole month's worth of artists of a broad range of genres playing the festival, it'd be natural to wonder why Apple is going to all of this trouble. Fortune's Jim Dalrymple addressed the question in an article he penned for CNN. "So what is Apple getting out of running iTunes Festival?" Dalrymple wrote. "As subtle as the message is, I think Apple is telling the world that music still matters to them. The iTunes Store is what helped Apple become the company it is today-the iPods and selling music online transformed Apple into a household name that made consumer products, not just Macs."
Those who are looking to catch the two Compton artists live as they perform at the Roundhouse in London can do so in a variety of ways. If you've got an Apple TV, hit up the pre-installed app called "iTunes festival", which will let you live-stream the concert when the artists go on stage at 4 p.m. EST. Don't have an Apple TV? No need to fret. You can still watch the concert using your iOS devices, which you can use to download the free app here to watch the live stream. Don't have that, either? No sweat: just make sure you've got access to a computer, though. You can catch performances streaming live by downloading iTunes and clicking here to use the Apple software to watch.
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