Hip-hop duo with hardcore influences BLXCKPUNKS perform for a raucous crowd at the PUNKS WEAR BLXCK show at Richland’s Uptown Theatre on June 6. The duo served as co-organizers for the event. Photo by Karlee Van De Venter
One of the most anticipated shows of the year in the Tri-Cities music scene was PUNKS WEAR BLXCK, a mixed genre show held at The Uptown Theatre on June 6, 2026. More than 500 people were in attendance, but not all of them were pleased. Allegations regarding safety parameters at the event and organizers’ intentions have taken over Tri-Cities-based social media spaces.
So what happened?
The concert featured a lineup of Tri-Cities and Walla Walla artists, including popular teenage hip-hop artist JOSIAHDAVIS, who called PUNKS WEAR BLXCK an “overall positive event.”
“I saw a lot of the behind-the-scenes of what was going on at the Theatre, and I thought it was really professional,” Davis said. “Everyone was treating me with respect, and I felt as if I was an equal among these people who I looked up to.”
Tri-Cities fan favorites The Velvet Helmets and A Quiet Life, along with Walla Walla’s Heel Klick, rounded out the lineup of supporting acts, delivering their usual high-energy, crowd-pleasing performances and getting attendees suitably amped up before the main event.
To top it all off, making sure the vibes stayed high between each set was local DJ Prota-C, who kept the house music blasting and the crowd dancing while they waited for the next round.
Finally, headliners BLXCKPUNKS, made up of rappers Aaron Loving (aka IAMTOPP) and Elijah Kilborn (Jang The Goon), put on a powerhouse performance featuring numerous special guests, including rapper Yel and local dancers, who some attendees noted as particular favorites among the guest lineup.
Loving is originally from the Tri-Cities, and according to reporting by The Inlander, this is also where the duo met. Before they joined forces as BLXCKPUNKS, they both performed at the first hip-hop show at the re-opened Ray’s Golden Lion in November 2023. Since then, they have exploded in the Spokane scene and online, with more than 10,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, and many successful shows at large regional venues.
Marketing for the PUNKS WEAR BLXCK show promised the ‘party of the summer’, and an estimated 560 people attended the show, making it among the biggest shows in Tri-Cities this year. The Uptown Theatre’s main hall has a capacity of 416 people, and the lobby allows for an additional 278, according to multiple sources familiar with the venue.
“[We were] definitely very, very close to the legal capacity for sure,” Loving said. He also noted that the event was profitable, and that they “wanted to make sure that everybody was paid fairly.”
“It’s really, really cool that everyone got to see success from this event in multiple different ways,” Loving said. “New friends were made, new people were introduced, new cultures were blended. And so, things like that were really, really, really cool.”
In addition to the profits, the event also raised around $1200 for Feed The Scene, an initiative at nearby Ray’s Golden Lion, where patrons can pre-pay for a meal for homeless individuals, many of whom spend time in the Uptown Shopping Center overnight.
Artists, staff, and attendees all mentioned the success of PUNKS WEAR BLXCK in bringing together multiple communities. Mixed genre bills are hard to pull off anywhere, and Tri-Cities is no exception. They often don’t draw bigger crowds than fixed genre shows. But PUNKS WEAR BLXCK had a variety of genres on the bill and still drew hundreds.
“The goal was to bring the scene together, and I feel like we did that,” said JOSIAHDAVIS. “That room was packed full of not only the punk scene, but people from scenes across the Tri-Cities. People who may have never interacted otherwise came together through one common thing, and formed bonds because of that.”
Kilborn also said their goal was to bring many communities together — through different scenes, different demographics, and different locations.
“We had Walla Walla, we had Spokane, we had Yakima folks in the building, we had people as far as Tacoma come out to this Tri-Cities event,” Kilborn said. “So when I’m thinking about the amount of regional community we were able to achieve, I thought that was a strong success.”
However, despite its relative success, both staff and attendees shared some criticisms after the show. Complaints included communication issues, lack of coordination, dismissive responses to safety concerns, and difficulties working with some of the organizers.
Some staff said that despite getting there early and planning for standard issues, nothing could have prepared them for how the night went.
“The thing is that [BLXCKPUNKS] wanted a good show by any means necessary, and they didn’t quite understand the technical logistics around making that happen,” said Calisto Riddle, an independent sound engineer based in Tri-Cities who was hired for PUNKS WEAR BLXCK just days before the show. Additionally, requests for unsustainable bass levels and an insistence on “keeping the party going” rather than allowing for safety checks and proper switchovers led to technical difficulties.
