Since it was first held in 2006, California’s Paid Dues Independent Hip Hop Festival has grown every year. While it originally featuring only little-known acts, this year’s festival was headlined by Three-6 Mafia, Wu-Tang Clan and Kendrick Lamar. Not that this is a bad thing, it just shows that the festival is now a new kind of event.

Held this past Saturday at the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino, Calif., the event featured an extensive list of hip hop acts, both widely known and relatively unknown. In addition to the artists mentioned above, the event also was highlighted by sets by Odd Future, Dipset and Mac Miller. Other acts included Brother Ali, DJ Quik, Dilated Peoples and People Under the Stairs.

The event lasted for 10 hours and in all featured more than 40 artists across three stages. Though the event has been criticized by some critics for abandoning some of its original indie roots, the festival made up for that in how eclectic the lineup was this year. And the variety is likely what made the event a success for its presenters, Murs and Guerilla Union.

In fact, the attendance this year was estimated to be around 18,000, a sellout crowd. This is particularly notable since the attendance last year was estimated at just 7,000.

Reporting on the show, Rolling Stone decided that Three 6 Mafia “put on the best show of the night, if you don’t mind that with only Juicy J and DJ Paul left from their glory years, classics like “Slob On My Knob,” “Tear Da Club Up” and “Who Run It” can only be played for about a minute each.”

The magazine also reported that the two artists that got the best crowd reception were Odd Future and Mac Miller. Even with the legendary talent joining in, it’s still the newcomers that have the Paid Dues crowd.

After becoming increasing popular on the pop music scene throughout 2011, Odd Future looks like they will be keeping just as busy during 2012, including a 12-date North American tour that will begin March 9 in Tempe, Ariz. The tour will support a new mixtape by the band, The Odd Future Tape Vol. 2, which will be released as a digital download March 20.

The North American tour will run through April 11, when it ends in Seattle. Other cities on the tour will include Minneapolis, Toronto, New York, Boston, Atlanta and San Francisco. During the North American Tour, Odd Future will hop across the Atlantic for five dates in the United Kingdom before coming back to the U.S. to finish the tour. They currently are in Australia playing the remaining Big Day Out festivals.

But the mixtape and tour are only the beginning of what the collective, officially known as Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, or OFWGKTA, has planned for the rest of the year. At least two members, Tyler, the Creator and MellowHype also will release solo albums. Tyler’s second solo full-length album, called Wolf, will be released in May, while MellowHype’s debut solo album will be released in the summer and is likely to be called Numbers.

Additionally, the group’s Adult Swim sketch comedy show, “Loiter Squad,” will premiere March 25. Not too much information has been released about the show, but Adult Swim’s website claims it will be a “live-action show that features sketches, man on the street segments, pranks and music from Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All.”

Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt apparently will not appear on any planned releases. Sweatshirt has been in the news over the past year because he is reportedly at a school in Samoa called the Coral Reef Academy, and it has been reported that his mother forced him to attend to the school and that she is not allowing any of his music to be released. Assuming this all is true, it is worth noting that Sweatshirt will turn 18 in February.