While it might not have been “rain or shine” as advertised, the Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival took place this weekend, Nov. 22-23, after being canceled the week prior due to heavy rain and wind. Although a few artists like Clairo and Men I Trust canceled their appearances, other acts like Geese and Kali Uchis were brought in to replace them and the two-day event proceeded as planned.

Day One kicked off with LA Reezy and Zelooperz, who welcomed the first flock of attendees into the Dodger Stadium venue. Their hype-fueled performances could be heard from as far as will-call, exciting those still patiently waiting to get in.

Once inside, the grounds were divided into three areas: Camp, Flog, and Gnaw, each with its own stages, vendors, bars, and carnival rides. In between Camp and Gnaw was an installation area featuring an Arizona Iced Tea-sponsored lounge, a photo exhibit by Brick Stowell celebrating Mac Miller, an enormous GOLF merchandise store, and artistic-specific pop-ups such as Earl Sweatshirt’s “Live, Laugh, Love” and Doechii’s “Swamp.”

In the early afternoon, Samara Cyn dazzled the crowd with her beautiful singing voice, flamboyant stage presence, and viperine bars; she’s still developing, but remains an artist to watch out for. Cyn was followed by PARTYOF2, which got off to a rocky start as the pair navigated technical errors with their in-ear monitors. The duo recovered by pulling out their in-ear monitors (a testament to their professionalism and ability to adapt) and the rest of the set was a swagger-fueled dance party.

The sun began to set at 4:30 pm, lighting the sky a ferocious pink and orange just in time for rising rock band Geese. Their set was erratic and chaotic, riddled with discordant noise, frantic tempo changes, and flying time signatures; if you let go of the handlebars and went along for the ride, it was a lot of fun. Although the band projected a bit of a blazé attitude, with singer Cameron Winter even telling people to leave (“If you need to leave the set to see Fakemink, do it. Get the fuck out of here, it’s worth it, he’s a national treasure”), the band clearly had an endearing back-and-forth with the fans, making it one of the strongest sets of the weekend.

As it was getting dark, Paris Texas came on to remind everyone the party was just getting started. They brought high energy, high BPM’s, and a non-stop deluge of air horns. Having seen them perform at Wonderfront Festival in 2024, the group has since grown and improved extensively. Their fun and infectious energy translated directly to the crowd, most of whom spent the entire set with their hands in the air and their feet off the ground.

Across the grounds on the mainstage, Kali Uchis established herself as one of the unintended headliners of the festival. Like Geese, she joined the set list this week to fill in for artists who had to cancel after the postponement. Uchis had a commanding stage presence and arena-tour quality production, which all ran like a well-oiled machine. Uchis hypnotized the audience with her elegant dancers, massive visuals, and her seductive, enrapturing voice; she was like Medusa, but instead of turning men to stone, she melted them like butter. For extra potency, there was an underlying theme across her performance about celebrating immigrant cultures across the US and worldwide, which gave an unexpected depth to her already rich performance.

If you sprinted across the festival grounds as she sang her final song, you could get to the Gnaw stage just in time to catch the start of Earl Sweatshirt, who leaned into the summer camp vibe with a BBQ, picnic-themed stage design. Despite sounding a bit sleepy on his last few projects, Earl was animated, alive, and engaging. His chemistry with his DJ displayed his fluidity and comfortability as a performer, stopping and starting songs without ever losing a sense of rhythm. The only fault with this set was that the vocals sounded muddy, as if the low end of the mix had been raised to high. The problem became clear when he brought out Navy Blue as a guest, who had sounded fine during his own set, but was also hard to decipher.

Although videos online appeared to show Earl frustrated with fans leaving his set early, that only happened because his set ended just a few minutes before Tyler, the Creator’s, and attendees had to scurry across the festival grounds to catch it in time. Bathed in a wash of red light, Tyler began his performance by apologizing for postponing the festival, expressing that it was the only way for it to be enjoyable and successful. Dressed in red, wearing bear gloves, and gyrating towards the camera lens, Tyler opened with a slew of songs from DON’T TAP THE GLASS like “Big Poe” and “Sugar On My Tongue” before transitioning into Chromakopia.

