Leeds Festival: Dave raps with fan (again) while becoming youngest headliner

Dave is the youngest solo headliner of Reading and Leeds Festivals since a Yorkshire site was added in 1999

Dave rapped on stage with a delighted fan while becoming Leeds Festival's youngest headliner on Saturday.

"I feel like I should share this moment with one of you guys for the final time," said the 24-year-old Londoner.

He then brought out an energetic young Merseysider, à la viral sensation Alex from Glastonbury several years ago, to perform the track Thiago Silva.

Earlier, US star Megan Thee Stallion invited "hot girls" and "hot guys" from the audience up for a dirty dance-off.

The Texan hip-hop sensation made history too by becoming the event's first black female co-headliner, as rap music took over from rock and pop.

Funky Saturday

Dave is a born story-teller and clearly now made for the main stage.

He arrived wearing a matching green vest top and shorts, with a "Psycho" cap on. And backed by a marching band with added strings and brass, situated behind a big metal heart-shaped cage, began to tell his truth.

"It's been a long road," he said, displayed in black-and-white on big screens. "I want to take you guys on a journey."

Stopping only briefly due to a health and safety concern in the crowd, he coolly performed songs from his Mobo Award-winning recent record We're All Alone in this Together, one of the biggest-selling albums of the year, which tackles themes of loneliness, mental health and racism in the UK.

As well as material from his Brit Award and Mercury Prize-winning album Psychodrama (hence the cap), which explores issues around grief, domestic abuse and his brother's incarceration.

There were good time vibes though, and early in the set he turned Saturday night in west Yorkshire into a Funky Friday, delivering his number one hit.

The star took he crowd on an emotinal journey from south London to the Leeds main stage

Then came the moment of the night. After his band played a snippet of The White Stripes anthem Seven Nation Army, up came a "buzzing" bare-chested young fan who said he had been waiting for seven hours in the hope of being selected.

"You nearly got me up in Newcastle," he revealed, excitedly. Then addressing the crowd, added: "I've been a fan of Dave for so long, I've been to three of his shows, I've been on tour with him... well, not with him!"

After going bar for bar with his hero twice, drawing loud cheers, he stopped for a quick selfie video and disappeared off into the night.

The limelight then fell back on the headliner, who let fans, old and new, into the secrets of his songwriting process, while switching between the piano and guitar. "Music is my way of communicating," he explained. "I'm not that good at speaking."

There were camera phones held aloft for as far as the eye could see as he ripped into his Stormzy collaboration Clash.

Unlike at Reading, Leeds' sister festival, the night before, there was no cameo from last year's headliner however. Though it didn't really matter, this was Dave's night. "It's one of the greatest honours in all of our lives," he beamed on behalf of himself and his band.

Speaking to Radio 1's Newsbeat in December, Dave said headlining a major event like Reading and Leeds would be a completely different challenge and experience to anything he has done before, promising "the highest quality production value that I can".

It was a promise he very much kept. Marking another big moment for UK grime and rap.

Megan Thee Stallion, like Dave, welcomed fans on stage

Before Dave there was Megan, who put on a highly sexually-charged HIIT class of a show, which peaked with a rendition of her's and Cardi B's track WAP (which I'm afraid I cannot decode for you here).

Her lyrics, filthier than some of the bodies on display that have been on the campsite since Wednesday, gave the brilliant sign language interpreters on the side of the sound stage an unenviable task.

"We here to have a party tonight," she announced. "I hope you all ready."

Twerking throughout in a leather corset and thong, Megan handpicked some "hotties" from the crowd - including a woman in a white bikini, another in a cowboy hat and a bloke in Hawaiian shirt - to join her, as one of the main stages was briefly turned into a strip club.

"That's what I'm talking about!" she yelled, encouragingly, in the direction of her newest dance students, after having warned them not to be shy. It was a warning that was well-heeded by all.

Megan, who is currently embroiled in a dispute with her record label, played a career-spanning set that was a joyous sight to behold.

'A good step forward for us'

Festival organiser Melvin Benn described her booking as "a good step forward for us", a nod to the much-needed diversification of the line-up in recent years, reflecting people's changing listening habits in the genre-straddling streaming era.

"Festivals are a reflection of what people are choosing to watch," he recently told Music Week. "As it happens, this year [Friday's co-headliner] Halsey was available and Megan Thee Stallion was available and they both wanted to play.

"Her show is exactly what the Reading and Leeds audience want and I was pleased and surprised that she wanted to do it."

Wolf Alice, who will play at Leeds on Sunday, said last year festival bookers had been playing it safe since Covid, giving preference to heritage acts.

And while there is still a long way to go in that regard, Saturday saw an abundance of new talent on display, including PinkPantheress, Griff and Joy Crookes.

Little Simz brought great tea-time vibes as the sun began to set

Another London rapper/actress Little Simz, who actually features alongside the multi-talented Dave in the cult gang drama Top Boy, set the tone for the evening getting the crowd to put their "dancing shoes" on to groove to songs from her critically-acclaimed albums, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and Grey Area as the sun started to set.

After finishing up with the tongue-twisting vocal gymnastics of Venom, she seemed genuinely humbled by the rapturous applause. "Every time I come to Leeds I have a wonderful time," she said. "I'm so grateful to be here."

She dedicated her penultimate track Woman to all the females in the field, rapping lyrics befitting of the evening ahead: "All I see is black stars and I love it, yeah / Time's up, tell the people that we coming, yeah, yeah."

Leeds Festival continues on Sunday with performances from Yorkshire rock bands Arctic Monkeys and Bring Me the Horizon, who both performed in Reading on Saturday evening.