The 10th anniversary of Tyler, the Creator’s L.A. festival featured artists ranging from Faye Webster to Playboi Carti, as well as a number of special guests
This weekend, Tyler, the Creator’s annual Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival cemented its place in the upper echelon of not just artist-led music festivals, but concerts in the post-pandemic era. Now in its 10th year, the two-day event was a well-curated and well-oiled machine, with artists ranging from Erykah Badu to Action Bronson, Ma$e, and Playboi Carti all providing refreshingly fun performances — almost as if the festival’s whimsical childlike charm had rubbed off on them, too.
Fresh on the heels of his Number One album Chromakopia, Tyler, the Creator orchestrated the weekend’s activities, which took place in the sprawling lot of L.A.’s Dodger Stadium, still brimming with excitement from the team’s recent World Series win. The festival itself had a sort of magical sequencing, allowing you to stroll from watching André 3000, to Faye Webster, to Earl Sweatshirt without missing a beat.
The weekend was a reminder of the kind of passion that drives individual music tastes. Only a mind as eclectic as Tyler’s could understand the audience overlap between the rising shoegaze musician Wisp, the British singer Sampha, and hip-hop icon Ma$e. Unlike most festivals this size (the crowds were seriously enormous), you never got the sense that anyone was at a particular stage waiting to see a later act. Instead, the crowds felt like communing with a bunch of fellow music geeks which is basically what Tyler had in mind from the start.
The 10th year of Camp Flog Gnaw was full of memorable moments, but we narrowed it down to our 10 favorites.
There’s something heartening about seeing a veteran performer in their element. Few have as innate a knack for storytelling and charisma as the inimitable Action Bronson, whose set Saturday afternoon served as a reminder of just how influential the chef-turned-rap auteur is among the current generation. For a number of songs, Bronson was backed by a live jazz band, infusing his sound with an irresistibly vintage New York sensibility. During “No Hit Record,” when Bronson raps that he had no hit records on his demo, you could feel a sense of something like millennial pride. It’s been more than a decade since the current vanguard of rap superstars got their start, and seeing Action Bronson’s cross-generational appeal was a testament to the thoughtful level of curation at Camp Flog Gnaw.
Saturday night’s headliner was Tyler, the Creator, who, in his festival’s ten years of existence, has managed to mostly avoid the spotlight at the event itself. Now, with a new, chart-topping record, a headlining set was inevitable. Luckily, the timing couldn’t have been better. At this moment in Tyler’s career, he’s making his most fully realized music yet, and his set on Saturday proved it. After running through a handful of popular songs from his new album, Tyler took fans down memory lane, playing hits like “She,” “Yonkers,” and “Earfquake,” before launching back into Chromakopia, bringing out special guest Sexxy Red for their song “Sticky.” While it’s clear that Tyler is no longer the young kid who rapped about being depressed on “Yonkers,” you can feel the continuity in his creative vision as he runs through more than a decade’s worth of music. Seeing the crowd of teenagers and aging millennials alike who grew up on Tyler’s music felt like witnessing a truly generational talent.
The legendary hip-hop producer Alchemist, responsible for Kendrick Lamar’s “Meet the Grahams” beat, delivered a set that doubled as a history lesson, charting through the hip-hop classics he helped architect, all while bringing the next generation of rap greats on stage — Earl Sweatshirt, Mike, and Navy Blue made appearances, along with Larry June and Action Bronson. Like the MF Doom tribute on Sunday, the Alchemist’s set served as a reminder of Flog Gnaw’s roots as a festival celebrating hip-hop, and this year felt like a seamless integration of that originating ethos.
This being the 10th anniversary of Flog Gnaw makes nostalgia about the early days of Odd Future hard to ignore. On-site at the festival this year was a photo exhibit from Brick Stowell, who captured the crew of teenage iconoclasts in the beginning. In those days, Tyler and Earl were something like two sides of the same outlandishly creative coin, and during his set on Sunday, Earl’s trajectory to becoming basically what Tyler is to the mainstream for underground rap felt like a full-circle moment. Like Tyler, Earl seems to be making his most fully realized music to date, flowing effortlessly between styles and cadences. At one point, he brought out the rising Virginia-area rapper El Cousteau to perform their collaboration “Words2LiveBy,” featuring a verse from Earl that set the internet ablaze last month.
While Playboi Carti’s long-awaited new album does not seem to be any closer to materializing, he has spent this year far more visible in public than in the past. Just this past weekend, the elusive rapper performed at two back-to-back festivals. On Saturday, Carti performed in Las Vegas for ComplexCon (he probably would have joined Tyler on stage for “Earfquake” that night otherwise), and on Sunday, he closed out Camp Flog Gnaw with a set that, for Carti fans, was everything they could have hoped for. In typical Carti fashion, the performance was relatively short, but he brought out the Weeknd to close the night with their smash hit “Timeless.” The experience of a Carti set is more like a soundbath than a typical concert, and his closing performance at Flog Gnaw enveloped the massive festival grounds in an undeniable aura that felt like witnessing a cult leader lead their flock. All the while, Tyler the Creator stood right in front of the stage, vibing along to the music.
Source: Rollingstone.com
