By All Accounts It Appears That Two Hip Hop Acts From The 2000s, Missy Elliott and T-Pain, Completely Stole The Show At Coachella This Weekend
I'm trying my darndest to put a positive spin on Coachella, because it's getting exhausting just constantly bitching about the music industry. Nobody likes the Debbie Downer, and despite the constant complaining, I don't enjoy being the turd in the punchbowl each and every time the discussion comes to music today.
But its damn hard.
I wanted to frame this blog around something like, "damn, we've come an awful long way. (Since the days of everybody hating T-Pain and autotune)". But when I began writing this blog, I realized, that things have basically come full circle, and we actually haven't.
Follow along with me here.
I didn't attend Coachella weekend 1 this past weekend, but I know a ton of people who did, and was following along on social media. For not being there, watching from afar, one of the highlights for me was seeing a monster crowd belt out the words to “Don’t Stop Believin’” together.
Except it wasn't Journey on stage. The dude leading the charge? Not even close to Journey. Instead, was none other than T-Pain, a man who, at one point back in the day, was practically blamed for ruining pop music as we knew it.
Today, T-Pain is 40 years young. Sure, he might have been decked out in steam-punk attire as opposed to the baggy jeans and oversized polo shirt of yesteryear. And the so-called “backpackers” might still be huffing and puffing about Auto-Tune, but let’s get serious- hip-hop and autotune are like a peanut butter and jelly combo now. You can’t even think about one without the other.
It was good to see that this weekend at Coachella everyone was hit with that Y2K nostalgia. It wasn't just the festival, but there's a movement going on. People of all ages, and races, coast to coast are in the mood for some good ol’ booze-soaked, early 2000s throwbacks.
After a decade of tight jeans and the last breath of Pitchfork’s indie snobbery, it turns out the club was never dead. It was just waiting to be resurrected, and T-Pain's performance was a battle cry to help lead the charge.
His entrance was fucking awesome.
As was this heartfelt moment where Mr. Pain got very real and vulnerable, opening up to the crowd about how the moment had been 20 years in the making for him, and how hard he had busted his ass to get there.
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The road to success is a fucking rocky one that tries to make you quit over and over and over again. We're also glad Mr. Pain never gave up.
Because as his set showcased, the man is a fucking hit machine. Just a flat out stacked catalog of bangers.
His intro to "Good Life", which he co-produced and wrote with Kanye West, was absolutely fire. He and his band dropped Michael Jackson's "Pretty Young Thing", which they sampled in the song, before dropping in to those organ keys of "Good Life". The crowd ate it up.
(Fun fact - T-Pain stands for Tallahassee Pain)
From there, Mr. Pain proceeded to rip a medley of his hits including, "Got Money", "I'm Sprung", "I'm In Luv Wit A Stripper", "Buy U A Drank", and "Bartender", before blessing the crowd with a few of his covers.
I blogged this back when he released this in 2023, but T-Pain put out an album titled, On Top Of The Covers, and it was straight fire.
He dropped the aforementioned "Don't Stop Believin'" cover, as well as "Tennessee Whiskey".
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He closed out with "All I Do Is Win," and if the festival was under a roof, it would have literally blown the fuck off. The crowd went nuts.
(Sidebar - apologize for the ADHD here, but a couple of weekend's ago, for some bizarre, inexplicable reason, the great Diana Ross decided to perform this jam as well. And it couldn't have been more confusing.)
The other set that I saw get a lot of buzz over the weekend that I actually wish I could have taken in first hand was from Miss Elliot.
First off, when you're financing your $600 (general admission) ticket to a festival, this is the type of product you should be receiving. Performances that you can tell a shit ton of time and effort went into choreographing and producing. (Unless you're a band- which there were obviously very few of- in which case, just get up there and play the hits, the hits, and nothing but the mother fuckin hits.)
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Missy Elliot, ever the envelope pusher, kicked off her show by being a fucking transformer.
From there, she hit the crowd with non stop energy and gave them what they came for- a show.
I think people forgot how many smash hits Missy had because most of the comments I saw on social media were in regards to how hyped she got the crowd going and for how long she had them in the palm of her hand.
(Sidebar - possibly Missy's biggest club smash ever and that's saying A LOT. And she produced it herself. R.I.P. Fatman Scoop)
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Again, she and her team did this by being smart, thinking outside the box, and pushing boundaries. Incorporating several other artists' hits into her set, interpolating them, and also just using them between her own songs to keep the crowd going and energy high is a move straight out of the best party DJ's playbook.
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Now, am I surprised that two of the most talked about sets from the entire festival last weekend were from two acts who peaked in the 2000s and 2010s?
No, not even remotely.
That is the era that is still played at the clubs, bars, and house parties that gets the best crowd reaction and gets parties going. There's a reason that it's still the go to for DJ's today, and that big time EDM DJs still remix (horribly) and drop these songs in their sets and festivals to surprise and excite crowds.
Props to the Coachella festival talent bookers for taking a risk and booking acts like these. It clearly paid off.
p.s. - if you haven't seen T-Pain's Tiny Desk performance, it's a must watch.
p.p.s. - Complex (again, another major media company that is somehow able to post as much music as they want with zero issues) jumped all over starting a campaign calling for "T-Pain To Perform At This Year's Super Bowl" and I couldn't agree more.
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I think this needs to be a separate blog, but what if for this year's show we just go with absolute hit machines from the early 2000s that might also be guilty pleasures? Hear me out. T-Pain, Pitbull, Flo Rida, Kesha, Jason Derulo, Pink, Nelly. Guaranteed everybody in the country is raving about that show for days following it.