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Justin Bieber and Lil Baby will headline Made in America

The initial lineup has been announced for the two day festival, which will return to the Ben Franklin Parkway on Labor Day weekend.

Justin Bieber performs at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles in November 2020. The former teen star will headline the Made in America festival on Labor Day weekend in Philadelphia. (ABC via AP)
Justin Bieber performs at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles in November 2020. The former teen star will headline the Made in America festival on Labor Day weekend in Philadelphia. (ABC via AP)Read more/ AP

Justin Bieber and Lil Baby will be the headliners when the Made in America festival returns to the Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia on Labor Day weekend.

Besides the former teen pop star and Atlanta rapper, other featured acts on the initial lineup of the two-day gathering include Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, Roddy Ricch, A$AP Ferg, Tinashe, Bobby Schmurda, Moneybag Yo, Freddie Gibbs, and Lil Durk.

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Bieber had been scheduled to play the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia next month, but his tour for his new album Justice — a pop album that opens with a sample from a Martin Luther King Jr. speech — has been rescheduled for next year. The not-made-in-America Canadian singer is due back at the South Philly arena on June 16, 2022.

Lil Baby, whose given name is Dominique Jones, scored five hit singles from his 2020 album, My Turn, and he’s teamed with other MIA artists, including Megan Thee Stallion on last year’s “On Me” and Lil Durk on the new “Voice of the Heroes.” Lil Baby is a vocal Atlanta Hawks fan and has been seen courtside rooting for his team in their Eastern Conference semifinals series against the Sixers.

Megan Thee Stallion, who won four Grammys including best new artist earlier this year, is a Made in America veteran who played the festival in 2019, and is a prominent just-below-the-headliners attraction at seemingly every major music festival happening in late summer and fall. In the region, she’s also scheduled to play the Firefly Festival in Dover, Del., on Sept. 26.

Made in America was founded in 2012 and has been headlined twice each by Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Rihanna, Coldplay, Pearl Jam, and Nicki Minaj have also gotten top billing. The hip-hop heavy gathering whose Rocky stage is set up in front of the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was canceled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Its return, on Sept. 4 and 5, was announced last month.

More acts will be announced in the coming weeks. A spokesperson for Jay-Z’s management company, Roc Nation, said last month that the festival would be staged at its full size. In past years, the gated, ticketed festival has attracted as many as 50,000 people per day to see acts on four stages.

This year’s MIA charity partner is the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. Tickets for the festival are already on sale at madeinamerica.frontgatetickets.com.