Megan Thee Stallion & Lauryn Hill Headlining the 2023 Essence Festival

Megan Thee Stallion at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2021
Megan Thee Stallion at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2021. Photo by Jay L Clendenin/Los Angeles Times/Shutterstock (11799890w)

Essence Festival has been celebrating Black excellence for decades, and it will continue doing so this summer. Ms. Lauryn Hill and Megan Thee Stallion will be in charge of headlining the upcoming rap-centric edition of the landmark New Orleans festival.

This year’s Essence Fest will return to New Orleans, Louisiana between June 29 and July 3, and it will be worth waiting for. Megan Thee Stallion will be headlining alongside Ms. Lauryn Hill, who’ll celebrate the 25th anniversary of her game-changing album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill at this year’s festival.

Vice President of Essence Festival, Hakeem Holmes, also pointed out that the upcoming edition will be held in honor of HipHop50, the ’50th anniversary of hip-hop.

“We couldn’t think of a better way to honor the contributions that genre has made on global culture and the impressions that these artists and their deep musical catalogs, which we all know so well, have been ingrained into the fibers of our day-to-day lives,” said Holmes in a statement.

The list of performers at the Festival of Culture stage will also include Wizkid, Monica, Coco Jones, and Kizz Daniel. Jermaine Dupri & Friends and Doug E. Fresh are expected to curate the HipHop5 celebration.