After a year of online classes, social distancing and late nights working on assignments at home, Binghamton University students are in the final stretch of the semester and our annual reminder of it is here: Spring Fling. After getting canceled last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Student Association Programming Board (SAPB) is bringing the traditional end-of-semester show back virtually with rapper Aminé and pop DJ duo Two Friends performing on the platform Looped.
Spring Fling has traditionally been a campus-wide festival, with carnival rides and game booths set up across the Peace Quad and student organizations tabling up and down the Spine, followed by a concert featuring a student band as the opener. While these aspects cannot be brought back to same capacity right now, the SAPB has worked to make the most out of this semester. For the fall concert, the SAPB brought us a virtual concert by DJ Steve Aoki, bringing a new genre to a concert that was performed by rap and hip-hop artists for the past 10 years. Sophia Cavalluzzi, SA vice president for programming and a senior majoring in English, wrote in an email that Aoki was the most requested artist on the fall concert survey and the concert itself was successful.
“We got really good feedback from our fall concert with Steve Aoki and thought an EDM-style show translated well virtually,” Cavalluzzi wrote. “A lot of students broadcasted the concert on their TVs and had mini parties with their housemates.”
Listening to students once again, Cavalluzzi wrote that the acts Aminé and Two Friends were chosen due to their popularity with students and range in genres.
“The DJ duo Two Friends is super popular among BU students, so we thought they would be a perfect choice,” Cavalluzzi wrote. “Since we did an EDM show in the fall, we did want to broaden the genres a little bit, and we thought Aminé would be a great performance as well.”
Adam Aminé Daniel, known professionally as Aminé, is an American rapper who grew up in Portland, Oregon. The son of Eritrean-Ethiopian immigrants, Aminé debuted his first mixtape, “Odyssey to Me” in 2014. He gained critical success in 2017 with his debut single “Caroline,” which peaked at no. 3 in February 2017 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has been certified three-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). His first studio album, “Good For You” featured hit singles such as “Heebiejeebies” featuring Khelani, “Turf” and “Spice Girls.”
In 2020, Aminé released his second album, “Limbo”, which debuted at No. 16 on the US Billboard 200 in August. Aminé is known for his more playful, carefree sound from “Good For You,” and “Limbo” signaled a transition toward more mature sounds, such as on songs like “Kobe” where he details the emotions he went through when he found out about the death of Kobe Bryant and “Fetus,” where he sings about his potential for being a good father and better son.
Two Friends is a pop DJ duo composed of Eli Sones and Matthew Halper. Sones and Halper met in middle school in Los Angeles and began working on beats together in middle school. They are best known for their “Big Bootie Mixes,” which are hourlong mixes of popular songs that they started making in 2013. There are currently 18 mixes available on Spotify in podcast form.
In an interview with Raver Rafting, the duo described their sound as, “songs that are fun and get you dancing and moving, but also hopefully resonate with you on a more emotional level at the same time.”
The Spring Fling concert will begin at 8 p.m. on May 1 on Looped, where students can chat with each other throughout the show for a more interactive experience. Students can register for the show through Looped [insert link – https://app.loopedlive.com/sapb-presents-spring-fling/talent/887040/events/?eventId=3677] and on the SAPB’s Instagram page.