Summer Breeze 2025.
On May 17th, UChicago’s Hutchinson Courtyard hosted Nick Cheo, Daya, and JPEGMAFIA.
photo of JPEGMAFIA taken by Taylor Pate.
College concerts are difficult to get right. Booking acts is hard—look no further than what happened with Northwestern’s Dillo Day this year. That makes what UChicago’s Major Activities Board (MAB) pulled off this year all the more impressive. Summer Breeze, the flagship concert series hosted by MAB every spring, welcomed three very different acts to campus on Saturday, May 17th: Nick Cheo, a DJ with traction on TikTok; Daya, a dance pop star with a solid catalog of throwback hits; and headliner JPEGMAFIA, a rapper with bold production choices and even bolder lyrics.
I’ll start with MAB’s announcement. A lot was made about Peggy being the headliner, with some folks complaining about being completely unfamiliar with him while others were incredibly excited. I was caught in the middle of this discourse as someone lukewarm on his music. To put it bluntly, JPEGMAFIA is popular primarily among chronically-online male music nerds. A crowd I proudly place myself in, to be clear, but I’ve never understood his hype in those circles. The almost-unanimous online support of his album SCARING THE HOES back in 2023 made me give him another chance. Let’s just say I did not see the vision, even if I appreciated some of the risks they took on the project. As a result, after MAB’s announcement, I was simultaneously downplaying JPEG’s arrival to his fans and hyping him up to my friends who didn’t know who he was.
Ironically, I was on the opposite side of this discourse with Daya: I had no idea who she was, and some of my friends couldn’t believe it. This, of course, was resolved once someone played “Don’t Let Me Down” for me. At that point, I knew Summer Breeze was set up to host diverse acts and appease different palettes.
Nick Cheo kicked off the evening around 5:45 and he led his DJ set with a song that’s really hard to screw up: Chief Keef’s timeless classic “I Don’t Like.” After about 15 minutes, I was already having a good time. The crowd started to fill out, and Cheo confidently quipped, “Now that you guys are here, I’ll start my actual set.” That made me lock in. Cheo played a mix of popular hip-hop, pop, and EDM tracks. He had some creative mixes, but I wasn’t sold on some of his transitions and felt that he cut a couple songs off way too quickly. In his 45-minute set, I think Cheo’s middle 15 minutes were the strongest even if he lost me by the end.
photo of Nick Cheo taken by Taylor Pate.
Daya made her entrance at 7:00, and never lost me. She took the stage with two backup dancers, Gavin and Jesse, who quickly became fan favorites with their sensual supporting choreography. All three of them knew they looked phenomenal…and acted like it. I laughed at how much they used box fans on stage for dramatic effect. Around Daya, Gavin and Jesse rotated either one fan, two fans, or no fans for about five songs of the set. The three of them have been working together for a long time, and their chemistry showed.
I went into the set with no context and an open mind. The first song that caught my attention was “First Time,” with slick grooves that stood tall relative to the grand, club-ready dance tracks that bled together for most of the set. After a few more records, she got into the throwbacks. On a couple occasions, she outright asked the crowd if anyone’s been around since 2016’s Sit Still, Look Pretty, still her only studio album to this day. The crowd roared, and Daya started focusing on her 2010s music, highlighted by the classics “Hide Away” and the album’s title track, “Sit Still, Look Pretty.” I have to admit: since the show, I’ve been wondering “Where do the good boys go to hide away?” That song is electric.
photo of audience during Daya’s set taken by Taylor Pate.
Daya closed her set (unsurprisingly) with The Chainsmokers-assisted “Don’t Let Me Down,” which (also unsurprisingly) got the biggest crowd reaction. For my money, though, her best performance was on the penultimate song of the set, “Feel Good.” Standing confidently in center stage, Daya poured her heart into every syllable of that second chorus, and I felt every word. Fourth-year Eric Olaziola agreed, saying that “Daya’s singing was so perfect, I genuinely started wondering if she was lip syncing.” Having now listened to the studio version, her live vocals were even more impressive than the track. As she got ready to walk off the stage, Daya teased new music coming soon; if it’s anything like what I heard at Summer Breeze, I’ll have to tune in.
JPEGMAFIA was scheduled for 8:30. Having been to my fair share of rap shows, I know that the main act being on time is a rarity (Summer Breeze 2024, anyone?). So when JPEG actually walked out on time, we were pumped. Dressed in a distressed oversized jean jacket, leather knee high boots, and a black cowboy hat, JPEG brought an entourage with him.
photo of JPEGMAFIA taken by Taylor Pate.
Third-year Christian Ziebold found both sets energetic in different ways: “With Daya, a lot of the energy was on stage because she and her dancers were giving it their all and you could feed off their energy. Peggy, on the other hand, had someone on stage just scrolling on her phone, but by the end of his set I was soaked in a mix of my sweat, other people’s sweat, and Red Bull.”
Fourth-year Darasimi Adeyemo has long been a JPEGMAFIA fan and reveled in seeing one of his favorite artists live. “His songs always had a raw energy to me, but his presence live was genuinely special,” Adeyemo told me.
Peggy reassured us that he’s “not a yapper like these bitch ass rappers,” and jumped right into the music. He mentioned a few times that he had to cut his set short, but he still managed to deliver plenty of hype moments. With that said, I enjoyed the crowd’s energy more than most of the actual songs. After Peggy played “Hazard Duty Pay!” I asked Adeyemo for the song name to save it; I listened the day after and was confused as to what exactly I had liked about it. JPEGMAFIA had great command of the crowd though: before “BALD!” he got a fun crowd pop by asking “all the bald bitches” and “bitches with bad hair” to shout. (I shouted.) He also teased us by claiming he had a surprise before proceeding to play the incredible Future-sampling and Vince Staples-featuring “New Black History” with no Future or Vince Staples in sight. At least he laughed.
Fourth-year Hari Balachandran was initially afraid that our headliner “didn’t want to be there as he walked on stage,” but Balachandran got fired up once Peggy sprayed water on our side of the crowd and delivered an “infectious energy” throughout his performance.
photo of JPEGMAFIA taken by Taylor Pate.
You could tell JPEG was having a great time, and so were we—at least the portion of the audience who stuck around through the chaos. Even if some of the wackier production choices on songs like “it’s dark and hell is hot” and “Steppa Pig” didn’t land with me, the unbridled energy that spilled out of most of those beats—produced primarily by Peggy, who was a producer before he was a rapper—was irresistible in a live setting.
I dialed that high energy into my expectations from the start, so it came completely out of left field when Peggy closed with what was easily the slowest song in the set: “either on or off the drugs.” I was caught off guard by how mellow the crowd suddenly became as we followed his lead, but it was a pleasant surprise. I absolutely loved this song and immediately added it to my library. After a (rather obvious) fakeout into a brief encore, JPEGMAFIA said goodnight for real, and we all slowly dispersed from Hutch Courtyard, still buzzing from what we just witnessed.
Thank you, MAB. Same time next year?
edited by Eric Harwood and Arjun Bhakoo.
all photos by Taylor Pate.