Multiple people who worked the event said they worked long hours, because no one was hired for cleanup. They got there early to make plans for the night, but poor communication and improper coordination made those plans irrelevant.
Riddle also said they were screamed at, publicly called out during the last set, and even had food thrown at them by the audience during a technical difficulty.
“I’ve never been treated that way,” Riddle said. “Of course, I’ve never had a show sound that bad, so I understand tensions get high.”
While the sound system at the theatre can be “finicky” according to those familiar with it, and technical difficulties are generally expected, PUNKS WEAR BLXCK had an extraordinary number of technical issues. Systems continually malfunctioned due to continued demands to push sound, unrealistic expectations, and an additional unrelated power surge that affected a number of businesses in the Uptown Shopping Center.
BLXCKPUNKS said they thought Riddle did a great job. “We love Cali; [they’re] a great communicator, great at [their] job, one of the best in the city for sure,” Loving said.
Loving and Kilborn both said they felt communication could have been improved that night, saying this was their first event working with other entities.
Sound was not the main concern at the concert. One major takeaway from staff and attendees was the lack of security. Staff called it an “extreme oversight”, and multiple attendees made public comments online, concerned about inadequate security, an emphasis on a big crowd over a safe crowd, and a lack of education for newcomers to the scene.
At hardcore shows, security is often not intended to prevent moshing or stage diving. Instead, they serve as monitors who can respond when safety issues arise. In the event someone passes out or sustains a significant injury, they can intervene and ensure the individual gets the help they need.
With more than 500 people in the building, the vast majority of whom were part of the pit, security who monitored the pit without prohibiting the usual hardcore dancing would have been standard. Due to “a breakdown of communication,” BLXCKPUNKS found themselves without security on the day of the event, and three people were assigned security roles that day.
Loving said they had worked with these three individuals before, and trusted they could do the job, even with the short notice. However, they did not have any badges or shirts identifying them as security. Loving said they “definitely tried to get as much security as possible,” but added they could have had “another one or another two, for sure.”
“When people get hurt at shows, that’s not acceptable,” said Riddle, who often works as a production manager as well as sound engineer for local events, estimating they’ve worked more than 250 shows in the past two years. “Whenever I produce a show, that is my first thought — and it never stops being a thought: Is everything safe? How can I make it safer?”
Loving said safety is a priority at their events and they always want to make sure everyone’s safe. However, he acknowledged that security was “not able to operate at the fullest capacity.” Kilborn noted that the majority of people were not harmed, but also acknowledged: “If even one person is harmed, that is something we have to look at.” The duo would not disclose where security was stationed throughout the night, but stated that they were instructed to cover as much ground as possible.
With critiques regarding security came commentary on the pit. Some comments on social media suggested the stage diving was over-encouraged in event marketing, and that the emphasis on hardcore moshing didn’t match the lineup or the crowd. But other attendees disagreed, saying hardcore moshing and stage diving were to be expected, and the pit wasn’t any more unsafe than any other.
Moshing comes with inherent hazards, which is why many venues who host hardcore shows have signs up noting to “mosh at your own risk.” While it may seem anarchic from the outside, mosh pits are generally more of a controlled chaos. Those entering a mosh pit understand the basic rules and etiquette that comes with it. However, mixed genre bills mean some folks in attendance may not be familiar with these rules, especially when the entire crowd is the mosh pit.
Kamaryie Gomez, a local who regularly attends hardcore shows in the region, spent most of the show in the pit. He said there seemed to be a mixture of experience levels in the crowd, some who were used to hardcore moshing and others who seemed unfamiliar with pits.
“There was definitely a lot of basic pit etiquette that was being performed — just basic things: helping people when they fall, checking if people are okay,” Gomez said. “It happened a lot, so that’s always something good to see. Also, there were a few people there that when they did see someone fall, they just froze and didn’t know what to do.”
Gomez said much of the night involved tamer forms of mosh pits, and that it wasn’t as hardcore as advertised. He said it got the most hardcore during A Quiet Life’s set, when they utilized the crowd to lead a “wall of death,” a popular move at hardcore shows involving splitting the audience down the middle, with both sides approaching the other when the song turns.
“Pit-wise, it was honestly very safe,” said Gomez. “It wasn’t too aggressive, definitely more of a ‘too-many-people’ thing, like just tripping on top of people. But other than that, the pit itself felt pretty safe.”
Others suggested the stage diving got out of hand. At least one person went to the hospital following PUNKS WEAR BLXCK due to injuries sustained in the pit.
