One of America’s premiere festivals Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival returned to beautiful Golden Gate Park, a stone’s throw from the iconic bridge.
August in San Francisco can be compared to winter in the southwest. So while the rest of the country sweats it out in the dog days of triple-digit summer, the festival-goers at Outside Lands enjoy sunny and cool 60-degree days and foggy cool nights. Perfect weather for what is always a great music festival.
A festival this well attended and as large as Outside Lands always presents the conundrum of making choices between two artists you may want to see, but this festival provides many options with four stages and two electronic music tents, a culinary stage, a cocktail stage, and a music den. The amount of things you can do is almost mind-boggling. Like most other festivals, Outside Lands provides plenty of opportunities to discover bands or artists you may not have noticed without the premiere live music experience Outside Lands provides attendees.
As can be imagined, it is nearly impossible to see everything, so there are choices to be made. A selection of Friday’s lineup mentioned here included hip-hop and R&B artist Duckwrth, Zambian artist Sampa the Great, YouTube creator, multimedia artist, and musician Oliver Tree, Lil Uzi Vert, and primary headliner hip-hop and R&B superstar SZA. Keep in mind Outside Lands has two other headline-caliber acts performing nearly simultaneously. Also headlining on this night were Phoebe Bridgers and Disclosure.
Duckwrth is one of those artists you see and you can easily tell he is giving everything on stage – singing, dancing, and performing. Duckwrth performed his afternoon set on the Lands End main stage. Many young artists hit the big stage and struggle to command. Duckwrth is not one of those artists, he comes across as prepared and completely confident, completely using all 50 minutes he was given for his set. In an age where artists routinely show up late and leave early for an already truncated festival set, Duckwrth takes every opportunity to win attendees of his shows over. He performed his brand of hip-hop and R&B to an appreciative audience. Not easy to do when many fans are there camped out admittedly to see other artists later in the day.
The Zambian-born artist via Australia, Sampa The Great brought her aggressive, confident hip-hop flavor to the Panhandle stage. While the Panhandle stage may be one of the smallest stages at Outside Lands, it is certainly the place where many of today’s artists appearing on the larger stages made their first appearances. Her energetic set fits in well with the hip-hop-flavored afternoon at Outside Lands. Her set drew in more and more curious passersby as it progressed, and by the time it was over had grown to a crowd of several hundred. Sampa is primed to make her notch in the hip-hop world soon.
Whatever you think of Oliver Tree, he is more than he appears. To underestimate him as just a YouTube sensation would be a mistake. It is immediately noticeable that he is a savvy performer and entertainer. What seems to be random silly onstage antics, costume changes, and outrageous insults hurled at his audience is anything but random. He knows his fan base, and he had a large and rabid representation at the Lands End main stage. Tree is extremely popular with his base with his fans singing along with all of his pop-flavored songs. His breakout 2019 song “Cash Machine” was one of songs that caused his fans to go the craziest, along with one of the most popular songs of 2022, “Cowboy Tears.” “Alien Boy” as he is also known, brought his a-game and alien on stage with him.In the pre-headline slot, Lil Uzi Vert brought his crowd-loving high-energy hip-hop set to the Lands End main stage. Lil Uzi Vert regularly spends time out in the crowd with his audience, which makes him extremely popular with his fans. At one point, a young fan faked distress in the crowd to get lifted into the pit. Once in the pit, he bolted up onto the stage, only to be thwarted by security, and put in a chokehold. But just as things looked pretty dire for the young man, Lil Uzi Vert stopped the show and asked the security not to hurt him and to let him go, telling the security “I got this.” After which, he asked the young fan for his phone. After producing the phone, he told the fan they were going to take a picture together, after which the show continued. It’s not hard to see why LUV is as popular as he is with his fans. His set ran through his most popular songs, going hard but always having one eye on the safety of the fans, several times stopping the show and asking fans in the most crowded GA section to move back several steps to alleviate the crush.
The first night of Outside Lands was concluded by the headliner SZA who brought an elaborate stage show that converted the Lands End Stage into a three-level wharf complete with a lighthouse and a dock with a rising and lowering rising tide, created by a beautiful video effect. A visually stunning stage that SZA and her dancers writhed performed on. SZA climbed up the lighthouse several times.
On the last song of the encore, SZA jumped off the lighthouse only to disappear into a virtual splash, ending the performance. And so ended day one of Outside Lands. SZA has become a massive pop, R&B and hip-hop star, and is revered as so. If you haven’t had a chance to see SZA perform live, do so whenever you possibly can.
OUTSIDE LANDS MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL
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