Jermaine Dupri has cleared up rumors around his upcoming Freaknik documentary about Atlanta’s infamous spring break festival.
The So So Def founder appeared on the Tamron Hall Show on Friday (April 28) and was asked about his upcoming Hulu documentary titled Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told, with people worrying that their past might be unwillingly revealed.
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JD said he’d been waiting to address concerns and went into detail about what the documentary will entail.
“I want to say this to all of those people out there,” he said. “My vision of Freaknik is really a story about the South and Atlanta. It’s not really a story about what everybody keeps talking about.
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“I don’t like that part because I feel like it’s a little disrespectful because I’m just telling a story of Atlanta, right? And how Atlanta was built into the place that it is today.
“People came to Atlanta through Freaknik and they stayed. I say that in ‘Welcome to Atlanta.’ And that’s how Atlanta has become this multi-cultural, multi-city place. Freaknik plays one of the biggest roles in that period.”
He added: “I can’t say that you won’t see freaking in the movie. It is called Freaknik. It is what it is. Because it’s the 40th anniversary of Freaknik, it’s the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop and it’s the 30th anniversary of So So Def. So it’s all tied in together.”
It was first announced Jermaine Dupri was working on a Freaknik documentary in December, with the multi-platinum producer promising to “show y’all what you missed” from that time period.
Freaknik began as a gathering thrown in 1983 by students at Atlanta University Center – the collective name of Atlanta’s four HBCUs: Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Morris Brown College and Spelman College.
It was initially intended to be an event for students who couldn’t afford to go home for spring break, but it continued to grow in size and popularity, with students from other HBCUs across the South.
At its height, the festival became a destination for students and non-students alike.
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By 1990, Freaknik saw a crowd of 300,000 people descend on Atlanta from across the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.
A release date or trailer for Hulu’s Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told hasn’t been revealed yet.
