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“It’s been so lengthy. Everyone talks about how lengthy it’s been,’” Frank Ocean instructed an uneasy crowd on the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Competition on Sunday night. “However I’ve missed you.”
Ocean began his extremely anticipated headlining set about an hour late. Earlier than that, crew members buzzed across the entrance of the stage beneath a monolithic display screen, seemingly nonetheless constructing the set. Earlier that day, the web lit up on the realization that Ocean’s efficiency—his first dwell present since 2017, having been rescheduled after the pandemic derailed his plan to headline Coachella in 2020—wouldn’t be livestreamed as deliberate. After I arrived on the pageant grounds round 4 p.m. that afternoon, an occasion worker working the bag verify station delivered unhealthy (if unconfirmed) information: I shouldn’t inform you this, however Frank’s not right here. He pulled out.
On the witching hour, when a display screen in entrance of the primary stage plainly assured that “Frank Ocean will start at 10:05,” a packed crowd was exhausted and on-edge. Concertgoers, some sporting bootleg or handmade Frank merch or wearing head-to-toe Channel Orange-orange ensembles, puzzled aloud if he’d even present up. Enjoying on repeat in my head was Ocean’s churning refrain on Jay-Z and Ye’s collab monitor “No Church within the Wild,” which might briefly play aloud right here inside the hour:
Human beings in a mob / What’s a mob to a king? / What’s a king to a God? / What’s a God to a non-believer / who don’t imagine in something?
When Ocean lastly took to the stage on Sunday, he appeared anxious, too. He additionally appeared excited. His set opened with an amped-up model of “Novacane,” the one from his 2011 mixtape Nostalgia Extremely that kickstarted his profession ascension—you realize, the one on which he sings about assembly a lady at Coachella. (Within the week earlier than his efficiency, followers thought the venture may lastly land on streaming platforms—a rumor spurned by BMW’s Instagram post of a mannequin fairly just like the pearlescent orange BMW E30 M3 that seems on Nostalgia’s album art work.) From there, he segued into an unreleased 2021 monitor known as “Come On World, You Can’t Go!” whose lyrics framed his stress as an artist: “I can’t be nice ’til I can escape.” If Frank had efficiently escaped, right here he was, pulled again once more.
He scurried in regards to the stage, sporting a vivid blue Mammut puffer with the hood pulled up comfortable over a black durag (a variation on a beloved outfit he wore in Paris a couple of years again), rejiggering logistics with managers and technicians in actual time. “That is chaos,” he admitted to a crowd that had already caught on. But he carried out as if he couldn’t wait to indicate us what he’s been into currently, mixing a number of of his most-loved tracks into new preparations none of us had ever heard earlier than.
Clad in his insulated area swimsuit, from his frenetic alcove beneath the stage, Ocean mystified the viewers at factors, both enjoying stripped down variations of his hits, or enjoying the studio audio of outdated tracks whereas he lip-synced and danced round stage with a toothy grin, cheeky-mugging on the digital camera. In some unspecified time in the future, he toted out the tennis-ball-green robotic child he introduced to the 2021 Met Gala. However early on, he allow us to in on the place his head was at: He was performing right here tonight not as a result of he had new music to launch any time quickly, however as a result of he to used to attend Coachella along with his youthful brother Ryan Breaux, who died in a car accident in 2020 at age 18.
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