The Sun Came Out for Gucci Mane at Beach Goth

Tony Hawk is not allowed backstage to watch Gucci Mane, but I am. As rain-soaked teens eagerly await the unforgiving 3 PM time slot at Beach Goth, I find myself side-stage, alone and hidden from the downpour, watching a cross-armed guard shake his head at the skate legend and Gucci mega-fan while I slip past, trying to make myself as small as possible in fear of getting called out.

"Gucci! Gucci! Gucci!" the crowd chants, eagerly awaiting their champion. The crush grows by the minute as the downpour floods and then shuts down the neighboring Rx stage, sending a wave of spring-loaded suburban kids decked out in Halloween costumes of varying degrees of absurdity our way.

Behind me, someone notes that Gucci is en route from the jet he traveled on specifically for the festival. While we can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of this, there is also no anecdote more perfect for the controlled chaos that is Beach Goth than using a private jet to fly Gucci Mane in for a 30 minute mid-day set in the Southern California suburbs.

Right on time, he arrives: Gucci, head-to-toe in all black, Peak Beach Goth, the only dude to ever look cool rocking a velvet hoodie with no shirt underneath. His chains sway from side to side as he swaggers past me and towards the front of stage, the sort of confidence only maintainable when you know you're about to throw thousands of people into a frenzy. Which, of course, he does.

Photos by Steven DeTray

Gucci's public appearances since his release have been scare, so to see him listed alongside the likes of Grimes, Bon Iver, Patti Smith, Reel Big Fish, TLC, and Nicolas Jaar on the festival's absurdist lineup left many delightedly confused. If Gucci was a participant in the festival, he was certainly not a part of it. At an event where artists were casually and happily mingling among the crowd and backstage, security was constantly buzzing around their prized subject—not surprising considering he was shot at just last week—and anyone hoping to meet the rapper was sorely out of luck: The Gucci camp departed immediately after his set was finished, sans a stop in his trailer unceremoniously hidden behind some stage rigging.

But leave it to Gucci to triumph. He hit the stage not a minute late, greeting the crowd with a joyous, "Ayyyyyyyy! What's happening?!," before running through a dozen best-of selections culled mostly from his pre-prison catalog. For those fearing a Woptober take over, the anxiety subsided as he jumped into "Photoshoot" and "I Don't Love Her." The man beamed, shades bouncing off his grinning cheeks, loving the crowd loving him and shouting back every word to every song. Leave it to him to galvanize a crowd of teens to shout the entirety of "Freaky Girl"in the middle of a Sunday afternoon in the parking lot of a suburban corporate campus.

As Gucci's crew got word that his performance would be wrapping up, his security team tightened the borders in hopes of a quick escape. Just as Gucci was gaining post-"Lemonade" momentum, the set neared its finale. These are the perils of a 30 minute slot. But with the crowd on his side, he squeezed some new hits ("Wop" and "Pussy Print") and old favorites ("Bricks" and "Bitch I Might Be")—into an impossibly small window, the rain subsiding and sun emerging to see what the fuss was about.

At a festival defined by its casual, delightfully reckless, anything-goes vibe, Gucci managed to serve up a flawless display of workmanship. It would have been boring if his energy wasn't so infectious; there just weren't any surprises. His stage crew is a bare bones affair: A DJ with a mic, who for some reason only used it as a prop, instead screaming along away from amplification; two security guards making sure Snapchatters in the wings weren't getting too close; a personal photographer; and a towel/water bottle assistant, whose efforts alone merited him his own towel/water guy. Gucci is no nonsense. He doesn't take prolonged breaks between songs, he acknowledges the crowd with various rap show platitudes, and makes it back to his jet before the stage crew has time to strike the stage.

It's the most interesting part of his stardom—that his personality can outweigh his creative output. Sure, there's "Lemonade" and "Wasted—both of which threw the audience into a crowd diving fit—but Gucci's a phenomenally likeable character even without his hits. His charm lies in the way joy radiates from his flow. There are very few Gucci tracks without a distinctly memorable line. That "Lemonade" sounds like a guy discovering the color yellow for the first time is only a bonus.

That's the void we all felt and what became irreplaceable when he went away for three years. It has less to do with music—the​​ mixtapes kept on coming during his prison stint—than Gucci the person. If at times Gucci the person was hard to find during his Beach Goth set, hidden behind massive black sunglasses, it was about all you could possibly ask for out of a Gucci Mane performance. He showed up on time, appeared to be enjoying himself, played the unimpeachable Gucci classics, and yelled "Burr" a lot.

In a sense, he saved the day for Beach Goth attendees. After the festival's second stage began flooding, festival organizers spent the afternoon scrambling and shifting bands to other venues. Grimes didn't play, and Nicolas Jaar began his set in a different venue before anyone knew what was happening. But Gucci—Gucci somehow embodied the calm before the storm. Amongst concert-goers in makeshift trash bag ponchos, Gucci was the only act to deliver what we came for during an otherwise chaotic and scrambled day.

Today, the stages are gone, and Beach Goth goes away for another year. The corporate offices are filled with disgruntled employees and suburban Santa Ana goes back to being just another off-shoot between Orange County and LA. But for 30 all-too-brief minutes on Sunday, it all belonged to Gucci Mane. Before we could thank him, he was gone.

​Follow photographer Steven DeTray on Instagram​.​​

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