Looking back at Appelsap: from the Oosterpark to Flevopark and many great artists

What once started as a small-scale hip-hop party in the Oosterpark grew into one of the largest hip-hop festivals in the Netherlands. It is the timeline of the Amsterdam Appelsap festival in a nutshell. Now the founders are starting a new festival, Mad City with the ‘new generation’. A good time to look back on almost twenty years of Apple juice.

Rogier Smalhout, Wiecher Troost and Koos Groenendijk started Appelsap in 2000. “For a first edition, it was still fairly well attended. I think 500 people came,” says Troost. “The weather was nice and our friends were behind the bar and helped clean up.”

Punk energy

But the festival soon grew and thousands of visitors came to the Oosterpark. “For years it was the largest hip-hop festival in Amsterdam and perhaps in the whole of the Netherlands,” says hip-hop expert Rajko Disseldorp, who looks back on the Appelsap era with admiration. “One year you saw an unknown artist who suddenly became very big a few years later. Everyone who likes hip-hop finds that hard.”

Although there were several highlights, such as the return of The Opposites in 2019 or Kendrick Lamar in 2011, the performance of Waka Flocka Flame is one of Rogier’s highlights. “He was one of the first rappers to bring a kind of punk energy to hip-hop. We had to cut the show early because he went into the audience, which was absolutely not the intention.”

Friends of the Flevopark

But that popularity also brought disadvantages, because in both the Oosterpark and the Flevopark they were at odds with park enthusiasts. In 2015, a judge even had to be involved. The action group Friends of the Flevopark had filed summary proceedings to ban the event a week before the start. Ultimately, the judge decided that the festival could continue.

Wiecher Troost says he has always understood it. “It’s always good when such groups are concerned about the neighborhood, the city, the park and culture. We do that too, although we have different ideas about it than they do. But otherwise we’re just cool with them.”

New style

And now comes Mad City, named after an album by rapper Kendrick Lamar (‘Good Kid, MAAD City’). Also someone who, before he became world famous, was on Appelsap.

The founders of Appelsap had already founded Mad City two years ago, but tonight is the first edition. The festival starts at 3 p.m. in the Lofi.