Kendrick Lamar makes headliner status and EDM finally makes the main stage

When Metallica headlined Bonnaroo's What Stage in 2008, the Scene ran a cover story pondering in jest — as to whether this culture clash was a sign of the apocalypse, wondering how the then traditionally patchouli-slathered Bonnaroo community would reconcile its jam-centric roots with this new mainstream frontier. Seven years later, Bonnaroo's jam band enclave is all but extinct, and even the festival's rock-heavy landscape of the past half-decade is shifting, as EDM trickles in from the festival's outer reaches to the main stage and joins forces with its (career-wise) newest headliner yet.

Friday night, in the slot Sir Paul McCartney occupied a mere two years ago, Kendrick Lamar — Bonnaroo's freshest headliner to date — will cement his spot as the most relevant rapper in music today. Later that night, splitting headlining duties, six-time Grammy-nominated producer/DJ DeadMau5 will also go down in the books as the first EDM act to get top billing, and the first ever to even appear on the What Stage at all.

Hip-hop headliners of Bonnaroo past have all been veteran MCs like Jay Z, Beastie Boys and Kanye West, making the festival's jump to a fresh face like Lamar's all the more significant. Age-wise, the members of Kings of Leon were considerably younger when they headlined in 2010, but were also supporting their fifth album, since the band started 10 years earlier. Lamar's third album To Pimp a Butterfly dropped a few months ago, four years after his debut, making him the newest kid on the block.

Last year, EDM heavyweight Skrillex made a notable impression as the first of his kind included in the festival's Superjam series, no doubt opening the door for another superstar DJ higher up on the marquee. Mind you, Skrillex had the benefit of sharing the stage with far less polarizing artists like Lauryn Hill and Damian Marley. Judging from the reaction on social media, the idea of being showered with glow sticks while DeadMau5's hostile, bombastic beats scream out from his cartoonishly large mouse-shaped, LED-powered helmet is going to send a lot of more traditional, perhaps older music fans back to their tents for respite.

Or, as it turns out, off to another show on the farm. While Kendrick and Deadmau5 are stepping onto the What Stage as two of Bonnaroo's boldest headliner picks in festival's decade-plus history, they'll also be the first headlining artists denied the luxury of no-conflict time slots. By the time Kendrick spits the first 16 bars of "Money Trees," Ben Harper and his Bonnaroo-friendly brand of chill-bro adult-alternative will already be 30 minutes into his Which Stage set. Later on, Deadmau5 will be locked in battle with Earth, Wind & Fire, Run the Jewels, Flying Lotus and Odesza — all threats to the big mouse's headlining dominance.

It's impossible to say why the schedule broke bad for Kendrick and Deadmau5 — cold feet after last year's (second) Kanye West debacle, perhaps? — but it's oddly appropriate that the Thursday night headliners manage to court underdog status, despite playing the biggest stage of the festival. That's not going to last for long, no matter how hard old-school Bonnaroovians hold out for the classics.

If that's the case, it won't cause much of a stir. Those folks will get their oldies fill Sunday night as Madison Square Garden house crooner Billy Joel jaunts into his fifth performing decade with a bang. If trends are any indication, millennials are changing the face of the music festival scene simply by being its most active participants. Unlike equally high-profile-but-more-future-facing festivals of the Pitchfork variety that have more exclusively featured a very narrow spectrum of genres by mostly new artists, Bonnaroo's traditionalist format hasn't buckled so easily to trends. Its large and inclusive model is possibly the last of its kind, but then again, it's evolved a hell of a lot.

Research by event listings website EventBrite last year found that 75 percent of social media buzz transmitted from inside music festivals comes from folks 18 to 34 years old, and 1 in 5 of those festivalgoers reported having attended a festival twice in the past year (twice that of the general population). From a marketing perspective, millennials are a crucial nut to crack. Given their immense success almost solely in that demographic, EDM and hip-hop are their most easily identifiable soundtrack, and given the trends, it's not unreasonable to expect Bonnaroo's flagship acts to get greener as the years go on.