Kansas State prepares to hop on the “Gravy Train” as it welcomes Minnesota-born rapper Yung Gravy to Bramlage Coliseum in a few weeks. The rapper is known for his unique taste in older music and older women, best showcased when he brought Addison Rae’s mother, Sheri Nicole Easterling, as his date to the MTV Video Music Awards in 2022.
Yung Gravy will perform at 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 11, after doors open at 7 p.m. Student tickets went on sale for $5 on Tuesday, at 8:30 a.m., and general public tickets followed for $20 on Thursday.
The concert is organized and sponsored by the Union Program Council, which, according to its website, plans over 150 events for K-State students and the Manhattan community every year.
“The Student Governing Association allocates special student funding, called the Campus Entertainment Fund, and provides that to the Union Program Council to put on large-scale entertainment events for the community,” Sara Heiman, director of Student Programs and Involvement, said. “So this is a campus entertainment fund event planned by the UPC suite.”
Amy Whitworth, senior in marketing and UPC Campus Entertainment co-chair, helped organize the event.
According to Whitworth, Yung Gravy was selected to perform by a survey filled out by students.
“We took the survey results that we had sent out to the students and took the top choices, like … comedians or artists, and Yung Gravy was among the top choices and the results of the survey,” Whitworth said. “So we took about five comedians and artists and presented those to the UPC … and basically, Yung Gravy was our top-voted artist.”
UPC advisor Caitlin McCourt said this planning process took about a year to orchestrate.
“We usually try to put out like a survey to as much of campus as we can just to get an idea of … what kind of performance, and then music, like what kind of genres people are into,” McCourt said. “We kind of get it down to five or six options, then us as a committee, we take it to the Union Program Council board, they kind of help us make a decision on just weighing everything like climate of each of these performers, just the costs, all that kind of stuff, how big they would be on campus. And then from there, we kind of get our top three, and then we take it to the Union governing board to help us kind of make those final decisions and give us approval to spend the money. So there’s — it’s kind of a lengthy process.”
Heiman said that the UPC included other things in the decision process as well.
“Other additional factors, of course, were our budget, what we had allocated to us from Student Government Association, and also of course, date availability, with our venue, which we identified to be Bramlage,” Heiman said.
McCourt said the Manhattan community is looking forward to the concert, especially because tickets are selling fast.
“In Bramlage, specifically, we haven’t had a concert since COVID,” McCourt said. “I’ve seen a lot of buzz on social media and things like that. So that’s just been super exciting to see tickets sell so fast to we’re all already nearing the end of the week, and we’re close to being sold out.”
Heiman said events like this are one of the best parts of her job.
“We’re just really excited as an organization, as UPC and as an office, as the Union, to be able to provide events like this for the campus community, and so we’re really looking forward to enjoying this event together with everyone,” Heiman said. “Events like this are kind of like what epitomizes the reason I do the work I do. It’s just really exciting to get a lot of our students together, who are all there for a similar purpose and to have a great, great evening together.”
For anyone wanting to listen to Yung Gravy before the concert, “This Is Yung Gravy” from Spotify has all his hits.
