I.C.E. OUT! A Mutual Aid Benefit hosted by T.C.U.P. ft. Hippo Campus, papa mbye, and 26 BATS!

Doors 3pm | Show 4pm | All Ages

INFORMATION | TICKETS

100% of proceeds will be donated DIRECTLY to families in desperate need. Let’s rally to support families impacted by escalating violence from federal agents in our neighborhoods.

Twin Cities United Performers (TCUP) is organizing to make Minnesota a state where musicians and performers are in community and solidarity with each other, treated with dignity, and supported to thrive as artists – not just survive.

Hippo Campus

Hippo Campus were sitting in the green room of a sold-out amphitheater show at the start of the Summer of 2023 when they realized they had a major problem. Their fourth LP simply wasn’t good enough. Singer Jake Luppen had been listening to the band’s work as they rolled around the country, trying to tease out how much work remained. All of it, he soon decided. The soul wasn’t there, obfuscated by the need to sound sophisticated and the overwhelming ambition to make the best Hippo Campus LP ever, a deeper and more profound record that reflected how their lives were changing.

They’d committed to that vow with longtime producer and collaborator Caleb Wright a little more than a year earlier, soon after a party where they celebrated the release of LP3. That very night, the call came that a longtime friend had unexpectedly died. They started this band as kids and enjoyed quick momentum, their thrill-a-minute live shows and charismatically experimental pop albums creating almost-instant, avid attention. But this was Hippo Campus’ first close brush with death; as adulthood encroached, the actual call of mortality reminded them of the stakes of art, friendship, and life.

Papa Mbye

Papa Mbye’s latest EP came out of a trip to Senegal and The Gambia, the latter of which is the country where he was born. While there for a family member’s funeral, he experienced a layer of grief common to the immigrant experience. A certain sadness for roads not traveled and paths not taken. He went to his origins looking for answers, but came back with more questions. If he never moved, would he still be making art? Was trying to be an artist as an immigrant in America wasting a precious opportunity?  “I ended up flipping around that confusion and guilt into a conviction that I should be telling these stories, I wanted to make something for young immigrants who have all this baggage they’re trying to work through.”

After Papa returned to Minneapolis, he channeled that dissonance into an experimental sound that never settles in one box long enough to call any one genre home. Named after the address of his uncle’s house in Senegal, PARCELLES 16 is grandiose in its sonic ambition, intricately threading bits of hip hop, alt-rock, soul, electronic and new age African music. Yet it’s grounded in Papa’s raw and introspective songwriting, which is sweet to the ears but tugs on the heartstrings. “One of my biggest fears was putting myself out there and being vulnerable, so on this I decided to lean into that fear and strip everything down to only what’s necessary.”

26 BATS!

Born out of Kremblems collective, group leader Bailey "26" Cogan (they/them) formed 26 BATS! Bailey's songwriting melded with Karl Remus' (he/him) production wizardry to create grooves that bob and weave through sonic rabbit holes with fiery vocals coaxing about magic, anarchy, and yearning.