The BC Fest has been a great success over the last few years. Talk about this year’s upcoming event and why you booked the artists you did.

Brandon McEachern: We try to pick artist we know will bring a lot of people out…I really take pride in the music and people we choose. Not necessarily for their message or anything like that, but who people gravitate to. People ask, ‘Why did you book Future?’ Why wouldn’t I book Future? Everybody’s rocking to Future right now, and Jhene Aiko. You hear her perform, it makes you wanna date me, break up with me, and love me all over again! Then BJ’s got the Chicago kids, and there’s Anderson Paak. Then you go to the Soundcloud world and you got Sango. I’m really excited to have him back again too.

For those who don’t know, what else goes on at BC Fest besides the musical performances

Brandon McEachern: One thing we really want to do is make it a platform for young African Americans. The vendor market place is very important because a lot of those young people are your classmates or a young person from your church and they have a hustle. They need a platform to showcase their stuff so the vendor aspect of the festival is big because that’s how they eat.

Then, of course, we have the healthy cooking demos, the 5K run the week before the festival, we’re gonna have a second stage to do trap karaoke and local acts this year, a massage therapist on site, live art. We got some things in store.

What made you decide to move the festival to D.C. in 2013? Do you guys anticipate moving it again somewhere else in the future?

Brandon McEachern: Well, I’m from the east coast. I spend a lot of time in D.C. I’ve got folks in Southeast and my partner, Marcus Allen, lives in the District.’ So I’m coming to D.C. all the time and I’m noticing this culture out there. So once I brought it to D.C., it became a thing and it became Broccoli City Festival. But we want to take Broccoli City to every urban city like, Chicago, Oakland, Atlanta. The goal is to make them free too. The more and more media attention we get, the more the sponsors will take us seriously. With no support and the use of word of mouth, we’re going from 5,000 people last year to already passing out 8,000 tickets, so we hope to get even more attention with that.