CeeLo Green and K. Michelle closed it out with Drink Champs. Yung Miami joined Crystal Renee Hayslett on Keep It Positive, Sweetie. Sheryl Underwood was in the building. Olympic boxing champion Claressa Shields, Tika Sumpter, AJ Calloway, Michael Bivins, Ray Daniels, Lil Duval, and KevOnStage popped out. And Summer Grays’ month-old social platform — built as the no-shadow-ban alternative to Facebook and Instagram — was named all day long.
It rained on Pullman Yards Saturday. Nobody left.
The fourth annual Black Effect Podcast Festival turned the historic Kirkwood venue into a daylong celebration of Black audio, Black business, and Black star power — and the weather didn’t crack the energy for a second. By the time CeeLo Green and K. Michelle joined N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN on stage to close out the night with Drink Champs, the crowd was eight hours deep and still dialed in.
The festival floor stayed loaded all day. Yung Miami joined Crystal Renee Hayslett on the Keep It Positive, Sweetie taping — a Pullman Yards stop one day after dropping her new single “Spend Dat” on April 24. Two-time Olympic gold medalist boxer Claressa Shields worked the red carpet in purple. Tika Sumpter spoke backstage. Sheryl Underwood was in the building. AJ Calloway, Michael Bivins, Ray Daniels, Lil Duval, and panelist KevOnStage moved through the grounds — the kind of cast list that reflects exactly what the festival has become four years in. A one-day collision of podcast culture, music, comedy, sports, and Black entrepreneurship, anchored in the city that has functioned as the spiritual home of Black media for the better part of a generation.
And running underneath all of it, named from the stage and on the airwaves throughout the day, was My Butler AL.
The Sponsorship That Cut Through
Summer Grays’ social platform, which launched only in March, came into the festival as a sponsor alongside presenting sponsor State Farm. By the end of the night, attendees had heard the brand referenced repeatedly from hosts and announcements throughout the run-of-show — and the My Butler AL video commercial played on screens inside the venue between sets. Leading up to Saturday, the brand’s :30 radio spot ran in rotation on 96.1 The Beat, the Atlanta iHeartMedia station that carries The Breakfast Club in mornings — meaning Atlanta listeners tuning in to hear festival hosts Charlamagne Tha God and DJ Envy that week were already hearing Summer’s brand before they ever pulled up to Pullman Yards.
My Butler AL sits in the lane Facebook and Instagram used to live in — a place to post, build a following, and connect — without the shadow banning, content takedowns, and algorithmic gatekeeping that have made the legacy platforms increasingly unusable for Black creators and culture. The app is built on the premise that grown adults should be able to speak freely on their own social media without being put in timeout. For a launch positioning itself as the alternative to Meta’s grip, taking that pitch directly to a roomful of podcasters, comedians, and creators — the exact audience most affected by platform censorship — was the strategic play.
For an app that’s roughly four weeks into its public life, that kind of saturation is what most early-stage platforms spend a year chasing. Summer was on the ground in Atlanta for the festival window.
A Day Built for the Culture
The festival opened with Grits & Eggs Podcast at 12:10 p.m. and rolled through Club 520, Reality With The King, The Don’t Call Me White Girl Live Show, and Keep It Positive, Sweetie — hosted by Crystal Renee Hayslett, the Sistas star, with Yung Miami joining for the taping — before Drink Champs took the closing slot. Panels between sets covered the Gen X to Gen Z conversation, the AI evolution, and audio and media development, with appearances from Tika Sumpter, Carlos King, finance voice Ian Dunlap, and KevOnStage among others.
Charlamagne Tha God, DJ Envy, and Loren LoRosa hosted the day, with music by DJ Loui Vee. Around the stages, the Black Effect Marketplace powered by Shopify was lit — Black-owned merchandise, vendors, and product drops drawing steady crowds across the grounds. The Zen Lounge offered back and hand massages for festival-goers needing a reset between sets, and the food trucks kept the lines moving from doors to closing. The Pitch Your Podcast Booth — a returning fan favorite where aspiring creators get a real shot at being heard — stayed busy throughout the day.
“We’re celebrating and uplifting the power of Black voices, creating space for creators to inspire, connect and shape culture,” Dollie S. Bishop, president of The Black Effect Podcast Network, said ahead of the festival. “From conversations on AI and investing to the future of audio, we’re bringing the culture together for connection, innovation and a few surprises.”
The surprises landed. CeeLo Green and K. Michelle on the Drink Champs taping was the kind of closing moment that sends a podcast festival home talking — Atlanta legends sitting down with N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN on a stage in their own city, after a day that already had Yung Miami on the Keep It Positive, Sweetie set, Claressa Shields on the red carpet, Sheryl Underwood walking the venue, and Michael Bivins on the floor.
What This Was Really About
Strip away the celebrities for a second and the festival’s bigger picture comes into focus. The Black Effect Podcast Network, founded in 2020 by Charlamagne Tha God in partnership with iHeartMedia, has become the flagship home for Black voices in audio. Podcasts now account for 40% of spoken-word listening time in the U.S., according to Edison Research, edging past AM/FM talk radio for the first time. The Breakfast Club itself has expanded into a Netflix streaming presence and is seeing rising ratings among listeners aged 18 to 54.
The festival is the network’s annual statement: this is who we are, this is who’s listening, and this is what gets built when Black creators control their own platforms. Atlanta has now hosted the event four years running.
For My Butler AL — named from the stage, played on the venue screens, in radio rotation across Atlanta the week of, and amplified by word of mouth all weekend — it was a debut on the kind of stage that brands fight years to be invited to. A social platform launching as a free-speech alternative to Meta, hitting the room where Black podcasting, comedy, and entrepreneurship were all gathered in one place. Summer Grays did it in week four.
The rain didn’t stop.
The 2026 Black Effect Podcast Festival took place Saturday, April 25 at Pullman Yards in Atlanta. The festival was presented by State Farm. The Black Effect Podcast Network operates under a joint venture between Charlamagne Tha God and iHeartMedia.
Festival photography by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for iHeart Media and The Black Effect Podcast Network.