CTRL + ALT + DEL drops a grip of Millennial hip hop on Long Beach

Long Beach got a little taste of the late 2000s and early 2010s on September 12th when CTRL + ALT + DEL: A Blog Era Celebration took over the F&M Bank Amphitheater. Headlined by Miguel and Big Sean, the concert brought together a lineup that felt like a trip back to the days when discovering new music meant scrolling through Tumblr, downloading mixtapes off DatPiff, and burning CDs for friends.

The event featured a stacked lineup of artists from that era, with Dom Kennedy, Curren$y, The Cool Kids, Pac Div, Casey Veggies, U-N-I, Chip Tha Ripper, Gym Class Heroes, and OverDoz, in addition to the headliners.

The idea behind CTRL + ALT + DEL was to celebrate the period when music blogs and online communities played a huge role in how people found artists. Before Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and other modern streaming platforms, music heads were going down the black hole of Limewire to find the next artist or song that everyone needed to hear.

Perhaps even putting viruses on our parents’ computer.

For anyone who was listening to hip hop during the “blog era”, seeing all of these names on the same bill brought us back to the good ol’ days. The opening acts were a major part of the sound and culture surrounding that time. A mix of west coast rap, alternative hip hop, and R&B is what made the lineup feel like an old iPod stashed in the bottom of a junk drawer.

The F&M Bank Amphitheater also gave the event a fitting setting. Located along the Long Beach waterfront (with the downtown skyline in the background and a stunning pink and orange sunset during a part of the evening), the relatively new venue hosted the concert as part of its 2026 season.

Big Sean was one of the artists most closely connected to the era the concert was celebrating.

For fans from his 2011-2012 era, Big Sean‘s appearance brought back memories of the Finally Famous Series and Detroit, when mixtapes sites helped build his name before he became the mainstream artist he is today.

Miguel then represented the R&B side of the time, with his early music establishing him as one of the standout R&B artists of the 2010s. There was a time when finding a new artist could feel like discovering a secret that you only shared with certain people: you might hear about someone through a blog, download a mixtape, or get a recommendation from a friend. Artists could build loyal fan bases online without necessarily having a huge radio hit.

For anyone who remembers spending hours digging for new artists online over 15 years ago, it was a chance to hear the soundtrack of that time again. CTRL + ALT + DEL showed that even after an era that felt like a lifetime ago, these tracks still slap and own a place in today’s playlist rotation.

Photography by Celeste Basich

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