Tyler undoubtedly had the best performance of the weekend. He commanded an immense stage presence, using dance moves and pelvic thrusts reminiscent of Michael Jackson at his peak. A few performers would come up to breakdance, twerk, or perform a skit, but Tyler was primarily alone, projecting an aura that would render even a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure hero jealous. Before the final portion of his show, Tyler stopped for a moment to apologize again for postponing the festival. “I know it wasn’t ideal to cancel last weekend,” he said, bowing deeply. “All of you who still showed up, thank you so much. I appreciate each and every one of you.” He then wrapped up with “See You Again” sans Kali Uchis, under a waterfall of sparks and pyrotechnics.

If Tyler was the main course, then dessert was still to come. After Tyler, the hip hop duo Clipse performed over at the Flog stage, mowing everybody down with their razor-sharp elocution. Opening with “Chains & Whips”, the instrumentals were pretty barebones at times, but their vocals were mixed really high, for the better. Their vocal chops were crisp, passionate, and executed with the precision of Itachi Uchiha in his ANBU era.

The final performance of the night was Childish Gambino, who, across the prior week, let his fans vote for his setlist on his website. Struggling to fit everything within an hour, Gambino frequently ended his songs short, cutting them off after a verse or two to rushedly proclaim, “We only have [X] amounts of minutes left, we have to keep moving!” His attempt to play every requested song, even a little, ended up feeling very endearing and gave the show a fun, interactive quality. He expressed that he genuinely wanted to perform every song his fans requested, even if it meant some had to be chopped up.

Despite the rush, he found a few moments to slow down, particularly during the “Where Have I Been Monologue,” which featured a drone show and Gambino describing how he suffered a stroke last year, and a cover of OutKast’s “Prototype”, where he brought out frequent collaborator Ludwig Göransson as a guest to play guitar. Dressed like Freddie Mercury, singing like an angel on high, Gambino closed out his show with a James Brown-inspired performance of “Redbone” and an outstandingly epic rendition of “Lithonia.” 

Luís, an attendee from Los Angeles, raved to me about the day as we made our way to the exit. “We just caught three back-to-back monster sets — Kali, Tyler, and Childish,” he said. “That was amazing, the energy was wild. I didn’t think I could see all three like that! Oh, I almost forgot I caught Clipse too, they were awesome!”

Day Two started at a slower pace than Day One: Gia Fu ran an unremarkable DJ set at the Gnaw stage while Ray Vaughn performed at Flog. “We are about to have a TDE take over here!” Vaughn shouted to an enthusiastic and quickly growing crowd. Vaughn delivered a humorous, emotional, and energetic performance, despite his relative inexperience and apparently fighting through a stomach bug. His DJ was a great hype man and regulator, helping Vaughn reel back in when his banter went on too long or got distracting. It was a short, high-quality set that demonstrated that Vaughn has a lot of promise and more untapped potential.

After Vaughn, Day Two seemed to drag. Alameda played a chill but uneventful set at the Gnaw stage, followed by Left Brain, who had a great sense of humor and wonderful anime visuals, but  lacked sonic diversity. That’s when I ran into Charlie, Benet, and Sam – or “The Doechii Squad.” These three friends had seen Doechii at Flog Gnaw in 2024 and had returned as super fans. “Last year she played at 3 pm and we got in the front row,” Charlie said. “But then she dropped her album and it all changed; she’s huge now.” The trio was making their way to the main stage five hours early to secure a good spot.

Meanwhile, bumping at the mainstage for 90 minutes was Zach Fox, who performed a DJ set of mostly house and dance music. Like Earl Sweatshirt, Fox had a BBQ-themed stage with picnic tables, a grill-shaped turntable set-up, and a rowdy crew of dancers, some of whom turned up like a backyard party. Twerking, humping, break dancing, hitting the splits; grandma nibbling on corn bread would have died at the sight.

Coming down from the high of Fox’s set made the rest of the evening frustrating to endure. Geezer, the duo consisting of Dominic Fike and Kevin Abstract, played an underwhelming 30-minute set that could have been a voicemail. Fike came out alone playing a cover of “Easy” by Lionel Richie, and was then joined by Abstract, who sang his early hit, “American Boyfriend”. Fike then sang a bit of “3 Nights” before letting the playback take over as the duo watched home videos of themselves from Abstract’s “Arizona Baby” era. The rest of the set was the pair telling each other how much they love each other and nostalgia baiting, but the emotional moment felt unearned, overly sentimental, and uninteresting. The duo walked off to “Sugar” by Abtsract’s former band BROCKHAMPTON, which felt emotionally manipulative and tasteless.

