Tyler, the Creator is no doubt one of the greatest showmen working today in hip-hop. During his headlining set on Saturday night (April 13) at Coachella, the rapper once again proved just that, transforming the main stage into a desert canyon and using lighting and projections to create an ambiance so vivid and entrancing that it could only have sprung from an imaginative mind as his own.
To that, Tyler made the most of his first headlining show at the festival, where he has performed numerous times before. “The first time I played Coachella was 2011,” he told the crowd midway through the set. “I didn’t know what the fuck Coachella was, but me and my friends at the time, we went by Odd Future. And it was great. We were in a house. We rented a crib, went to target n—a, bought some snacks, and performed. The performance was terrible. But it was awesome.”
He’s come a long way since palling around with his OFWGKTA crew, and you could feel his confidence permeating across every moment of the performance. Tyler is a master conceptualizer, and knows how to toy with the various frequencies of his stage, dimming the lights for reflective moments and dancing around shooting flames during more electrified songs. But beyond all the bells and whistles of the production, Tyler controls the spotlight. It’s impossible to take your eyes off of him, and throughout the 80-minute closing set of the day, the energy — of both Tyler and the audience — never waned, even when he took a few moments to pause and collect himself between songs (or, at one point, to eat a sandwich while sitting in front of a green tent midway through “IFHY”).
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Sick intro from Tyler the creator pic.twitter/24SVykeP0W
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