Thousands of Tyler, the Creator fans gathered Saturday night at Dodger Stadium to mark 10 years of the rapper’s taste-making festival, Camp Flog Gnaw. The two-day, L.A.-centric smorgasboard of hip-hop and R&B kicked off with a carnival of bold sounds from major groundbreaking artists like Doechii, Kaytranada, Sampha, Vince Staples, School Boy Q and many more. This year’s Camp Flog is also a celebration of Tyler’s latest chart-topping album, “Chromakopia,” which was born from the eccentric artistry and madness that continues to inspire the long-running festival. Below are a few highlights of the best stuff we saw from Day 1.
Doechii performs at Camp Flog Gnaw on Saturday.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Doechii
By the time Doechii brought out SZA to perform the remix of “Persuasive” on Saturday afternoon, one of the darlings of L.A. hip-hop label Top Dawg Entertainment already had a tight grip on her audience. Fresh off the tour of her critically acclaimed “Alligator Bites Never Heal” mixtape — which made her the most nominated female rapper for the 2025 Grammy awards — the “Swamp Princess” who hails from Tampa opened up her high-energy set with the standout “Boom Bap.” With the help of her equally turned up DJ, Miss Milan — whom she performed multiple dance routines with — Doechii ran through several other album favorites including “Catfish” and “Boiled Peanuts,” along with the 2019-deep cut “Spookie Coochie” and 2022’s “Crazy.”
Throughout her set, the fiery rapper also sprinkled in multiple breath work exercises for the audience to do and positive affirmations like “I’m that bitch” and “I’m serving face.”
Miss Milan rushed to take off Doechii’s burgundy designer heels, just in time for “Nissan Altima” so she could bounce around the stage freely in her Miu Miu set (a collared shirt and olive green hot shorts). It’s the perfect ending as the song’s lyrics perfectly represent Doechii’s place in the rap conversation right now: “I’m the new hip-hop Madonna / I’m the trap Grace Jones / I don’t know what type of motherf— crack they on.” — Kailyn Brown
Omar Apollo
With his role in Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer” on the horizon, Omar Apollo has lately been paying more attention to his burgeoning film career than to his music. But he finished his Flog Gnaw set with a pair of show-stopping ballads that dared anyone not to think of him as a high-level pop romantic: first “Evergreen (You Didn’t Deserve Me At All),” his viral TikTok hit with echoes of Smokey Robinson, then the downright Celine Dion-ish “Glow,” which also closes Apollo’s excellent 2024 album, “God Said No.” — Mikael Wood
Sampha performs at Camp Flog Gnaw on Saturday.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Sampha
From the moment British crooner, pianist and producer Sampha joined his four-person band onstage to perform “Plastic 100°C” off his 2017-project “Process,” he ushered the audience in like a seasoned choir director.
Garbed in a monochromatic cream outfit, he danced energetically and grinned wide while he sang deeply emotional and reflective songs like “Suspended” off his 2023-album “Lahai” — “I was in and out, but drowning more and more / Sipping on red wine, I spilled it on the floor / Then I find myself, all washed up by the shore.” On “Spirit 2.0,” he gets even more introspective: “Waves will catch you / Light will catch you / Love will catch you / Spirit gon’ catch you, yeah.”
His electro-infused R&B set, which blended together seamlessly, included more tracks from “Lahai,” a handful from “Process,” and snippets from tracks he’s been featured on including Kendrick Lamar’s “Father Time” and Solange’s “Don’t Touch My Hair.” The Grammy-nominated singer gave a master class on breath control and effortlessly reminded attendees why he’s still one of the most refreshing and vulnerable singer-songwriters in music today. — K.B.
Vince Staples
Vince Staples asked the audience of thousands in front of him if they’d come for “real n— s—,” received an answer that suggested they had, then paused to consider the ramifications. “A bunch of white people saying they like real n— s—,” he said. “It’s perplexing.” The closest thing hip-hop can claim to a Larry David figure, Staples thrives in these awkward moments; his music is all about peeling back the veneer of social tradition to reveal the ugliness that lurks beneath. (So too is his great Netflix comedy, “The Vince Staples Show,” which premiered in February and was recently renewed for a second season.) Here the Long Beach MC doled out fan favorites like “Norf Norf” and “Magic” while the disembodied head of a grinning minstrel-show performer alternately mocked and egged him on from the giant video screen behind him. Said Staples: “Y’all did come to have fun, right?” — M.W.
Kaytranada
As we launch into Grammys season again, take note of one dance music artist that has once again captured the academy’s attention. Kaytranada, the Canadian deep-house and club music savant, has already won two Grammys (for dance/electronic album and dance recording, both in 2021). Next year, he’ll be up for three, bringing his nomination total to eight.
Clearly, something about his savvy with deconstructing R&B vocals and evocative, just-at-the-edge-of-underground productions is still resonating with the industry more broadly.
On stage, Kaytranada’s sets walk a tight line between the Black, queer club avant-garde and the dramatic ebbs and flows of festival dance music; he played a prime Coachella set in 2023 and opened for the Weeknd’s 2022 stadium tour. At Flog Gnaw, famed for its open-minded audience (as long as you’re not Drake), Kaytra cut loose with a set that straddled his pop impulses (a remix of Rihanna’s “Kiss It Better”), nods to his omnivorous taste (his edit of “Waitin” by “Kelela” and a slice of his genre-agnostic 90-minute mixtape “0.001%”) and his own globalist writing (the afrobeats-inspired “Vex Oh”). “Call U Up,” a funny and brash single off his LP “Timeless,” was just saucy enough to turn heads all over the grounds.
