North West gave her first-ever solo music festival performance at a Chicago festival – check out footage below.
North, who is the 12-year-old daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, has been steadily launching her music career over the past few years, and took to the stage at Lyrical Lemonade’s Summer Smash 2026 in Chicago on Friday (June 12) for her festival debut.
She performed ‘Talking’, her 2024 collaboration with Kanye – now known as Ye – which is featured on his album ‘Vultures 1’, as well as tracks from her debut EP ‘N0rth4evr’, which was released in May.
Both her parents supported the gig, with Kardashian and Ye sharing clips of the set to their Instagram stories.
The performances came after she shared a teaser of a new collaborative single with her father back in January. In ‘Piercing On My Hand (Ye Version)’, she raps: “No friends, just filter, you wouldn’t understand / Shopping in Japan, that’s where I always stand / Went to school for two days, then I got banned / Skipping school, yeah, I do it on the daily.”
This is North West’s first festival performance 🤯
Via: IG/42ceo pic.twitter.com/vzpgZ81kWY
— MuchMusic (@Much) June 13, 2026
The crowd went crazy when North West played “TALKING” during her first set at Summer Smash 😭😭🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/Ukalj5AS4t
— yzyupdates (@yzyupdates) June 13, 2026
North West performs “TALKING” during her first-ever solo festival performance at Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash 2026 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/ACACQSkO31
— yzyupdates (@yzyupdates) June 13, 2026
Ye and Kim Kardashian support their daughter North West at Summer Smash 2026 for her first-ever solo festival performance ❤️ pic.twitter.com/fcWyTosZoP
— yzyupdates (@yzyupdates) June 13, 2026
She also featured on FKA Twigs’ ‘Childlike Things’ on last year’s ‘Euxesua’, a track that saw North singing in Japanese. Twigs said she wanted North on the song as her “energy is so inspiring”, adding: “It needs someone who has that tenacity, who has that strong point of view that you have when you’re 11.”
The youngster performed ‘I Just Can’t Wait To Be King’ at the live production of ‘The Lion King at the Hollywood Bowl’ in 2024, and later that year, she announced that she was working on her debut album, titled ‘Elementary School Dropout’, a reference to her father’s 2004 record ‘The College Dropout’. That album has yet to be released.
In 2024, she also joined her father for a live version ‘Talking’ at an arena show in Paris.
Elsewhere, Kim Kardashian recently revealed that she and West played Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ at the moment that North was born.