Erykah Badu, Playboi Carti, MF Doom tribute, Sexyy Red and more bring the heat to Camp Flog Gnaw on Day 2
The second day of Camp Flog Gnaw’s 10-year anniversary came roaring back into Dodger Stadium for fans of Tyler, the Creator’s universe of energized and eclectic hip-hop and R&B — with a dash of jazz flute. As fans swarmed the festival to see Mustard, Erykah Badu and Playboi Carti, the mindset of letting it all hang out on a Sunday evening was strong throughout the three-stage slate of acts that kept the crowd captivated from beginning to end. Here’s the best of what we saw on Day 2.
André 3000
I’m not sure how many people I expected to watch André 3000 play the flute with his instrumental jazz combo Sunday night, but it was definitely fewer than actually showed up. Wearing a Mitch Marner hockey jersey and a red knit cap, the beloved Outkast MC performed for an audience of many thousands at Flog Gnaw one year to the day after the release of “New Blue Sun,” which this month earned a surprise nomination for album of the year at February’s Grammy Awards. (It’s his third time in the ceremony’s flagship category after Outkast was nominated in 2002 with “Stankonia” and won the prize in 2004 with “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below.”)
As on the LP, André didn’t rap here, instead blowing long, searching notes on a series of flutes as his collaborators supported him with sympathetic grooves; he also crouched down at one point to tap several small gongs. Having recognized perhaps that this wasn’t exactly a jazz crowd, André helpfully explained that he and the band were improvising in real time: “Everything we play every night, we make it up,” he said. But he also took the opportunity to have some fun at his fans’ expense. Near the end of his set, he squared up behind a mic and started throwing out long, passionate vocal lines in a language I can’t say I recognized. The energy in the audience shifted slightly but perceptibly: Wait, is he rapping? Then he laughed. “I just completely made all that s— up,” he said. “Y’all should have seen your faces. Y’all like, ‘Man, he saying some deep-ass s— right now.’ ” — Mikael Wood
Erykah Badu
Erykah Badu began her set nearly half an hour after its scheduled start time — a serious no-no at a festival with a tightly programmed live stream — and consequently found her sound cut after only about 20 minutes of music. (Like a handful of acts Sunday, Badu didn’t agree to stream her performance, so maybe she thought her time was her own? Flog Gnaw disagreed.) The veteran R&B seeker used her brief time onstage to do a jazzy rendition of “On & On,” her breakout single from 1996, and a trippy take on “Window Seat,” from her most recent studio album, 2010’s “New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh).” She also offered the crowd some mystical words of wisdom, declaring that “we have just entered the fourth world war — the war between the people and the mind.” — M.W.
Tommy Richman
It was a surprise when aspiring opera singer-turned-TikTok sensation Tommy Richman, didn’t receive any nominations for the upcoming Grammys. After the 24 year old’s “Million Dollar Baby,” which debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart (a rarity for an artist with no prior history on the chart), went viral on TikTok, it seemed like an obvious choice.
But the recent snub didn’t seem to phase Richman, who brought several of his friends and collaborators including Trevor Spitta and mynameisntjmack onto the desert stage — which resembled his “Coyote” album cover. Richman, a genre-bending artist whose catalog delves into hip-hop, R&B, funk and alternative, showed off his impressive vocal training as he sang records like “Whitney,” “Thought You Were the One,” “Devil is a Lie” and “Last Night” from his 2023 EP, “The Rush” which was my introduction to him. — Kailyn Brown
Sexyy Red
After putting in a cameo with Tyler, the Creator on Saturday night, St. Louis’ Sexyy Red gave a rowdy performance of her own on Sunday, twerking exuberantly in a pair of sparkly red yoga pants as she ran through thumping club-rap jams like “SkeeYee,” “Sexyy Love Money” and her part from Drake’s “Rich Baby Daddy.” “Shake that ass, b—,” she commanded in her appealingly shrill, Midwestern honk. “Make them hoes mad.” — M.W.
The Marías
L.A. rock quartet the Marías were one of few acts at Flog Gnaw to acknowledge the, let’s say, tense atmosphere in the U.S. right now. “Let all out all your frustrations from the past couple weeks,” singer María Zardoya told the crowd as the band kicked off “Run Your Mouth,” a lithe disco number that served as pure and welcome escapism.
The Marías are an emblematic L.A. band right now — bilingual, effortlessly cosmopolitan and able to traverse global Latin superstardom (they guested on Bad Bunny’s “Otro Atardecer” from his gargantuan LP “Un Verano Sin Ti”), while preserving the R&B, indie and old-soul flourishes that imbue SoCal. Between them and Omar Apollo on Saturday, Flog Gnaw knows exactly where to slot a vibey, Latin-indie act. “Submarine,” the band’s 2024 LP, documented an intra-band breakup with poise and panache, and featured some of the group’s most precise writing and ambitious production yet.
