Never Seen Footage From Upcoming Freaknik Documentary Has Some Worried
People who formerly attended Atlanta’s Freaknik festival are coming to social media with their concerns about the upcoming Hulu documentary, The Wildest Party Never Told.
Hide your aunties and uncles. After the recent announcement of the upcoming Hulu documentary, Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told, Gen-Xers who once attended Atlanta’s Freaknik in the 1990s are worried about potentially being seen in the Luther Campbell and Jermaine Dupri-produced special.
One woman shared a TikTok over the weekend, expressing that she attended the festival throughout the ‘90s, including its peak in ‘94.
“I’m just praying that Jesus be a fence. I’m praying that Jesus just be a big, tall privacy fence. That’s my prayer this Easter, this Good Friday,” she says in the clip.
“That’s my prayer. I will say this, though, I will say this… like when they would bring out those video cameras and start recording, I immediately removed myself from that situation. If you see ya girl in the documentary, hey, man, at least I’m fully clothed. At least all my clothes is on. That’s all I got. That’s the best I got. But yeah, y’all, they ‘bout to put our business out in the street. Some of us might be on TV, so get your parental controls together,” she continued.
Additional Twitter users joked about their parents attending the event, which was popular amongst HBCU students from the ‘80s to the late ’90s, with police and elected officials, including Atlanta’s then-Mayor Bill Campbell, citing traffic control issues. In 1998, the Associated Press also revealed Freaknik opposition from an Atlanta committee, who called out “sexual assaults, violence against women, and public safety concerns.”
Gen-X and Gen-Z Twitter users echoed those concerns, discussing hypersexual behavior during the festival that led to alleged rapes and sexual assaults.
“Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told” “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,” reads Hulu’s description of the film. “Can the magic of Freaknik be brought back 40 years later?”
Freaknik has been resurrected in recent years, albeit for an older crowd, as a day-long concert event at locations including Morris Brown College and Lakewood Amphitheatre.