Apparently, it was God’s plan to have Drake appear as a headliner at this past weekend’s Camp Flog Gnaw festival, but the congregation wasn’t having it.
For those of you who are unfamiliar and wondering why I just completely made up a couple of words, Camp Flog Gnaw is an annual music festival and carnival curated by Tyler, The Creator. Beginning in 2012, the festival was originally called OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) Carnival or Odd Future Carnival. This year, the festival took place at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Nov. 9 and 10.
Along with Tyler, 21 Savage, Da Baby and Solange, there was one particular mystery headliner that had everyone speculating. The secret headliner was billed as “???” on the lineup’s flyer for Sunday, Nov. 10.
I, along with everyone else, surmised that the surprise headliner would be the infamous industry recluse, Frank Ocean. However, on Sunday evening, audiences were not treated to the Blonde artist. Instead, according to video footage, Drake performed.
“I’m here for you tonight, if you want me to keep going I’ll keep going!” Drake exclaimed in the video, amongst the jeers of the audience screaming “Frank!” and “Noooo!”
The video also showed Drake walking offstage while one audience member could be heard saying, “He’s pissed!”
Once footage was circulated to the general social media public, many felt the crowd was ungrateful, given that Drake is such a huge artist to book.
Then again, it does make sense that the type of crowd Camp Flog Gnaw usually attracts would prefer Frank in place of the more “mainstream” stylings of Drake.
While acknowledging how much of a big deal it would’ve been to see a Frank appearance, I would’ve thoroughly enjoyed a Drake performance, for the record. And fun fact, if not for a scheduling conflict, I would’ve been on site. Why was everything happening this weekend?! I digress...
One festival patron took to Reddit and explained what really went down, claiming Tyler misled fans, who were initially under the impression that Drake was one of the many special guests Tyler brought on stage (such as Lil Uzi Vert), not the headliner.
The Reddit user wrote:
so drake comes and does his thing the crowd fucking loves it even though the possibility of frank is becoming dimmer and dimmer. He mentions that “he was told to only do a couple songs for us.” Okay our hopes are up once again at a possible frank. He asks the crowd “Do y’all want me to perform more” we say yes and he raps a couple more songs. The issue is he keeps insisting that him continuing to perform is up to us and he makes it clear he’s not supposed to perform anymore. He and Tyler give heavy hints that more people are to come. So once drake again asks for the 4th time if we want him to keep going, 30-40% of the crowd says “nooo”. Nobody booed, nobody kicked him out. Understand that uzi and [A$AP] rocky only performed 2 songs. We were under the expectation that every artist was only given two songs allowed to perform as their would be a feast of artists coming out or very possibly frank. Drake wasn’t fully communicated or sold to us as the headliner and 99% of us would be very happy with the biggest pop artist in the world performing for us, if we didn’t think there was more to come. We simply were given false manufactured hope by Tyler and drake. This wasn’t the crowds fault, this was Tylers.
It’s okay, Drake, Kiki still loves you.
Update: 11/11/2019, 1:00 p.m. EST: Tyler, The Creator took to Twitter to respond to the controversy in the most Tyler-esque way possible.
“But hey man shit happens, all jokes aside, shit lowkey funny,” Tyler tweeted on Monday morning, following the viral status of the Drake performance. He confirmed there were no arrests made and he ultimately hoped “everyone had a good time.”