Made in America turns 5, a winning tradition for Philly and curator Jay Z

Five years in, what is the Budweiser Made in America festival?

A first-class hip-hop fest, for starters, that usually lands a big-name rock headliner - this year's catch being Coldplay, the British pop superstars who closed down the event Sunday - and has less success bringing in midlevel rock acts.

It's a winning business proposition for festival curator Jay Z and his various enterprises, from his Roc Nation management company to the Tidal music service that live streamed the event all weekend.

And it's a Philadelphia institution, an end of summer/start of the semester rite of passage where a diverse, mostly 25-and-under crowd can get out of their heads to a genre-blending mix of music at an event that transforms the city's streets into a playground of crushed Budweiser - oh, excuse me, they renamed it "America" for the summer - beer cans.

Coldplay proved to be an even better choice for a second-night headliner in practice than on paper. It's true that MIA draws a mixed crowd - it's one of the festival's most appealing attributes. Made in America truly looks like America - only drunker.

But most years, that winning Philly mix of black and white has dissipated toward closing time when the last rock act comes on and plays to a mostly white audience.

That didn't happen Sunday, because the Chris Martin band makes eminently agreeable, buoyantly melodic music that crosses racial lines. Fireworks went boom at the start of the band's 90-minute set with the mildly psychedelic "A Head Full Of Dreams," and glow sticks that were handed out at the entrance lit up during "Yellow," and pretty much everybody stuck around and sang along.

Coldplay is an easy target if there ever was one. They're soft rockers who can tend toward the soporific. They're shameless panderers - "It's the last night of the summer in one of the coolest cities in the world" - like U2 without the edge or hubris.

The band's bright and breezy music and genial attitude surely were suited to the task of closing out the grueling two-day forced march of Made in America. The band's predictably sturdy songs are built for open spaces, and that goes for both the high-energy numbers and quieter moments like "Evergold," a Hallmark card that Martin sent out to those suffering in Syria, Louisiana, and Italy, and which ended with a film clip of Muhammad Ali advocating for compassion for his fellow man. (It also began with birthday wishes to Beyoncé, of whom Martin said, "She's 107 years old, I can't quite believe it.")

The celebs were out in force. Maybe the reason the crowd at the Liberty stage for British avant-erotic R&B singer FKA Twigs wasn't so large is that her music tends toward the abstruse, but also because word got out that Bill Clinton, Jay Z, and Chance the Rapper were getting chummy in the nearby VIP area, and people were craning their necks for a glimpse.

In any case, Twigs was terrific. As long as she was dishing out such aural treats as "Two Weeks" and "Good To Love," it was working for me. Transfixing.

Chance the Rapper was the hip-hop audience's most anticipated act of the day. The 23-year-old Chicagoan was a bundle of energy, working the stage with his trademark "3" ball cap and taking time to offer musical birthday wishes to Beyoncé, whom the video screens showed in the audience alongside her festival curator husband. Chance is an engaging performer whose music is suffused with gospel influences. When he did "No Problem," from his sterling 2016 release Coloring Book, it was the third time the song was heard at MIA over the weekend: The deejay crew Grits & Biscuits spun it on Saturday, and 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne also did it in their set. His closing number, "Rain," bubbled over with the joy that makes him such an attractive performer and also served as a celebration that despite the iffy forecasts, this year's cool and completely dry MIA had its best weather ever.

Earlier, Edwin Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros - the Los Angeles folk band fronted by bearded bohemian Alex Ebert - held down the MIA main stage in the late afternoon. He turned in decent cover of John Lennon's "Instant Karma."

At the other end of the venue on the Tidal stage, Bibi Bourelly, the African German songwriter who has frequently been covered by MIA Saturday headliner Rihanna, fronted a solid rock quartet, with impassioned songs like "Poet" and "Riot" that explored heartbreak and desperation.

Travi$ Scott, the Houston rapper born Jacques Webster, worked the Liberty stage crowd into a frenzy peaking with "Antidote," his hit single from his 2015 release Rodeo. Then, over on the Rocky stage, dress-in-white party starter DJ Khaled came on to do his "I'll yell at you until you have a good time" schtick. "When I say DJ, you say Khaled!"

It works for him. Khaled is widely known as the king of Snapchat, and his album Major Key went straight to number one last month, thanks to guest spots from Drake, Future, and others. But without big-name guests to bring out - save for Jay Electronica, infamous for encouraging a mass rush to the Liberty stage on Saturday and his chants of "Let's collapse this stage" - Khaled merely played other people's hit records.

Opening up Sunday, the main stage kicked off with St. Lucia, the stage name of South African songwriter Jean-Philip Grobler, who makes pleasantly tuneful if not particularly memorable synth-pop supported by a four-piece band. Next, a stab in the dark: Over to the EDM Freedom stage for a band called Watch the Duck, which I knew nothing about. Bull's-eye! It turned out to be a three-piece outfit from Montgomery, Ala., who are IDed as part of the singular genre known as trapstep or soulstep. Meaning, essentially, that they combine elements of dominant EDM subgenre dubstep with southern rap and soul.

That's close enough for jazz, as they used to say. The African American trio band consists of deejay Eddie Smith III; rapper-singer Jesse Rankins, fond of repeating the mantra "This is a party, it's not a show"; and guitarist Oscar White III, who was dressed in a sports mascot-style, full-length duck costume. While White cranked out Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix licks, Smith brought the deep-bass rumble and a mind-blowing P-Funk sensibility to the too-often inhuman-sounding EDM template, while Rankins chanted the vocals to songs like "Poppin' Off." Soon to be a festival favorite touring act, for sure.