In a joint statement, co-organizers Loving, Kilborn, and Reign Darling, as well as Travis Rybarski who was representing the theatre, said: “Each one of us could have been more vigilant about crowd control, and we’re sorry the stage diving got dicey. We did have three paid security people patrolling, but mosh pits always carry risk of injury.”
Loving also mentioned the event’s social media post that went up the week of the event. It encouraged attendees to drink water, help each other up, and look out for each other. The same post also encouraged stage diving.
“We wanted to create a safe environment, a controlled chaos environment, where it’s still fun, but everybody’s okay,” Loving said.
There were also criticisms of the event asking whether the usage of words like “punk” and “hardcore” were truly warranted.
“This is my passion, it is what I live for, and to see a show like this that feels like it has lost the soul of what punk means, it’s crazy,” Riddle said. Gomez said the marketing led people to believe the show would be more hardcore-friendly than it was, encouraging more of that community to show up.
When we asked BLXCKPUNKS what punk and hardcore mean to them, they didn’t have an answer, except to say that “hip-hop, punk, and hardcore belong together, or at least they can belong together, because they all share a lot of common goals and a lot of common ideologies.”
Some of the scene considered certain aspects of the event innately un-punk, and a major element of this conversation was PUNKS WEAR BLXCK’s corporate sponsor, Zumiez. One staff member said they would never normally agree to work a show sponsored by a corporation like Zumiez, but accepted as a favor for a friend. A member of one of the bands stated they would not have agreed to play if they had known about the Zumiez sponsorship.
BLXCKPUNKS clarified that Zumiez did not coordinate the event, and had no say in any decision-making, but paid for “a handful” of tickets. They said the intention of the sponsorship was to provide tickets to those who could not afford it, and allow more of the community to attend. The chain retailer also awarded a $500 shopping spree to one individual in attendance, the winner of the ‘best dressed’ contest.
“We got to actually work with more than 20 local companies, businesses, [and] organizations for this show,” Loving said. “I really, really want to highlight that, because I think people aren’t acknowledging that, or are forgetting that.”
Multiple people also complained about the lack of access to water. Attendees only noticed water in one place that night — behind the concessions counter.
“Every Uptown Theatre event we’ve ever been at, water’s always been free,” Gomez said. He noted how often moshing was encouraged throughout the night, and with the amount of people in the building, that raises body temperatures quickly. “That’s going to get hot and dehydrating real quick, and having to pay for water just makes it a little harder to just get that basic necessity.”
Staff said they were asked for water multiple times throughout the night, and both staff and performers handed out water bottles from their personal supply to keep attendees hydrated. When cleaning up after the show, multiple unopened cases of water intended for sale were found.
Loving and Kilborn said there was a free water dispenser in the lobby. Comments online suggest this was not easily identifiable to attendees. “It definitely should have been in a better location,” they said in a joint statement.
The PUNKS WEAR BLXCK show garnered a variety of strong opinions. Some members of the local scene criticized anyone complaining about the pit, saying they should have known it would be hardcore when they purchased a ticket. Others are disappointed at the lack of education on pit etiquette, especially at a mixed genre show, and the safety risks posed throughout. Others still questioned the motive of organizers and their actions in marketing, planning, and putting on this event.
“To have that many people show up to a hip-hop-centered punk show was amazing,” Riddle said. “I think they did achieve something great.” But they also think the backlash took away from this progress.
The Uptown Theatre no longer plans to work with outside entities for concerts, and intends to host concert events internally only.
“I use the Uptown Theatre a lot for charity events, and for the Battle of The Bands,” Riddle said. “It’s a very special space to me, and if it’s off-limits to punks from now on, I would feel like that is a very unfortunate thing that would make me feel pretty sore.”
In the aftermath of PUNKS WEAR BLXCK, the scene appeared split. Many people had high praise for the event, noting they had a great time, brought out family and friends, and supported the local scene.
Others are bummed at the loss of a large community venue, and concerned about the true intentions of some players in the local punk scene.
Even the organizers had split reactions. One said they felt “shattered,” and just wanted to move past it, and had many thoughts on what could have been done better. Meanwhile, the other two had nothing to say about what they’d do differently.
The major responsibility that comes with throwing a large event in a small music scene is rarely accomplished perfectly, especially on the first try. One thing we can say about PUNKS WEAR BLXCK is that it certainly got Tri-Cities talking.
Karlee Van De Venter is a full-time reporter at the Tri-City Herald who contributes Arts and Entertainment coverage for Tumbleweird. This is the full version of this article; a shortened version previously appeared in the Tri-City Herald through a co-publication agreement. For more, follow @KarleeVNews on Instagram.
