Lil Wayne, Roots, Big Freedia's Gospel Top Saturday; Picks for Sunday at Jazz Fest

Lil Wayne, by Ramona Rosales

The question going into Lil Wayne’s collaboration with The Roots at Jazz Fest Saturday was what effect they would have on him. Lil Wayne has been a mercurial performer who never appeared to overthink a set. Would a professional band like The Roots make him more professional? 

The answer was “Sort of.” The Roots started with a half-hour set on their own, then at 6 they moved into a more Funkadelic jam zone with “Capt.” Kirk Douglas’ guitar heroics moving into the Eddie Hazel zone. I’ve been told that the excursion was prompted by a late Lil Wayne.

He walked onstage at 6:15 and strapped on a guitar, a cause for concern since Lil Wayne has shown more passion than skill with the instrument. Fortunately, he only played a few notes to start the first two songs before handing it off to a roadie..

Frequently, it was hard to hear the impact of The Roots. Weezy played a minute or so of many songs, getting through a verse and chorus before cutting it off, so they didn’t really get a chance to make a mark. During “Hustler Muzik,” the horns started to swell behind him as he brought the song to a halt with a thankyouverymuch. He didn’t sound like he cut them off unexpectedly since that and all the endings were tight, but it came before a musical idea could pay off, 

When The Roots got a little more space as on “Mrs. Officer,” they made good use of it, giving the song some soul in that case. 

There biggest contribution was creating a space that allowed Lil Wayne to feel comfortable. He was at his most musical as a vocalist and played with dynamics, letting himself be quiet at times, so much so that friends farther back sometimes had a hard time hearing him. 

That was in part because much of the audience knew Lil Wayne songs the same way that Thursday’s audience at the Festival Stage knew John Fogerty’s. They rapped along with Weezy and their friends, sometimes with enough excitement to drown the stage out. 

For those people, it was simply a Lil Wayne show and he made them very happy. I found the speed with which he cut songs off and moved on to another kept the set from breathing. I could have used room for more music so that songs had time to become living entities, not reminders from beloved albums. That’s in part because The Roots are capable of so much, but also because the show never broke out its staccato rhythm to fully come to life.

Big Freedia’s show and body of work is about loving yourself, so it’s no surprise that when Big Freedia does gospel, it’s a liberation gospel. “You don’t need no preacher / to love the church,” she sings, but in most ways the faith expressed in the songs is fairly conventional. It’s positive and thankful, crediting a higher power for helping Big Freedia be Freedia. 

In performance on the Festival Stage a few hours before Lil Wayne and The Roots,, no one will be surprised to learn that the show was ecstatically ecstatic. Big Freedia doesn’t make small, measured statements. She goes big, with her choir taking church energy and amplifying it to her energy. They sang about God’s blessings coming down like rain, and  doing the Holy Shuffle complete a dance that I assume was what a Holy Shuffle  looked like.

Part way through, Big Freedia announced that it was time for the second line, and she and the choir shed their robes and moved to the bounce she’s known for. It looked like the choir members were p-popping, but since I wasn’t focused on them during that part of the set, I’m not 100 percent positive. In the moment that seemed like a bold juxtaposition, but the choir and dancers were the same people, it was also perceptive. Church isn’t only for the saintly; they’ve been filled for as long as they’ve been around by people who needed the club on Saturday night and the church on Sunday morning. 

Moment of the Day: The Zar Electrik set the Lagnaippe Stage. Zar Electrik plays Maghreb, music from  North Africa, and they do so with an electric kora, regional stringed instruments, and a keyboard player who also provided a solid electronic thump. That got people who never give a second thought to Bassnectar or Deadmau5 to not just shuffle around but genuinely dance. 

You can focus on that inconsistency, or you can focus on the joy the set brought to so many people. By the time Zar Electrik ended, the Lagniappe Stage was still buzzing, staying in that moment just a little longer.

Sunday at Jazz Fest   

Sunday will be an interesting day at Jazz Fest with proven headliner Dave Matthews Band on the Festival Stage, and first time closers Haim on the Gentilly Stage and Burna Boy on the Congo Square Stage. Jazz Fest isn’t in the business of taking big chances on unproven bands, so I don’t doubt that audiences will be there. 

Both certainly have the big stage experience. The three sisters in Haim have done their time on the festival circuit and opened for Taylor Swift’s Los Angeles shows on the “Eras” tour, and the Nigerian singer Burna Boy spent last summer playing major festivals in Europe. 

Jazz Fest now features Tuareg bands from Niger almost every year, and Etran de l’Aïr (1:40 p.m., Blues Tent; 3:40 p.m., Expedia Cultural Exchange Tent) will play this year, and while they don’t have a guitar wizard like Mdou Moctar, they’re equally hypnotic and guitar-driven with unexpected rhythms and songs that may be a little more friendly to first-timers. 

Boyfriend (2:40 p.m., Shell Gentilly Stage) uses her time at Jazz Fest well, adding performance elements and theatrics not usually seen on the Fair Grounds stages. This year, she’ll debut music from her new album, In the Garden, which retells the story of the Garden of Eden from a feminist, queer perspective. On the album, she is joined by musical guests Billy Porter, Jake Shears from Scissor Sisters, and Big Freedia, but as she said in an interview on the project, don’t expect any of them to make guest appearances. She has a history of bringing a lot of show on her own, so it will still be something memorable.

I’m also looking forward to Sarah Quintana (12:40 p.m., Lagniappe Stage), the calypso of Charlie and the Tropicales (1:50 p.m., Lagniappe Stage), and the electronic-friendly New Orleans music of People Museum (12:20 p.m., Shell Gentilly Stage). You can find coverage of them elsewhere at My Spilt Milk. 

For more on Sunday and Jazz Fest, visit My Spilt Milk at Jazz Fest 2025. 

Finally, it’s hard to have a lot of confidence in this pick since there’s so little information online that I could find about El JM y Su Norteños (11:30 a.m., Expedia Cultural Exchange Pavilion Stage), and the size of the band makes the time slot seem unlikely. But if some version of this is actually playing, I want to see it.