Freaknik Documentary Shows What Fest Was Like Before It Went Off the Rails

September 2024 · 15 minute read

The Big Picture

Freaknik was a massive street party that drew hundreds of thousands of people to the city of Atlanta in the '80s and '90s. Many credit this party for putting Atlanta on the map culturally. Years later, Luther "Uncle Luke" Campbell, Jermaine Dupri, 21 Savage, and many others have partnered up to produce a documentary that captures the vibrancy and uplifting feel of this notorious festival. Freaknik: The Wild Party Never Told shows the origins of Freaknik and how this HBCU-focused event brought joy to the community and continues to uphold an unforgettable legacy. The documentary series is filled with video footage of the time, and captures what it was like being there, and how important it was to so many people. In addition, Freaknik features appearances by Lil Jon, Killer Mike, Jalen Rose, Too $hort, Shanti Das, former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Erick Sermon, CeeLo Green, Rico Wade, Kenny Burns and more.

Ahead of its world premiere at SXSW 2024, Campbell, Dupri, executive producer Geraldine L. Porras, and director P. Frank Williams stopped by the Collider media studio to talk with our own Steve Weintraub about the full scope of Freaknik, digitalizing tapes people sent in straight from their personal archives, destigmatizing the picnic in its early form, how the festival changed from its simple beginnings to this massive party.

According to Campbell:

“The thing about this doc is it is very important to the city of Atlanta, it's important to HBCU, it's important to the world. I mean, the world don't know about pre-Nik. They just know one part of the story. If you grew up 10 years after it happened, you think Freaknik started at this point. But if you grew up in the beginning of it and understood how it was put on and how it was, what it was, what was the original presenting of it. You understand the actual story. I mean, and these guys did a great job of putting it together.”

Throughout this insightful discussion, the team behind the documentary also mention their frustration with social commentary on Freaknik, share a few of their go-to TV shows, and Campbell shares a wild story from his Freaknik days.

Check out the video above for the full interview, or read the conversation below.

COLLIDER: First of all, I really want to say congratulations on... Is it right to call it a documentary? What is the proper term for this documentary film?

GERALDINE L. PORRAS: Sure, documentary film.

Just making sure. Because you hear showrunner, and I'm like wait, I only saw one episode.

FRANK WILLIAMS: That means she is the boss.

100%

PORRAS: I run the show.

Jermaine Dupri and Luke Campbell On Freaknik's Origins and How the Doc Brings Black Joy to Atlanta

I want to start on camera by saying really, congratulations on this. I learned a lot about the city of Atlanta and about Freaknik. There's going to be a ton of people watching this who have not seen the doc, who might not know about Freaknik, so who wants to bite the bullet and explain what the documentary covers?

WILLIAMS: Well, you've got the legends here who made Freaknik, Freaknik. So let's start with Luke Campbell.

LUTHER "UNCLE LUKE" CAMPBELL: The thing about this doc is it is very important to the city of Atlanta, it's important to HBCU, it's important to the world. I mean, the world don't know about pre-Nik. They just know one part of the story. If you grew up 10 years after it happened, you think Freaknik started at this point. But if you grew up in the beginning of it and understood how it was put on and how it was, what it was, what was the original presenting of it. You understand the actual story. I mean, and these guys did a great job of putting it together.

One of the things about documentaries that people don't realize is getting all that footage requires clearances and a whole bunch of lawyers and work. So talk a little bit about the obstacles you might have faced in getting footage to do this, and what were some of the big challenges?

WILLIAMS: Well, Geraldine can speak on this. We got a lot of videos from all over it. We tried to find stuff that wasn't out there. I mean, because everybody got some HI-8 tapes, some DV tapes from back in the '80s and '90s. You know what a DV tape is?

Yeah.

WILLIAMS: You remember the big camcorder?

It's in the movie.

WILLIAMS: We were trying to find out all the original stuff that you had never seen before, so it was a challenge.

PORRAS: But people came forward and we were very lucky. The biggest challenge was the fact that it was sitting in people's garages and a lot of things that had to be digitized before we even knew what was on those tapes. A lot of reaching out to folks and seeing what they had and, of course, J.D. and Luke putting the word out there too for people to submit their photos and videos. It went a long way.

JERMAINE DUPRI: Yeah, that made it easy. It's a cultural thing that people have just really been waiting on, and they've been waiting to see somebody do this the correct way. It's just been people out there with like tons of footage and stuff that we didn't even get a chance to use. You know what I mean? That is a little bit more explicit than what you probably need to see. I'm still getting people sending me footage right now.

