Dog Days: A Friday Night in July
Dog Days was a creative combustion. Kid Splinter, a rap artist local to Fort Worth, Texas, partnered with The Haltom Theater to set the stage for a wide variety of regional hip-hop and rap artists to showcase their talent for one night. With over 10 artists on the bill, Dog Days was a highly energetic event with a wide variety of flows, styles, and performances from everybody.
The Performances
I had a brief moment with Kord before the show kicked off, one of the artists on the lineup for Dog Days, to ask him what he was listening to. “I listen to a lot of D&D podcasts, people just playing D&D. My favorite [podcast] is Dimension 20… Music-wise, I listen to a lot of hip-hop: Kendrick, Juice WRLD…” He went on to mention how Juice WRLD was a huge inspiration for him to start making music, dating all the way back to 2019. “This has been the first time in a while since I’ve performed, so I’m nervous, but usually after I do the first song—it’s all good.”
He wasn’t wrong–Kord quickly came into his own on the stage. Filling the room with his strong sing-rap, melodic vocals, Kord’s performance stood out among his peers, where the air filled with ambient, emo-pop, and trap sounds suited for space travel.
Next was NicoTheChosen1–a notable act who drew the crowd immediately with his energetic adlibs and raw, emotional lyrics reflecting on betrayal and loyalty: “Feeling betrayed, should’ve gone and pulled that trigger / Tell me would you ride for me? / Tell me would you die for me?”.
Following NicoTheChosen1 was my personal favorite MC from Dog Days–Nyck Khayo. I became more aware of Khayo’s swift rap efforts on the 2020 collaboration tape, No Sleep by blu i and Vic Boujee, where he was scattered throughout the project, providing strong and catchy deliveries.
Khayo kicked off his Dog Days performance with a solo rendition of the opening track “No Mercy” off No Sleep–the most popular song from the project. He then brought up Johnnie Gauge to the stage, co-performing their latest collaborative track “5 to 9”–a soulful, hypnotic slice of life. Khayo was then briefly joined by Ol’ Dirty Space Cadet, where they performed an unreleased collaboration as well as ad-libbed for one another on some tracks.
With a wide variety of acts in different styles and flows, Dog Days truly was an event that cultivated many creative communities across the region. Kid Splinter’s efforts to bring people together through art, music, and community are not going unnoticed–may the annual Dog Days tradition continue to be a space for new and returning acts alike to keep pushing their creativity.
Splinter shared a few words on a follow-up Instagram post the following week after the event in July:
“Dog Days this past Friday was one for the books, fosho.. The energy was high, and even tho I was exhausted, I took in as much as I could. Shoutout [to] all the artist[s] who slid thru and everyone who came to support us.”
You can watch Nyck Khayo’s performance from Dog Days here on the Matt Cinematic Productions YouTube channel.
Rooted Literary Magazine is a literary platform dedicated to showcasing art, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, spoken word, music, and film that captures the full spectrum of human experience—from the beautiful to the devastating, and everything in between.
