Inside Fetty Wap’s first concert—alongside 1,000 underage teens

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND—The first thing I see outside the venue of Fetty Wap’s debut concert for his first major tour is a crying teenage girl. There’s a drama playing out—two young ladies have been kicked out of the show during opening acts because one of them got drunk and threw up in front of a police officer. Her parents have been summoned. Now she’s sobbing, clutching her friend—who didn’t puke in front of cops and gets to stay.

“I won’t do it,” the friend swears. “I won’t see Fetty Wap without you, I promise.” I leave them there, clutching one another across a smoking section barrier with tears streaming down their faces.

Inside, the Fillmore theater is cramped. The analogy packed like sardines falls apart immediately because when you open a can of sardines there’s at least a little room around the edges, but here in the crowd an hour after the doors open, but two hours before the headliner, there isn’t an inch of extra space.

There’s a DJ on stage cycling through half a dozen RGF production rappers who end every set by putting their Instagram handle on the screen above the stage and asking for follows, but the only thing holding the crowd’s attention are covers of Top 40 rap songs—”Antidote” by Travi$ Scott, “Say It” by Tory Lanez.

The only place there’s not a throng of teens is at the bar. Behind the polished counter two bartenders lean against the shelves polishing glasses. Apparently barely anyone attending the show is of legal drinking age. The man handing out wristbands at the door to buy booze tells me he’s only given out 150 wristbands, maybe, “But even that might be an overestimate.” The Fillmore holds 1,150 people, and this show is sold out. That means there are 1,000 teens here to see Fetty Wap.

But this isn’t just a Fetty Wap show. By the time Fetty Wap comes on stage at 11:30pm, there have already been 6 different performers on stage and several people whose whole sole job seems to be hyping up the crowd. There is one man who simply carries around a GoPro for the entire four hours.

The hype doesn’t reach a roar until Post Malone comes on—he’s the last act before Fetty Wap himself. Around me, teens scramble to pull out their phones and start documenting Post Malone on Snapchat. Nearby, a boy with waterfall bangs makes out with his girlfriend. Accidentally, his elbow digs into the side of a young black woman next to me. She hits him on the head, tells him to stop, and he does.

The last song Post Malone plays before Fetty Wap comes on is his Top 40 hit “White Iverson,” and the teens know every damn word. Behind me I hear a boy say “I’d like to sauce on you,” a reference (albeit a corny bad one) to the chorus of Iverson’s song “Saucin’, saucin’, I’m saucin’ on you/ I’m swaggin’, I’m swaggin’, I’m swaggin’ oh ooh.” I ignore him, but he persists, and when I turn around at the end of the song, he’s so  much younger than I thought he would be that I can’t stop myself before asking him, “Are you even old enough to vote?”

He laughs. “How old do you think I am?” I think that he is probably 17. But I say 14 just to affirm my stance as an older person. “I’m 18, an adult,” he says. Stunned, I ask him who he will vote for. “I FEEL THE BERN,” he screams at full volume, and a few teens clap.