The A3C Hip Hop Festival announces the 2010 event will occur on North Avenue in Atlanta, GA with a home base centered around the legendary music complex, The Masquerade (www.masq.com).

Building upon the success of last year’s event, the A3C has three new priorities for 2010. The festival wants to provide an outdoor showcase and create a true block-party experience for fans.

The festival will have a centralized location that offers expanded educational content, including equipment demonstrations and panel discussions. 2009’s well received educational programs included panels on “Women in Hip Hop” and “State of the Industry” presented by GRAMMY U as well as a lecture by Public Enemy’s own Professor Griff.

Finally, the 2010 event seeks to make access to multiple stages easier for attendees, ensuring they see as much as possible and up and coming, buzz artists performing alongside more well known, mainstream artists.

Using the Masquerade music complex as a hub for the festival enables the A3C to achieve all of the 2010 goals. The Masquerade also provides great access to a number of venues within walking distance as well as increased overall festival capacity across multiple venues. Many of the shows at participating venues in 2009 sold out.

Brian Knott, the A3C Festival founder explains, “The multi-level Masquerade not only offers three, perfect-sized listening rooms for various A3C day and evening content, but also has a vast outdoor concert lawn for which A3C has planned a number of events to capitalize on Atlanta’s amazing fall weather.”

“This location gives us the opportunity to do things that we have never been able to do before. By using Masquerade as the home base, we get all of the benefits of a multi-venue format, while still getting a Hip Hop goes to summer camp, mothership connection, compound-type complex where you can’t help but run into likeminded people.” said Knott.

The Masquerade is one of the oldest, concert venues in the city, providing the Southeast more than 20 years of the best in live entertainment.

The A3C is still looking to bring on additional partners in 2010 to help bring the best of Hip Hop to Atlanta this fall. Specific events including showcases, panels, workshops and artist updates will be announced through the festival’s website on a rolling basis and continuing through the event’s start on October 7th. More information about becoming involved in the A3C as an artist, partner, sponsor, or volunteer can be found at www.a3cfestival.com.