FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Travis Scott Starts a Riot & Metallica Fans Keep Peacefully Quiet at Lollapalooza Day Two

Lolla day two's genre-busting lineup goes off without a hitch, save for one artist's attempt to drag it into chaos.

Photos by Daniel Patlán

I don’t know a lot about botany, but I can tell you that Travi$ Scott was supposed to play for 45 minutes yesterday afternoon. Instead, he got through roughly five, before being dragged off stage, fleeing, getting caught, arrested, and charged with disorderly conduct. (One fan is said to have suffered the same fate.) Scott, already nearly half an hour late for his set at a festival that usually runs on a tight schedule—he told his fans he was doing “the ultimate amount” of drugs—urged the crowd to ignore security, jump the barricades, and rush the stage. Hundreds of teenage fans who have apparently never heard that Ghost/Rae skit did just that, and after a bit of confusion, Lolla pulled the plug on the whole thing.

Advertisement

(Now might be a good time to mention that Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel recently barred not only Chief Keef, but his likeness via hologram, from playing a benefit concert for a 1-year-old boy who was killed. Emanuel called Keef “a significant public safety risk.”)

Continued below

Most of the day’s other rap acts were well-oiled and, in the case of hometown hero Mick Jenkins, remarkably well hydrated. Jenkins cuts an imposing figure on stage, and his gruff delivery translates well to the live setting. Those who caught him on tour with Pro Era’s Kirk Knight know The Water[s] upstart is one of the most energetic live performers in hip-hop, and his set has only been scaled up as he gets accustomed to bigger and bigger crowds. The act that followed Jenkins on the Pepsi stage, Raury, didn’t fair as well, his lilting guitar lines and delicate voice mostly getting lost in the din. Paradoxically, though, this worked to the advantage of his police brutality protest song “Fly”—what the record lacks in specificity and bite it made up for with the sense of community a festival setting brings.

The set of the day that won the most new fans must have been Ryn Weaver’s. We’re living in a post-Lana del Rey world, and the contrast of dark, ethereal pop and waify heroin chic are inescapably in vogue. But where del Rey relies on a tremendous amount of production value in turning her work over to the public, Weaver was able to toy with the audience’s expectations and exercise her will in a difficult afternoon slot. High waist, high stakes.

Advertisement

Where dads ruled Friday’s crowd, Metallica reigned supreme on Day Two. There were no horror stories (at least that I witnessed), no monstrous metal fans taunting Tame Impala heads. Instead, a lot of scraggly beards and denim vests (and where do these people get all these bandanas?) milled about, patient, waiting for the headliners. I imagine exit polls would show it was worth it. When the band took the Samsung stage, lead singer James Hetfield stepped up to the microphone and gave what sounded for a second like an apology, and there was a brief moment when some might have worried the set would be cancelled or shortened. Instead, the group launched into the famously unintelligible “Fuel.”

You might expect an act like Metallica to divide festival-goers down party lines, but the fringes of the massive crowd last night were made up of converts and casuals. The band deserved it: the 18-song set (including a four-song encore) was remarkably well-paced, and the musicianship cuts across lines of taste and age. “Master of Puppets” was colossal; “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “Am I Evil?” played like mainlined adrenaline. When the set was over, the band lead the sea of people in a round of applause before sending them off the extra trains the CTA had waiting.

Across the park, Sam Smith was playing to the other half of the Venn diagram. If this ends up being the biggest year of the British singer’s career, no one should bat an eye. This February, I was standing on the Staples Center floor for the entire Grammy Awards, and no one—not Prince, not Beck, not Kanye, not Katy Perry, not last night’s headliner Paul McCartney—elicited roars from the crowd like the “Stay With Me” star. For the time being, the reception stays warm: Smith’s devotees belted out nearly every word, swaying back and forth, only stopping to try out the dance moves he tried to teach them. By the time he closed with his signature song, two people in arm’s reach of me were in tears.

Advertisement

The clean precision of Smith’s set was in stark contrast to the act before him on the Bud Light stage and the one competing with him from the Pepsi stage. Kid Cudi and G-Eazy, respectively, suffered similar problems: expecting huge reactions from crowds that wanted to oblige but weren’t given anything to grasp onto. Cudi favored droning monotone renditions of his songs (when those from the latter half of his catalog already lean in that direction), while the Berkeley-bred Caucasian was tripped up by a surprisingly disengaged crowd. G-Eazy’s raps skew slow and aphoristic, ideal for drunk chanting and retweeting, but he had a perplexingly difficult time converting even the frattiest first-timers. Maybe it was too late in the day.

Alesso’s set was as clean and pretty as Friday’s EDM headliner, Kaskade, but parlayed that into an even more frenzied crowd. The high point was undoubtedly when Tove Lo came through to sing “Heroes.” Other impressive sets from earlier in the day include Tyler, the Creator, who has smartly drawn a separation between his increasingly experimental studio releases and his fan-service live shows. Though his LPs have packed less and less punch since his star-making turn on Jimmy Fallon, he still hurls insults and curses at the crowd, this time from a stage set up that was supposed to resemble a teenager’s bedroom.

The day bottomed out right at the end when, while walking toward Michigan Avenue, we got caught behind a half-dozen white guys in kimonos.

Watch a live stream of Lollapalooza here. Follow Paul on Twitter.