Isaiah Rashad’s breakout album turns 10 this year, and he’s marking the occasion the only way that makes sense for an artist whose career has been built on patience: by taking it somewhere he’s never performed before. The Top Dawg Entertainment rapper has announced Leg Two of his Lil Sunny’s Awful Road Trip World Tour, extending the run through March 2027 with stops in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand for the first time in his career.
The Full Leg Two Route
The North American leg closes with a hometown show in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on November 25, a booking Rashad’s team has specifically flagged as personally significant given his roots in the city’s East Brainerd neighborhood. Presale opens Thursday, September 10, with general onsale following Friday at 10 a.m. local time.
| Region | Dates | Sample Cities |
|---|---|---|
| South Africa | Oct 3–4 | Cape Town, Johannesburg |
| North America | Nov 4–25 | Portland, Vancouver, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Chattanooga |
| Europe/UK | Jan 10–31 | Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Warsaw |
| Australia/NZ | Feb 23–Mar 7 | Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Wellington |
Why ‘The Sun’s Tirade’ Still Anchors This Tour
Released in 2016, “The Sun’s Tirade” marked the moment Rashad broke through to mainstream audiences, eventually earning Gold certification and featuring the Platinum Kendrick Lamar collaboration “Wat’s Wrong.” A decade later, the album remains his most commercially significant project, and building an entire international tour leg around its anniversary, rather than exclusively promoting his newest work, reflects how much that record still defines his identity as an artist.
That said, the tour isn’t purely nostalgic. Rashad is currently touring in support of his third studio album, “It’s Been Awful,” released earlier in 2026 and named one of the year’s best by multiple outlets. The North American leg’s original run closes September 29 with “The Anniversary Show” at YouTube Theater in Inglewood, an evening built to honor all four projects in his catalog: “Cilvia Demo” (12 years), “The Sun’s Tirade” (10 years), “The House Is Burning” (5 years), and “It’s Been Awful.”
A Sound Built on Patience, Now Reaching New Audiences
Rashad has described his catalog’s core identity as “radical vulnerability” paired with structural patience, a description borne out in the atmospheric, unhurried pacing that’s defined his music since his debut. That approach earned him a spot on NPR’s Tiny Desk series, where he performed a 13-song set he characterized as “rapping in hieroglyphics” to host Rodney Carmichael, a description that captures both his lyrical density and his reluctance to spell things out too plainly.
Taking that sound to South Africa and Australia for the first time represents a genuine expansion of his audience rather than simply revisiting markets that have already embraced him. Both regions mark entirely new territory for a rapper who, despite a decade in the industry, has built his career more on critical respect and devoted fandom than blockbuster commercial reach.
How This Tour Compares to Other Hip-Hop Anniversary Tours
| Artist | Anniversary Tour | Album Being Celebrated | New Markets Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| Isaiah Rashad | Lil Sunny’s Awful Road Trip Leg Two | The Sun’s Tirade (10 years) | South Africa, Australia, New Zealand |
| Kendrick Lamar | Good Kid, M.A.A.D City anniversary shows | Good Kid, M.A.A.D City | Limited, mostly existing markets |
| J. Cole | Forest Hills Drive anniversary sets | 2014 Forest Hills Drive | Limited, festival-based |
| Freddie Gibbs | Piñata anniversary dates | Piñata | Select European add-ons |
What distinguishes Rashad’s approach is the scale of new territory involved. Where most hip-hop anniversary celebrations tend to be one-off shows or limited add-ons within existing tour circuits, Rashad is using his album’s 10th anniversary as the occasion to build out entirely new international markets, a more ambitious use of a nostalgia moment than most of his peers have attempted.
With VIP packages including meet-and-greets and pre-show Q&As already available, and dates confirmed through the first week of March 2027, Rashad’s team has built a genuinely global celebration around a single album’s anniversary. For longtime fans who’ve followed him since “Cilvia Demo,” it’s a full-circle moment; for new audiences in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Sydney and Wellington, it’s simply their first chance to see him at all.