That's actually something I wanted to talk about, which is what this doc could have been. I think you did such a great job and it just keeps moving. It has a really good runtime, but I'm curious, what was your first cut like? Did you have a three-hour version that you're like, "how are we going to bring this down to an hour"?

WILLIAMS: Well, originally it was a different direction, which I think people know, but it was actually about bringing Freaknik back, and it then turned into a retro after that. That cut was a totally different cut than what you saw. Shout out to Disney and Hulu for you know, understanding that that particular situation was in the best direction based on some of the people involved. But we're very happy with it. I just wanted to follow up. Freaknik is about black joy. It's a celebration of young black people finding freedom in America in a country that really didn't accept them. That's why they started this picnic, because they needed a place for themselves. You can look at Daytona and all of those kinds of places and the sort of treatment of them versus African Americans in America. This is a film about race, about culture, about young people. Enjoy!

One of the things you bring up in the documentary is the hypocrisy and the fact that people in Daytona are doing even crazier shit, and they're getting away with it or other places. Freaknik, especially before the Olympics, you could really talk so much about the city of Atlanta. I always get mad at government hypocrisy.

WILLIAMS: J.D. was in Atlanta and saw all of it at the time.

DUPRI: I think what's interesting about this is that I see all the people talking, and I see all, I would say, social media commentary wondering what this documentary is about, right? It's a little disrespectful to me because, to me, people didn't want us to live our story. I think that that's what I realized when we started doing this. Luke and myself, we are from the South. It's not anything else that connects us besides more than just the fact that we are connecting states almost. Georgia, Florida and whatever else is in the South, but it's a whole lifestyle in the South that this has happened, right? It's not just you see people saying in Virginia that they had something going on in VA, they had a Greek fest or something down there, and they're trying to compare this to Freaknik. What they don't understand or even when they say that, what they stopped paying attention to is that Atlanta has four HBCs, not one. So whatever happened in Howard, in DC, Atlanta's four times that. Whatever happens in Hampton. Any one of these other HBCUs is just one. We have four of them in this city. The explosion of Freaknik and what it is, a lot of people don't actually pay attention to that level of this. This is something that's not just like a bunch of kids just having a picnic. It started at that, but it just opened the doors for like, you should open your eyes and pay attention to how geographical and cultural the city and everything that's happening to it. This is Freaknik, basically.

As you talk about in the documentary, Freaknik pretty much put Atlanta on the map, in terms, for so many people. What I found so amazing about it is this all happened before Wi-Fi, the internet. Before, people were reading newspapers and magazines and calling each other to pull this shit off. It's crazy what was able to be accomplished in the '80s and especially into the early '90s.

DUPRI: I think that's the cultural part of it is that the message is like, you had to be there! This is a thing that's just like Luke coming from Miami and me being young and not knowing why are these people coming to Atlanta like this? What is it so special about this? I was a kid that couldn't really actually participate in the first efforts of Freaknik. I was actually just watching from cars and just riding around, watching all the people go into the clubs. You see this, but then you start seeing, like we say, in the dark the stars that start coming. Luke Skywalker and all of these people, people from other places. You just start saying "damn", what is it about Freaknik that's making all these people come and then, like I said, it just opens up the education of history to me. Social studies that we haven't had.

CAMPBELL: You asked a question earlier about the controversy of it. Freaknik still exists today in Miami Beach. Miami Beach is trying to ban Black college spring breakers. It's no different than what was going on in this film. It's so amazing that this film is coming out at a time when you have a city like a place where I'm from. Exercising the same things that happened when you look at this doc. Just like Jermaine said, you know, it just brought so much, when you had all those HBCs in there and then the surrounding areas with Georgia, Florida, Alabama and all these folks coming together in one city. It just took on a life of its own. What they did in bringing the originators of Freaknik to tell that part of the story. That is the most important part of it, because it turned into something else, like J.D. said. When I came down, I am wild and crazy. 2 Live Crew. I heard "freak" and I just thought I was supposed to go anywhere with it. When I got there, it was like,"OK, we just got Freaknik", not knowing that it was a civilized party, done by some divine organizations.

'Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told' Shows What Freaknik Was Like Before It Went Off the Rails

One of the things that I found amazing is that, nowadays, so many things get disrupted, unfortunately with gun violence and disruptive elements. What was amazing about Freaknik in the '80s and in the early '90s to a certain point is how it seemed pretty peaceful and just like a great party where people want to just mingle and have fun. Can you sort of talk about that?