Geezer was followed by Blood Orange, which was a bland, sleepy set. Band leader Devonté Hynes’ vocals were too soft and when you could hear them, they were often off-key. The instrumental arrangements were uninspired and uninteresting, and the musicianship wasn’t anything impressive. Overall, it sounded as if a really shy Phil Collins was covering a bunch of The Cure songs, but oversimplified the lyrics, melodies, and arrangements.

Thundercat played next, and while the musicianship was better, his band also struggled with a mix problem, primarily the bass drum, which was too loud and overpowered every other instrument. It was as if they were playing the soundtrack to Mario Kart 8 at 10x speed, stripped away the melodies, and replaced the kick drum with a mic’d up AK-47 with the automatic setting turned on. Even with earplugs, it sounded like someone was unloading an endless magazine inside a cement bunker.

At 8 pm, Doechii finally came out and performed possibly the best set of the day (the night’s closer, A$AP Rocky, is another contender). On stage she had a giant boom box with slides on each side, one of which she later fell off of, and a visual aesthetic resembling a hybrid between Lauryn Hill and Schoolboy Q. Her show was divided into “lessons,” covering topics like genre, scratching, and sex ed, and along with her talented DJ, she played mixes and variations of songs from her Grammy-winning album, Alligator Bites Never Heal. She closed out her set with a tribute to Tyler, performing their song “Balloon”.

Before A$AP Rocky ended the night, T-Pain and Glorilla performed from opposite ends of the festival. Since I had seen T-Pain already in 2024, I opted for Glorilla, who came out 15 minutes late, but made up for it with a raunchy, yet bashful set. She and her dancers were all dressed as foul-mouthed Girl Scouts, twerking and flipping off her audience in a jestful manner. Although much of her crowd had thinned out by the end of her set to make it to A$AP Rocky, she rewarded those who stayed by bringing out Tyler, the Creator to perform “Sticky”, to which the crowd went absolutely bananas.

A$AP Rocky closed out the festival by commissioning a helicopter to fly over the festival and blast the audience with a searchlight as he entered the stage on a fake helicopter. With grandma curlers in his hair and a megaphone in his hand, Rocky screamed his set like a banshee, hyping up the exhausted but passionate crowd. He was joined onstage by a massive posse wearing white bloc and waving American flags, and the tech crew seemed determined to use up their entire store of smoke machine fuel. Whatever energy these people had left, Rocky was able to tap into and party, even bringing Tyler out for two songs. There was no better way to end the festival.

Although the festival was ultimately a success and the fans who attended were receptive and in full spirits, many of the fans coming from out of state for the original dates were distraught and frustrated. Marcus Brown of New Orleans flew into Los Angeles with his girlfriend on Thursday for the original dates, but found out in his hotel room that the festival had been postponed. He is currently in the process of getting a refund for his Flog Gnaw tickets, but was unable to refund his hotel or flights.

“Although we were bummed af we made the most of the trip for sure,” he said to me in a direct message. “Ngl I spent that Saturday afternoon sulking in the Airbnb on what could’ve been and looking at how much it didn’t rain. I can’t fault the festival for making the decision they made IF it were based on safety. The part that has left a bad taste in my mouth is the postponement being out of reach for travelers, the TOTAL lack of acknowledgement for travelers, the wack partial refund for VIP and SVIP, and on top of that they re-released tickets at a higher price.” Organizers have since told fans that they are giving full refunds for VIP and SVIP.

Another disappointed fan, Yari, flew from New Jersey and found out the festival was cancelled on his way from the airport to his hotel. “I was honestly anticipating it,” he said. “[I] had seen the leaks of food truck owners saying that the festival had been postponed but still wanted to have good faith. Although I kind of already knew I was still pretty disappointed. I still made the best of it because hey I’m in LA. I stayed around the koreatown area and tried new matcha and kbbq spots.” Yari said he was used to the rain, being from New Jersey, and had purchased ponchos and a stool to sit out the rain. Despite his disappointment, Yari says he would try again next year. “I would definitely go again, I went last year and had an absolute blast, it literally changed my life.”