Kaytranada’s at a potent point in his career — primed for main stage superstardom while still cultivating his underground roots. As dance music and nightclub culture twists into new forms postpandemic, Kaytranada’s polyglot vision seems to be taking the lead. — August Brown
Mase performs at Camp Flog Gnaw on Saturday.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Mase
If the horrific allegations made against Sean “Diddy” Combs in recent months mean that the man himself is no longer welcome in popular music, must we also reject the songs on which the producer and rapper built his celebrity? Not if Mase has anything to say about it: Best known for the years he spent in the late 1990s as Diddy’s jovial sidekick, the now-49-year-old MC drew a small but appreciative crowd who rapped along with him as he cycled quickly through a collection of hook-riddled hits that included “Lookin’ at Me,” “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” and “Been Around the World.” Dressed in green leather pants and a matching green cardigan, Mase was offering a simple solution to a complicated problem. — M.W.
Daniel Caesar performs at Camp Flog Gnaw on Saturday.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Daniel Caesar
As Daniel Caesar performed a stripped-down version of “Loose” from his debut 2017 album “Freudian” at the piano, a sudden hush washed over the crowd on Saturday night — perhaps the quietest it had been all day.
Fresh off his shining collaboration with Tyler, the Creator on “Chromakopia,” it was only right for Daniel Caesar to not only be included on the festival lineup, but to be the headlining act on the main stage, right before Tyler. (In fact, Caesar later returned to the stage to perform “Balloon” with Tyler, the Creator and Doechii.)
Backed by a band, Caesar swapped between playing a piano and guitar, and dug deep into his catalog, performing tracks like “Japanese Denim” (2015), “Who Hurt You?” (2018), “Open Up” (2019), the reggae-inspired “Cyanide” and a few songs from his 2023 album “Never Enough.” The crowd turned into a wholesome karaoke session with people swaying left to right and holding up their lighters when Caesar performed one of his most beloved songs, “Best Part,” featuring H.E.R. who sadly wasn’t there live for the duet; despite that, the song still slayed. — K.B.
School Boy Q performs at Camp Flog Gnaw on Saturday.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Schoolboy Q
Is it possible to have had a No. 1 LP, three top 10 albums on the most acclaimed rap label in modern L.A. history, be a member of a supergroup with Kendrick Lamar, and yet still be kind of underrated?
Schoolboy Q rattled Flog Gnaw on Saturday with so much skill and conviction that it should put local rap fans on notice — if you’ve ever let him slip from mind in the decade since his TDE landmark “Oxymoron” came out, pay fresh attention, because right now this dude is at the top his game.
“Blue Lips,” his sixth and most recent LP, shook off any midcareer stasis. It never once succumbed to late 30s comfort or malaise, and instead delivered a chaotic charge of restlessness and structural invention. Instead, the album is L.A. party rap run through a buzzsaw of regret and dread and cackling humor and utterly fresh musicality.
The rapper displayed confident looseness on Saturday that only a veteran can truly inhabit on a stage in front of thousands of festivalgoers. Bouncing across the stage, limber and in total control, he sounded better than ever as a performer. With “Cooties,” he took stock of his life in a “big-ass kitchen, a runway here / My kids playin’ soccer, all while “Mass shootings, when will they stop it? Hmm / Another kid gone for unlimited profits.” On “Blueslides,” he was even more candid: “Been a prisoner in my own house, I don’t know if they noticed / I done broke down so many times, next time, it’s gonna catch me.” Lines about preserving sanity in the glare of fame were jarring but considered — “We was screamin’, ‘Mental health,’ and now we wanna kill ‘em all / Lord, please forgive me for the day I finally fall apart.”
Those tracks from “Blue Lips” were statements of purpose for 2024, but he also had hits for the L.A. canon: “Collard Greens” will go down as an era-defining track for SoCal rap, and at this 10-year anniversary edition of Flog Gnaw, you could start to see the history taking shape. — A.B.
Tyler, the Creator
Tyler, the Creator had much to celebrate as he closed Night 1 of his annual Camp Flog Gnaw festival late Saturday: Not only had he put together (and sold out tickets for) the 10th edition of the hometown show — a real feat in an era when festivals are struggling across the live-music industry — but he’d just logged a third week at No. 1 with his latest album, “Chromakopia,” which this month scored the biggest chart opening of any rap LP released this year.
“What the f— is going on?” he asked about halfway through his headlining set. “This is crazy.”
To mark the occasion, Tyler performed a good chunk of “Chromakopia” — on which the 33-year-old ponders all the ways that wealth and power have shaped his attitude toward growing up — while wearing a mask and a military uniform and prowling the top of a green shipping container. “Noid” was dense and menacing, Tyler’s flow somewhere between a growl and a yowl; “Darling, I” was light and whimsical but almost painfully yearning too.
Sexyy Red turned up for a rowdy take on the marching-band jam “Sticky” and playfully spanked Tyler after he did the same to her; Tyler took a hit from his asthma inhaler after that one. Doechii and Daniel Caesar also popped out to do their parts from “Chromakopia,” as did Schoolboy Q, who stuck around onstage after his verse in “Thought I Was Dead” just to watch Tyler, his face slick with sweat, rap his lines a cappella, each slower and more vehement than the last. (The moment had some serious “Def Poetry Jam” energy.)
A veteran festival act who just headlined Coachella this past April, Tyler knew he had to pepper the new stuff with a handful of old hits: a swaggering “Lumberjack,” a winsome “Earfquake,” a still-acrid “Yonkers” that made you wonder how in the world it had been 13 years since that song came out. But in an inversion of what normally happens in this type of environment, the crowd seemed eager for Tyler to return to “Chromakopia.” His fans already knew every word. — M.W.