DUPRI: I definitely say this all the time. There was a time in America when people didn't pay their money to go somewhere to act stupid. You know what I mean? Even, with Miami banning spring break. That's because kids are going to Miami and shooting and doing stuff that you don't go out of town to do this. To me, personally, and my vision of going to Miami has always been something else besides going down there and getting in a fight. Right? I think this was the same time in Atlanta. It was young kids from other HBCs and surrounding states. They were coming to Atlanta because this was a place that allowed, you know, this is something else that we don't talk about really in the doc, but Atlanta stayed open 24 hours when Freaknik was out. It was almost like Vegas of the South. We had a club in Atlanta called 112 where you could go to at five o'clock in the morning and this place was packed, jam-packed. After we've been to 2 Live Crew shows, and after we've been to everywhere, people would go here. That's what I'm saying. Atlanta was a place where you could damn near just party all night. Have a good time and people were respectful of that. I think that's what we lost and that's why it's important to bring this to show people, so we can at least try to get that back in life.

Ice-T, Martin Lawrence, and More Are Go-to TV Icons For the Team Behind the Documentary

If you could only watch one TV show for the rest of your life, what TV show would it be and why?

CAMPBELL: Law & Order. They just keep killing people and killing people and Ice-T stays on there. He's one of my favorite rappers ever, so as long as he keeps you in check, there's a rapper involved. Olivia, I love her and I just be having these dreams about being in bed with her.

I love that answer.

WILLIAMS: I'm not even sure how to follow up with that situation. I don't know, that's a good one.

I got to hit up Ice. I'm like Ice, you know, you're getting pops from Luke. I'm going to go into light fair. I'm just going to go with the Martin situation because I do a lot of deep stuff in my regular life in television films. So I just want to laugh. Martin to me, I just turned it on, and I just release. Martin Lawrence.

I'm very familiar with Martin.

DUPRI: I must say The Sopranos. I would watch The Sopranos over and over again. I'm into the gangster shit, excuse me.

PORRAS: For me it's The Simpsons. I think it's funny. It's smart and a little psychic too.

The other thing about it is, a lot of people have come in, and they debate picking a show that has 20 seasons or 30 seasons because you have to watch it. I don't know how many seasons is in Martin?

WILLIAMS: About seven. It's been on for a while.

Luke Campbell On the Wildest Freaknik Story Never Told

There's a bunch then. I've been keeping this conversation very PG, and I'm celebrating that's the reason that's where we're going, so I definitely have to ask you, sir (Campbell). Perhaps, when you think back on Freaknik, what is something like crazy that you either participated in or heard about that you still can't believe happened? By the way, you don't have to answer obviously, but I am curious because you do have a little bit of a reputation.

CAMPBELL: Of course

DUPRI: There's a reason why there's a sticker on the CD.

Do you realize that I know who I'm sitting next to? This question was coming.

CAMPBELL: Well, well, there was a little story that most people don't know, and I'm gonna be as clean as I wanna be. At Freaknik, there was this big-time agent named Dr Tucker, and he came down with this young phenom named Glenn Robinson, and he was courting him, and he was trying to be his agent and he said, look, I want to hang out with you and we are just going to be together. I need to lock this dude in. Eventually, we went to my hotel in Nico and Glenn went into the closet with somebody. I don't know who he went in the closet with. He never came out for the rest of the week.

WILLIAMS: Well, Robinson is an NBA player too, by the way. Just want to make sure you understand one of the best young phenoms.

DUPRI: Never come out? Is he still in there?

CAMPBELL: You stand up, he might be there. He was the first guy to make $100 million. That's what Michael Jones was like, "who is this guy?" That's the PG version.

Right. I understand and I appreciate you sharing that. For real. Listen, and because I've to wrap with you guys, I could ask a million other questions, but I really want to say sincerely, congratulations on the doc. I know people are going to love it. It's really well done. Congrats on being part of SXSW and I wish you nothing but the best.

DUPRI: Thank you.

WILLIAMS: I appreciate you, my man.

Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told will premiere on Hulu on March 21. Keep your eyes on Collider for more exclusive SXSW news and interviews.

Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told (2024)
Documentary

Recounts the rise and fall of a small Atlanta HBCU picnic that exploded into an influential street party and spotlighted ATL as a major cultural stage.

Release Date March 21, 2024 Director P. Frank Williams Runtime 82 Minutes Main Genre Documentary

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