Andrew Veeder on October 29th, 2017

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The sixth annual Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, orchestrated by Tyler, The Creator, took over Exposition Park on Saturday for the first of two days of games, food trucks, legends, troubadours and rappers that spanned the spectrum from up-and-comers to established emissaries. Day 1 offered a little bit for everyone, and culminated in co-headlining performances from both Tyler and singer Lana Del Rey.

Tyler, The Creator ran through a good chunk of his new and fantastic album “Flower Boy,” kicking things off with the Frank Ocean-guested (sans Frank Ocean live) “Where The Flower Blooms” from inside a suspended cube above stage clad in a jumpsuit. The cube lowered and he stepped down for the punky “Deathcamp,” the fantastic “Foreward,” the spooky “Who Dat Boy,” the sweet “See You Again” and the chaotic “Cherry Bomb.” Early fan favorites “Yonkers” and “Radicals” were absent from the nearly hour-long set, notable in correlation to how much more mature Tyler presented himself this year as compared to Flog Gnaws of the past, such as 2014 when he jumped around on a big bed.

Lana Del Rey closed out the night with an hour featuring half a dozen each from this year’s “Lust For Life,” and her full-fledged 2012 debut “Born To Die,” performing the usual suspects “Blue Jeans,” “Diet Mountain Dew,” “Summertime Sadness” and “Video Games.” Her voice has only gotten stronger as she’s settled more into her identity, but slotting her after Tyler brought everything way down. This sequencing of chamomile tea after a cup of coffee was reminiscent of FYF booking Frank Ocean after A Tribe Called Quest this July, following a high-energy performance with a much more subdued closer. She basically sang us to sleep and it was a nice wind down to the action-packed day one.

||| Photos by Jazz Shademan

Here’s how Saturday played out, from start to finish

1:37 p.m. — After snaking back and forth through 16 lengths of waist-high partitioning for at least as many minutes at the crowd’s leisurely pace, getting through security takes 16 seconds.

1:44 p.m. — This is much less a music festival and much more of a full-blown carnival with Tyler’s aesthetic applied in a paste. Giant pink flowers adorn many of the trees not yet bare from our makeshift autumn, and the perimeters are plastered with 6′ bright pastel graphics in conjunction with Tyler’s “Flower Boy” artwork and Odd Future brand. A tall Ferris wheel sits opposite the main stage and is one of over a dozen rides available. Carnival games also pepper the grounds, complete with Speed Pitch, Balloon Party and the high striker strongman competition to ring the bell. Odd Future merch are prizes, and Odd Future merch is everywhere.

2:51 p.m. — Following a delay that ate up nearly half his time, jazz great Roy Ayers and his three-piece band are giving us a free lesson in funk, featuring side lectures in how to tickle the electric ivories, make a bass emote, keytar freak out, and xylophoning like a boss. “Searching” was a treat, but the highlight was sunny and synthful “Everybody Loves The Sunshine.” The rhythm section starts grooving into the next tune, but Roy Ayers is cut off for time. Before he leaves the stage, he proclaims, “I’m from Los Angeles. Thank you very much, I’ll be back very much.”

3:35 p.m. — Oakland rapper Kamaiyah starts the dance party early, joined with a hype man and trio of backup dancers for a trio of bangers, “Build You Up,” “I’m On” and “Out The Bottle.” “Being a queen means you gotta show yourself love,” she tells the festival-goers, and later dedicates “N*ggas” to “the boss bitches,” a gender-flipping take on how she’s the player. She also plays “some new sh*t” as two of the backup dancers commence with the Twerk Olympics. Per the audience response, it would appear they do indeed f*ck with that new sh*t.

4:23 p.m. — FIDLAR are as fun as you remember them, just a little less of a sh*tshow. In Halloween spirit, lead singer Zac Carper wore a Muppets’ Animal mask around his neck, while guitarist Elvis Kuehn took the prize as a dead ringer for Freddie Mercury, complete with slick back hair, mustache, and white tank. “Leave Me Alone” and “West Coast” had the crowd moshing, then the band called for an all girls mosh pit, which sent hundreds of them plowing through the masses and going wild up front to “5 to 9.”

4:35 p.m. — With two multi-instrumentalist and two backup singers in place, Kelela takes the stage and begins with “Waitin” from her new and dynamite debut album “Take Me Apart.” “LMK,” “Frontline,” and “Enough” follow, as does “Go All Night,” illustrating her poise and show-stopping voice. About halfway through her set, Kelela says, “Camp Flog Gnaw …  This motherf*cker’s got us saying some weird shit.” It’s true, and it’s the funniest line of the day.

5:18 p.m. — Self-proclaimed boy band Brockhampton looked entrenched on the main stage, flanked by four golf carts rocking back and forth with entourage, as the collective roams around in orange jumpsuits and Blue Man Group facepaint, spitting “Heat” like they’re about to burn it all down. The DJ remains seated on a couch mid-stage with his rig set up on a coffee table while over half a dozen others attack the set with furiosity, attacking posse cuts from their 2017 mixtapes “Saturation” and “Saturation II.” “Swamp” and “Gold” drew the biggest responses, and there’s something refreshing about attending at a large rap-heavy festival and hearing the group’s mastermind Kevin Abstract rap so much about being gay, with lines like, “Heath Ledger with some dreads / I just gave my n*gga head,” and, “Bruh, I don’t fuck with no white boys / ‘Less the n*gga Shawn Mendes.”

6:23 p.m. — As the unannounced “special guest,” Mac DeMarco pranced around the stage with a LaCroix and mic in hand, karaoke-ing through a half an hour set that also included somersaults, a cartwheel and deadpan “Blade Runner” quotes. “On The Level” at dusk was rather sublime, and his shtick resonated among the young female festival-goers, as screams near stage found themselves amplified, but the uninitiated were wondering what they were watching.

7:05 p.m. — Syd‘s set was 50 minutes of slinky and sexy R&B culled mostly from her debut album “Fin,” guest spots, her work in The Internet, and her new EP “Always Never Home.” Standout “Know” came early in the mix but kicked things into high gear before she dedicated “Got Her Own” to the ladies, kept said ladies dancing through the Kaytranada-produced “You’re The One,” and brought out Steve Lacy for “Over.”

7:50 p.m. — The aggressive electronic percussion blares through the trees as Long Beach rapper Vince Staples begins with “Party People,” and in cheeky Staples fashion, he raps, “Move your body if you came here to party / If not then pardon me / How I’m supposed to have a good time / When death and destruction’s all I see?” to a sea of adoring fans. Staples is one of the smartest rappers in the game, with deadpan sober social commentary in his interviews and lyrics, and is the kind of performer who is more in on the joke than you are. Silhouetted against a bold bright screen and smoke-filled stage, he breezes through multiple cuts from this year’s hard-hitting “Big Fish Theory,” including “745,” “BagBok,” “SAMO,” and “Yeah Right,” as well as early fire “Blue Suede,” “Lift Me Up,” and “Norf Norf.”

9:00 p.m. — Migos continue their world tour on a quest to make the phrase “skrt skrt” a thing, performing the bulk of their 2017 ubiquitous debut album “Culture.” For those looking to turn up, the Atlanta trio obliged immediately with “Get Right Witcha” and “Slippery.” Casual observers would note that the show was fairly to very lit. All of a sudden, a loud burst of what sounded like static came from off of stage left. Turns out it was the graveyard construction crew welding together the new soccer stadium 50 feet away, just on the other side of the pastal-plastered perimeter.

9:45 p.m. — And it was on to the headliners, fireworks and all, and then fireworks and none.