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While he may be nearly two decades removed from his breakout singles, one thing people have never forgotten about Mike Jones is, well, his name.
On Thursday night, as one of the opening headliners of Summerfest 2025, Jones reiterated why we collectively never forgot his name, his phone number, or his run of early-aughts hits. In fact, he put emphasis on it.
After a brief spell of rain cooled down an otherwise perfect first day of the festival, Jones took to the U.S. Cellular Connections stage, as part of a host of hip hop and R&B stars that made their mark just after the turn of the millennium. The stage would later play host to sets from rapper Fabolous and crooner Ginuwine, but the Houston rap icon was the first among the first to make his presence felt, following a set from Milwaukee’s own NileXNile.
From the jump, Jones had the crowd at the Connections stage up and moving, walking out to the plunking piano of “Mr. Jones.” Donning a pair of headphones and a Louis Vuitton backpack for the duration of his set, Jones would rap with precision and a still-present hunger over his tracks with no aid other than his DJ on stage with him. His set featured smart transitions, like taking the hook from “Back Then,” which also appears on breakout hit “Still Tippin’,” and using the two to link the songs up.
Within about 30 minutes, Jones weaved his way through what felt like a greatest hits mixtape, with no track necessarily overstaying its welcome in the process. He moved from one track to the next with ease, even making time for his featured verses on the Ying Yang Twins’ “Badd” and T-Pain’s “I’m In Luv (Wit A Stripper).” Then, Jones briefly ceded some time from the hits to play what he called a newer track, “Down Down,” a song that has been circulating online since 2023.
With hit after hit being played, it did start to lead you to wonder exactly what would close out the show. Turns out, that would mean running songs back. Specifically, running the hits back to perform them a second time.
“I’m gonna do this acapella. I need you to hear what I’m saying here” said Jones, before instructing his DJ to take the beat out during his verse on “Still Tippin’.” In fact, the beat confusingly wouldn’t be cut, and Jones simply performed the song a second time. Then “Back Then,” “Flossin’,” and “I”m In Luv (Wit A Stripper)” were all repeated, with Jones still giving an impassioned performance, almost as if those songs weren’t already played just minutes before. If you got there late, you were in luck. If you were there from the beginning, it was puzzling.
After the second time running through the T-Pain track, Jones thanked the crowd for rocking with him, and made his way offstage after roughly 50 minutes. The majority of the U.S. Cellular Connections Stage crowd had made their way out of the area, before minutes later, the bass dropped again, and the sound of “Mike Jones!” blasted out of the PA. Perhaps unaware of his set length, Jones walked on stage for three more tracks: “Sauce,” “She Making It Werk,” and “3 Grams.” He appeared ready to do a fourth, before consulting his DJ, and deciding to call it once again, just after the 7:30 p.m. mark.
“They gotta get ready for the next act, stick around he’s about to kill it” Jones told the crowd before making his way offstage. In a word, it was anticlimactic.
For what it's worth, the Summerfest crowd didn’t seem to mind Jones reverting to his hits and the confusion at the end of the set. In fact, they were very much into hearing their favorites a second time. In that sense, Mike Jones delivered on Thursday evening. However, if you’ve ever looked at the volume of music in the Swishahouse catalog of music, you couldn’t help but feel a little confused. With dozens of mixtape tracks that were fan favorites, he certainly wasn’t light on material that could get a response, but instead, he went back to the well, and that made for an awkward end to what began as a strong set.
If you were looking for just the Mike Jones-driven classics on Thursday, you got 30 minutes of those in a stellar set. The only downside, though, was that the set length was an hour. On a beautiful first night of Summerfest, however, most didn’t seem to mind.
