Georgetown Program Board (GPB) announced its artist for this year’s annual Spring Concert this afternoon, via their Instagram account. Platinum-certified rapper Yung Gravy will perform for Georgetown students on April 10 at McDonough Arena.
Gravy is an American rapper most known for songs like “Mr. Clean” (2016) and “Betty (Get Money)” (2022). He began his career on SoundCloud and has since released one mixtape, four albums, and seven extended plays.
Gravy will continue the GPB Spring Concert tradition, which began in the early 2000s. The concert aims to bring students together for a low-cost live performance, complete with activities and food trucks. The concert serves as an opportunity for GPB to engage with the student body while also creating a memorable experience for students.
Each year, GPB undergoes a rigorous selection process to find its headliner. To begin the process, they survey the student body using a Google Form to gauge interest in specific genres and names.
“We want the concert to feel by students, for students, so input from the rest of the campus is super valuable,” Eliza Shearer (CAS ’28) and Mimi Lee (CAS ’27), the concert co-chairs for GPB, wrote in an email to the Voice.
Once they have an idea of what the student body is interested in, they begin reaching out to various artists with the help of Degy Entertainment, an external agency that helps the club with contracting.
“We worked with our agent to send out multiple bids and narrow down our options based on genre and budget restraints,” Shearer and Lee wrote.
From there, it becomes a negotiation with artists to find what works best.
“There is always some back-and-forth with the artist’s team about budget and other matters before we finalize the process,” Shearer and Lee wrote.
Georgetown is not the only university seeking out big names for student concert events. Other universities, such as Harvard, are working to secure artists for similar events, with mixed success. Before settling on their headliner for this year’s Yardfest, Ravyn Lenae, Harvard College Events Board tried to secure Zara Larsson and Olivia Dean. They were unsuccessful because of financial and scheduling constraints.
While GPB aims to contact a wide range of artists, it has experienced some similar financial difficulties when making its final decision.
“As is typical in the booking process, we sent a few ‘long shot’ bids that were ultimately not accepted because our offer was too low and it was not feasible to increase our offer given the financial constraints and production costs,” Shearer and Lee wrote.
The budget, which GPB receives from GUSA each year, covers not only the artist’s fee, but agency fees, production, and space rentals. This means that some higher-profile artists may be out of their price range. This year, GPB also received support from the Provost’s Office and GradGov, Georgetown’s graduate student body, allowing them to choose a higher-profile artist.
GPB expressed that Yung Gravy was the ideal choice for this event, being an artist that students could recognize and engage with.
“Our main selection criteria are based on student responses and interests, and trying to bring an artist that the most people will be excited about,” Shearer and Lee wrote.
According to Shearer and Lee, Yung Gravy was a popular choice among students, along with rap and pop music in general. Since his music spans multiple genres, including rap, pop, and even country, he was the perfect way to shake up a program that had recently featured artists from just one genre.
“We wanted to switch up the vibe from our past few artists, which have been more on the indie side, so we thought this would increase the variety of types of music students could see on campus,” Shearer and Lee wrote.
GPB has coordinated fun events and inclusive programming for students since 1984, often offering alternatives to those who don’t participate in costly activities or traditional party culture. Annual programming includes the annual Mr. Georgetown show, Haunted Healy, and the Funniest Human Contest.
“GPB is committed to high-quality, low-cost programming for every member of the student body to enjoy,” Shearer and Lee wrote.
Ultimately, GPB’s main priority when planning their spring concert is getting the student body engaged.
“We ultimately selected Yung Gravy because he was the best option and overall fit for the experience we wanted to create this year,” Shearer and Lee wrote.