Zardoya has become one of L.A.’s most compelling rock stars in a long time — she knew exactly how to frame her angles against a wall of washed blue lights, and walked through the crowd shaking hands like an aspiring president. Songs like “Ruthless” and “Vicious Sensitive Robot” showed the full band firing on all cylinders, veering from yacht-rock trumpets to meditative jazz grooves, while “Paranoia” had a hypermodern ambience. “Cariño” hit the bilingual Flog Gnaw crowd with a wave of warm, vacation-nostalgia vibes. Zardoya playfully alluded to the topicality of “Submarine” on “No One Noticed,” where she gently taunted the crowd, “If you want your ex back, sing it.” But it was easy to imagine that there were other recent missed opportunities for brighter days in America on her mind as well. — August Brown
Mustard and Friends
No producer has had a year quite like DJ Mustard. Still riding high on the success of what’s arguably the song of the year, “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar, Mustard brought a similar energy and familiar faces to the Camp Flog stage as he did at “The Pop Out — Ken & Friends” show on Juneteenth. Among his special guests were Roddy Ricch, Shoreline Mafia, Tyga, Ty Dolla $ign, Big Sean and his most frequent and earliest collaborator, YG. At one point during his set, Mustard even played Drake’s “Crew Love” featuring the Weeknd, but just before Drake’s verse was about to start, Mustard shouted “Sike!” then cut into his next track.
Images of various L.A. landmarks such as the Slauson Super Mall, Randy’s Donuts and Dodger Stadium were projected onto the screen as Mustard performed on a tall stage that rose higher as the night went on. In honor of his hip-hop peers, he gave short tributes to Grammy-winning DJ and hypeman FatMan Scoop, who died in August, and treasured L.A. rapper and entrepreneur, Nipsey Hussle.
Before playing “Not Like Us” — he played it twice — the stage went black, a green smoke appeared and the memorable “I See Dead People” scene from M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense” played over the speakers. For a moment, it felt like Kendrick Lamar was going to make an appearance. Although he didn’t, the energy in the crowd never wavered. — K.B.
Faye Webster
Almost certainly the weekend’s quietest act, singer-songwriter Faye Webster was a mesmerizing presence on the festival’s Gnaw stage between Sexyy Red’s throwdown and an elaborate tribute to the late MF Doom. Webster’s laid-back sound, which prominently features pedal steel and saxophone, lives somewhere between Southern soul and West Coast yacht rock; here, she and her band stayed thoroughly dialed-in even as Webster directed crew members to several people in the audience in apparent need of medical attention. — M.W.
Blood Orange
Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes has been in the news for the work he looks to be doing in the studio with Lorde for her next album. But what a pleasure to have his dream-pop R&B combo back playing shows after a couple of years away. Blood Orange balances tenderness and propulsion like few other acts, which is why the group’s set was able to encompass a cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” an appearance by Brendan Yates of the post-hardcore band Turnstile and a new song that evoked Luther Vandross fronting New Order. — M.W.
MF Doom tribute by FM MOOD
One of the most beautiful moments during Camp Flog Gnaw was a tribute to beloved rapper-producer MF Doom, who died suddenly in 2020 at 49 years old. As conductor Miguel Atwood-Ferguson — who was rocking a Fernando Valenzuela jersey and a metal face mask — led the Metalface Orchestra and Madlib (the other half of superduo, Madvillain) through various favorites like “Rhymes like Dimes” and “One Beer,” MF Doom’s vocals projected over the speakers, bringing his spirit to life.
Given that their performance was the last set of the night on the Gnaw stage, if you were present, you wanted to be there — fans were locked in, rapping along to every word and bobbing their heads to the music.
Toward the end of the nearly one-hour set, producer Daedelus came out to play his accordion on the rapper’s 2004 crowd favorite “Accordion,” and Erykah Badu — who performed on the main stage earlier in the night — sang a beautiful rendition of Sade’s “Kiss of Life,” which is a sample on MF Doom’s “Doomsday.” Before leaving the stage, Badu put her hands in a prayer position and told the crowd, “Thank you so much for loving my brother.” — K.B.
Playboi Carti
Playboi Carti was the only headline-tier act who did not broadcast his show on the Flog Gnaw livestream, leaving reams of Opium record label superfans caterwauling in the comments. It makes sense though — Carti’s whole thing is mystery, with the head-to-toe Rick Owens goth drip, the punk and metal window dressing on his trap productions, a high-ramped stage set only lit with strobe lights and no close-ups.
The Atlanta rapper has accomplished something comparable to what Tyler, the Creator has done in L.A. over the years — build a self-contained universe around the intersection of uncompromising hip-hop, “Hesher” dirtbag aesthetics and avant-garde fashion. Albums like “Die Lit” and “Whole Lotta Red” have become foundational documents for Gen Z rap, topping album charts and festival bills even as his vicious noise and shredded delivery refuse bend to the needs of a hit single (though he does often pop up on others’ more mainstream tracks, like Tyler’s “Earfquake,” and Camila Cabello’s loopy “I Luv It”). His personal life is volatile, but one can’t argue with the scale of his ambition, or how his gnarled aesthetics have reached an unlikely mass crowd.
While fans are still rabidly awaiting the followup to 2021’s “Whole Lotta Red,” the screens of his Flog Gnaw set flashed an image — “I Am Music,” the presumed title of his forthcoming LP — to assure fans it is really coming after long delays. The very short headline set was pretty typical Carti–ripping live metal guitars, frantic redlined vocals and a scrum of new cuts like “Ketamine” that seethed with tension and circle-pit chaos. He brought out the Weeknd at the very end to do “Timeless,” their synth-pricked new collaborative single, and left with barely a break or a breather. He promised a new single Friday. Give him this — Carti never gives fans anything but what he wants to. — A.B.
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