Drexel University’s DAC Pack hosted the annual Midnight Madness event Nov. 5, featuring a performance by Chiddy Bang to celebrate the beginning of the basketball season for the men and women’s teams.
Over 2,100 people, mostly students, attended the event, which marked the first of three campuswide concerts that will be held this year by the Dragon Concert Series Committee, which was created over the summer by the student-run Drexel Student Activity Fee Allocation Committee.
In addition to the concert, members of the men’s and women’s basketball teams were introduced for the first time for the 2011-12 season, and the event ended with the unveiling of this year’s DAC Pack T-shirt design on the DAC Pack Facebook page. The first 500 people in attendance received a commemorative Midnight Madness 2011 special-edition T-shirt.
The headlining act was Chiddy Bang, an alternative hip-hop group composed of two former Drexel students, Chidera “Chiddy” Anamege and Noah “Xaphoon Jones” Beresin, who met at Drexel as students in the music industry program and dropped out to focus on their music career.
“When choosing an artist, we wanted to keep the interests of the students in mind. We knew that the show would be focused around the men’s and women’s basketball teams and athletics as a whole, and we wanted to choose an artist whom we felt would complement the athletics portion while at the same time put on a good show for the crowd,” DAC Pack President Anthony D’Angelo, a senior sport management student, wrote in an email.
He added: “It also helped that both members of Chiddy Bang were former Drexel students, so it was a homecoming of sorts for them. We held a few preliminary meetings where students could come and share their thoughts on who they thought would make a good performer for the event. Chiddy Bang was in our heads, and when the first suggestion unprompted was Chiddy Bang, we knew we had something.”
The event marked the first time that Chiddy Bang officially performed on campus since they dropped out after freshman year, though they occasionally visit Drexel to visit friends every once in a while.
“Being back here at Drexel makes me feel like a student again for one night,” Chiddy said.
In addition to marking the 10-year anniversary of the creation of the DAC Pack, this year’s Midnight Madness was also the first time a large-scale concert was held at the event. An opening disc jockey set by The Jane Doze was also performed before Chiddy Bang took the stage.
“The idea of a concert is not new. In fact, it is over five years in the making. The problem was gathering the funding necessary to put on such a spectacle. Thanks to the hard work of many different people, the Dragon Concert Series was created, and the proper funding to hold the type of event we had envisioned finally came,” D’Angelo wrote.
This year the Dragon Concert Series Committee will also help with the existing concert traditions of Homecoming and Spring Jam in addition to putting on the DAC Pack’s Midnight Madness event.
“The goal of the Dragon Concert Series was to create a tradition of three mega-events during the school year. This is just the first of those events. If the students who came to this show had a good time and took with them fond memories of the event, then we have done our job,” D’Angelo wrote.
“I thought it was really fun. It was a great setup, and I thought [the DAC Pack] had a good setup with minimal security, and the quality of the show was what it was, and it was meant to showcase Chiddy Bang’s type of music,” William Lindsay, a sophomore music industry major, said of the concert.
Lindsay, whose band W. C. Lindsay won the Campus Activities Board’s Battle of the Bands competition to open for Major Lazer at Spring Jam 2011, had previously met Xaphoon while volunteering at the Popped! Music Festival in September and hung out with Chiddy at last year’s Pi Kappa Palooza concert event.
“First and foremost, my goal was for Midnight Madness to be a huge pep rally to get the students excited about the upcoming basketball season and introduce the players to the student body. Additionally, I wanted to have a celebration complete with lights, sound, music and performances to make students excited about Drexel. This had as much to do with Drexel pride as it did with basketball,” D’Angelo wrote.
Previous Midnight Madness events held dunk contests, shooting contests and scrimmages that were not featured during this year’s event.
“Unfortunately, the logistics of all these elements didn’t really fit. Given the concert, we needed to tarp the floor, making it impossible to do basketball-related activities. It became a question of whether we wanted the basketball or the performer. We thought that we could use other elements to incorporate basketball into the event without having the contests,” D’Angelo wrote.
Though the basketball season has not started yet, the women’s team is coming off their third straight postseason appearance, and the men are projected to be at the top of the CAA after coming off 21 wins last year.
“[This year’s Midnight Madness] was a fitting kickoff to a promising year of basketball,” Fran Orlando, a sophomore business major, said.
Additional reporting by Daniel Abelson.