Demi Lovato and Ludacris to headline Wawa Welcome America concert on July 4
The concert will conclude with fireworks over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, capping 16 days of programming across Philly.
The vibe at this year’s Wawa Welcome America concert: pop punk meets Atlanta hip-hop.
Singer Demi Lovato and musician-actor hyphenate Ludacris will headline the free July 4 concert, which will conclude with fireworks over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
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The Welcome America concert has been a Philadelphia mainstay since 1993, with Wawa taking over the sponsorship mantle in 2010. Since then, the Delaware County-based convenience store chain has helped bring acts like Pitbull, Nicki Minaj, Jason Derulo, and Philly natives the Roots to the parkway.
Wawa Welcome America has also added the two-day Hispanic Fiesta to its lineup, thanks to a partnership with organizer Concilio, a Latino family services nonprofit. That event, set at the Great Plaza at Penn’s Landing on June 24 and 25, will feature headliners Manny Manuel and Jose Alberto.
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Who is Demi Lovato?
Lovato, who came up through the Disney Channel industrial complex, is a Grammy-nominated musician, author, and mental health advocate.
Her career spans eight albums and a cluster of genres, from pop to touches of R&B, to, more recently, rock. Lovato’s most recent release is a 16-track punk-adjacent album that she teased by hosting a funeral for her pop era on Instagram.
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Lovato has been open about her yearslong addiction journey and bipolar diagnosis, detailing both in the self-produced docuseries Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil. Her candor has won several awards, including the Vanguard Award from LGBTQ-advocacy organization GLAAD, which celebrated Lovato in 2017 for her anti-bullying work.
Who is Ludacris?
Generation Z might know Chris “Ludacris” Bridges as the guy from seven Fast & Furious movies and a one-time Justin Bieber collaborator, but the rapper is perhaps most famous for taking southern rap mainstream with songs like “Area Codes,” “Money Maker,” and, of course, “Southern Hospitality.”
Though the elder statesman of rap hasn’t dropped an album since 2015, Ludacris has been teasing new music — and potentially an album — while on the press tour for the latest Fast & Furious film, Fast X.
On the acting side, Ludacris has also starred in two Academy Award-nominated films: Crash, alongside Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser, and Hustle & Flow, which launched the career of Memphis-based rap group Three 6 Mafia.