Day 2 of The Roots Picnic was less hype, more chill with Erykah Badu, Black Thought, and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Here’s what our music critic thought.

Roots Picnic weekend came to a close Sunday night, with a full moon shining over the Center City skyline in the distance and Black Thought of The Roots joining Erykah Badu during the final set of the festival’s first year on Belmont Plateau in Fairmount Park.

It was an action-packed two days at the fest t founded by the Philadelphia hip-hop band in 2008 at Festival Pier — essentially a parking lot — and has been growing steadily since.

This year, the Picnic pulled in its biggest name ever, with Jaÿ-Z’s appearance atop the bill on Saturday guaranteeing a sellout of 40,000 tickets per day. The tickets were sold as two-day passes.

The post-fest recaps will rightly focus on that superstar performance by the rapper and entertainment mogul whose Labor Day weekend Made in America fest has vanished from the Philly music calendar while The Roots Picnic has expanded.

» READ MORE: Jaÿ-Z and the Roots cap electrifying first day of Roots Picnic, with surprise guest Meek Mill

Backed by The Roots (and Philly bass player Adam Blackstone), Jaÿ-Z opened with a freestyle that included Nicki Minaj, Drake, and Kanye West disses and brought out a who’s who in Philly hip-hop and R&B, including Meek Mill, Jazmine Sullivan, Bilal, and Beanie Sigel.

Sunday’s second Picnic day was less hype, more chill.

The vibe was relaxed under a cloudless blue sky with a not-so-packed house after lots of out-of-towner Jaÿ-Z fans — too many wearing Jalen Brunson New York Knicks jerseys, quite frankly — skipped town.

The Picnic’s new home, of course, is an iconic destination immortalized in DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s 1991 song “Summertime,” in which Will Smith rapped: “Back in Philly we be out in the Park / A place called the Plateau is where everybody goes.”

A rumored Smith guest spot with Jazzy Jeff, who manned the turntables on the secondary Plateau stage on Saturday and the main AT&T stage on Sunday, did not materialize.

You’ll have to wait for the July 4 One Philly Unity concert for that.

But Jazzy Jeff did put on an hour-long early-evening set on Sunday as a bridge between “Folded” R&B-pop star Kehlani and Badu. It was a highly entertaining DJ master class that artfully blended hip-hop history with pop culture references.

Was that the Gilligan’s Island theme song and “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” mixed in with deconstructed Jaÿ-Z, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar jams? It was.

The Picnic’s move down the road to the Plateau after several years at the Mann Center followed last year’s first day of the fest debacle when repairs to muddy grounds caused by heavy rain led to long delays to enter. That, compounded with poor communication, angered attendees who expressed their displeasure online.

This year was a much smoother operation, though there were reports of long lines and lengthy delays on Saturday at the fest’s bottom-of-the-hill Montgomery entrance, near the closed-off Montgomery Drive exit of the Schuylkill Expressway.

It was generally easier to get in at the Chamonix gateway, where there was cellphone connectivity and attendees lined up to pose for photos at a ROOTS PICNIC sign that showed off a sparkly Center City in the background.

The site is a vast grass bowl situated on 70 acres or so, more than big enough to accommodate the crowds, once inside. Getting inside, however, required lots of walking, especially for those parked in free nearby parking lots, which were not equipped with shuttles. The Roots Picnic was a good way to get your steps in!

Picnic tables nested around abundant food trucks and water ice and lemonade stands, with Down North Pizza, Charles Pan-Fried Chicken, Mike’s BBQ, and Taqueria Dos Hermanos, among the refreshingly noncorporate (though not cheap) offerings.

This year’s Picnic was blessed with nearly ideal weather. A little cloudy and windy on Saturday, a perfect late spring day in the park on Sunday. No rain or punishing heat.

Would the Plateau really be a better spot for the festival than the Mann, whose TD Pavilion has a roof, if the skies were to open up?

Probably not, but that wasn’t put to the test this year.

Every year, the J.Period Mixtape is an if-you-know-you-know highlight, where Roots rapper Black Thought gets to cut loose with other emcees, after being limited by The Roots’ duties as back-up band to the stars in their main fest appearance.

This year was no exception, with announced D.C. rapper Wale playing a starring role, preceded by surprise emcees Conway the Machine (of the Buffalo, N.Y., crew Griselda) and old-school 1980s “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’” hip-hop hero Big Daddy Kane.

Without Big Daddy Kane, Black Thought said, “There would no Roots crew, there would be no Jaÿ-Z.”

The only problem with the J.Period Mixtape was the timing.

The mark of a topflight festival is it makes you choose between multiple stages, and FOMO is inevitable. I was hoping to also catch part of Corinne Bailey Rae, the English singer-songwriter who intriguingly rebooted her career with 2023’s Black Rainbows.

But alas, by the time I climbed the hill to the Plateau stage, she was done. Dang.

Back on the main stage, Atlanta R&B singer Mariah the Scientist got off to a rocky start. A significant portion of the crowd was disengaged early on, and the singer couldn’t help but notice.

“I feel like y’all aren’t feeling me,” she said to the crowd. “The aunties are out here, but what about the rest of y’all?” She got the crowd going, though, when she sang recognizable hits like “Spread Thin” and “Fever.”

Her quip about aunties was a nod to the Picnic’s core audience of adult Black music fans and — she might not have known this — the significance of the Plateau, where many of the weekend revelers undoubtedly had a history of hanging at hip-hop parties in their younger days.

As Black Thought put it when he came on with Badu, the sounds heard at the Picnic are “grown people’s music.”

Badu’s loose, improvised, often-brilliant shaggy-dog set included reminiscences of recording her 1997 album Baduizm in Philadelphia with The Roots — whose keyboard player James Poyser she called her “work husband.”

Black Thought spoke after joining Badu on stage for “You Got Me,” the 1999 Roots single that featured Badu singing a vocal hook written by Jill Scott. (Look for Jilly from Philly to sing that herself when she shares a bill with The Roots on July 4th.)

The second song that Badu and Black Thought did together was “Baby, I’m Scared of You,” the 1983 R&B hit by Womack & Womack, the duo of married couple Linda and Cecil Womack.

Black Thought, who showed off his soul singing chops in the performance, broke into a broad smile as the drummer counted off the beat. A grown folks song for the old R&B heads, and an only-at-the-Roots Picnic moment, if there ever was one.

Another such performance came earlier in the evening when bass player, bandleader, and recent Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame inductee Blackstone presented a tribute to the Whitney Houston starring the Babyface-produced Waiting to Exhale soundtrack.

He assembled a cavalcade of R&B and gospel-singing women, who he brought out one by one to sing songs originally recorded by Houston, Brandy, Aretha Franklin, and others.

Blackstone’s lineup wasn’t as illustrious but still filled with seriously gifted singers, including Melanie Fiona, Chante Moore, Ledisi, Gogo Morrow, Yolanda Adams, Andra Day, and a show-stopping Tamar Braxton.

The entire set was presented with tenderness and care, marred only by the sonic bleed on the Plateau, where music from a nearby DJ stage and the even further away main stage (where Funk Flex was holding forth) could be heard during the quiet moments.

That’s a stage positioning issue that needs to be fixed next year.

Staff writer Earl Hopkins contributed to this article.