USC’s annual Welcome Back Concert swept campus as new and returning students filled McCarthy Quad for a night full of music and festivity.
This year’s celebration kicked off the school year with multi-genre performances varying from mellow grooves from Spill Tab to legendary flows from Pi’erre Bourne.
The concert is known to students every year as not just a musical experience, but also as a way of bringing the campus community together in a social setting before the school year gets off to a start. The concert acts as a culmination to what is known as “Welcome Week.”
This year’s food options included a vast assortment of food truck options including, KOGI - BBQ Food, StopBye - Indonesian Fusion Food, the Churro Man and The Boba Truck. Pop Pay sponsored the event and also offered coupon tickets for certain food items as a courtesy.
USC Concerts announced Pi’erre Bourne as this year’s headliner in an instagram post on August 7.
Although the event is widely marketed through social media by the USC Concerts Committee, a part of USG programming, some students found out about the event through their orientation in June, along with platforms including EngageSC. The concert was free and open only to currently-enrolled USC students, who could reserve a free ticket through EngageSC.
Previous Welcome Back headliners have included popular artists like Flo Milli, YBN Cordae, Smino, and AG Club, making the annual Welcome Back Concert a staple event during Welcome Week. Freshman Stella Ruggiero, a neuroscience major at USC, heard about it at orientation.
“I knew they had a lot of big names, like Post Malone,” she said.
For Jesus Vargas, a freshman majoring in mechanical engineering, there was no better “big name” headliner for this year’s Welcome Back concert than Pi’erre Bourne.
“I wrote my USC essays to his ‘Good Movie’ album,” Vargas said. “It was kind of like a manifestation.”
Zach Gibbs, journalism senior and production director for the USC Concerts Committee, started his production workday at 8 a.m. to make sure the event was a success.
“As much as it is a grind, I love it because live music inspires me. I like to give people that same feeling I get,” Gibbs said.
In between sets from Frat Mouse, Spill Tab and Pi’erre Bourne, Kahoot games were broadcasted on the stage’s screen, inviting audience members to join in on USC trivia games and “Where’s Tommy?” — a game where students locate Tommy Trojan on album covers.
For juniors Nya Manneh and Jazmyne Aquino, the experience is not only about the music, but also the social environment in which students come together.
“I like how it has more of the social environment towards the stage, and more of the chill in the back, I think it caters to everyone’s energy levels,” said Aquino.
“Honestly, I’m always here for the food. they didn’t really have games last year,” said Manneh, a junior majoring in communications.
Aquino was also excited by the opening act, Spill Tab, who also opened for Sabrina’s Carpenter’s “Emails I Can’t Send” Tour.
“I was pretty stoked about it because at 9 p.m. that was when the opener for Sabrina Carpenter’s tour came out,” said Aquino, a junior double majoring in PR and theater.
Bourne’s performance followed Spill Tab and automatically lit up the crowd with his strong, heavy bass sounds and his energetic stage presence. The South Carolina-based artist knows how to work the stage from left to right, providing entertainment to all areas of the audience.
On top of being an artist and producer who knows how to work a crowd, Bourne runs his own record label, SossHouse, under Interscope Records. He has signed fellow artists including Sharc, Jelly, Chavo, Frazier Trill, J Billz and Kura. While he rose to fame producing hit songs for rappers like Playboi Carti, Travis Scott and 21 Savage, he’s proved just how well he can work on his own with his three solo albums.
“I like how versatile he is,” said Ethan Oblea, a junior transfer majoring in economics. “I know most people know him as a producer. But I do like his sound as well—it’s pretty unique.”
His set featured a healthy mix of heavy trap headbangers and more euphoric, mellow tracks and included hit songs like “Drunk and Nasty” (feat. Sharc). The Welcome Back concert concluded with “Pissy Pamper (Kid Cudi),” an unreleased song with Playboi Carti, wrapping up USC’s Welcome Week.
Freshman Eden Cingrani, an international relations major, expressed what this concert means to her: “As a freshman, I’ve enjoyed going to all the Welcome Week events, and I was definitely excited for this concert because it’s one of the most hyped up events,” she said. “It’s always fun hearing new music and just being with people and the Trojan family.”