The Student Association Programming Board (SAPB) announced on Wednesday that Post Malone will be headlining the 2017 fall concert. The show will be opened by Dave East.
Ashley Blake, the concerts chair for the SAPB and a senior majoring in history, said the timing of the concert is ideal.
“He’s really blown up over the past couple of weeks, which we love,” said Blake. “It’s coming at a really good time for us.”
Post Malone, born Austin Richard Post, is best known for recent hits including “rockstar,” “Congratulations” and “White Iverson.” “rockstar” peaked at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart this week. He is coming to Binghamton University fresh off of a 25-city tour, but Malone is no stranger to upstate New York — he was born in Syracuse and attended Syracuse University for several months before dropping out to pursue his singing career.
Opener Dave East is a rapper from east Harlem, known mainly for his appearances as a featured artist on tracks from established rappers.
“He’s had actually a lot of features with, like, Chris Brown, French Montana, Wiz Khalifa,” Blake said. “He runs with a good circle.”
Recent years have seen several big names in rap take the stage at the fall concert, including Fetty Wap, Big Sean, Trey Songz and J. Cole. This year, the SAPB tried to seek out performers in other genres, before choosing Post Malone.
“For our survey, we had had equal responses for the pop-rock-alternative genre and rap and hip-hop, so we were definitely trying to look at both genres and see,” Blake said. “Traditionally, we just always kind of had rap artists, so we did look into pop artists. A lot of people are writing or touring in Europe, so that was kind of difficult.”
The show will be more than a month later into the semester than last year’s concert. Blake explained that this was due to a combination of the existing athletic department schedule and the availability of the artists.
“We were only given an October date and a November date, and we tried to get Post Malone for our October date to stay with that normal time range of the fall concert, but due to travel issues he couldn’t make that,” Blake said. “We really wanted to pursue him — we just felt like he’d be a good act that students would enjoy and we knew he was gonna get big.”
Due to safety concerns raised by Binghamton’s New York State University Police and Events Center staff, the ticket structure for the show will be different than in years past. Rather than have general admission tickets on the floor of the Events Center, patrons will be able to purchase general admission tickets for the stands or a limited number of separate floor seats. Like last year, general admission for students will be $25 and $35 for the public. Floor seats will be $40 for students and $50 for the public.
While Blake recognized the concerns students may have about the price, she said she hoped the payoff would be worth the increased cost.
“All the proceeds from this concert go toward Spring Fling,” Blake said. “So the more tickets that we sell, the better artist we can get for Spring Fling, which … is a free concert.”
The show will take place at the Events Center on Nov. 30, with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. and the show beginning at 8 p.m. As of Nov. 2, tickets for the concert are sold out.