Once upon a time, I was a virgin.
Yet somehow, despite acne and angst taking turns terrorizing my adolescence, my hormones finally decided to cooperate and I miraculously lost my virginity at 17 years old. I wish I could say that confetti and fireworks filled up the sky—or at least filled up the luminous forest where I put my thang down, flipped it, and reversed it for the very first time—but after what felt like eons of anticipation, once my body was no longer my own, all I felt was confusion and…disappointment.
And after finally—finally!!!!—having the opportunity to see Frank Ocean live at Coachella on Sunday night, that same feeling of confusion and disappointment was infinitely worse.
To the rest of the world, prior to the abomination that occurred on Sunday (more on that shortly), it had been six long years since the man who inquired, “What’s a king to a god? What’s a god to a non-believer?” blessed us with a public performance. But as someone who had never had the privilege (and I use that term loosely) of seeing Frank live prior to Coachella this year, that wait felt like more than a lifetime—which still somehow felt shorter than the hour it took for him to finally take the stage on Sunday night. (I’m guessing his chakras needed to align?)
You would think all that extra time would’ve been poured into fine-tuning his set, but instead, I and tens of thousands of others were assaulted by a bizarre intro in which his “dancers” scrambled around on stage like roaches looking for a college dorm to call home. Did I mention this was in complete silence? Did I mention this synchronized roaching was liiiiiiike 10 minutes long?
Once Frank’s set began—which is still up for dispute depending upon who you ask—instead of him actually taking the stage, we were treated to what looked like a colonoscopy: cramped, chaotic visuals that could easily be mistaken for either deleted scenes from The Blair Witch Project or a Minecraft sex tape. Apparently, it was supposed to be a replication of his creative process—Frank hunched over the mic in the studio swarmed by musicians and pissed-off fans screaming, “This is a terrible fucking idea!”—but instead, all we got was a shitty mini-doc on how to get vertigo at Coachella. Fun times!
And for those wondering about the music, allegedly there was a rave and some repurposed fan favorites like “Chanel” and “Pink + White” that were unwilling participants in what will go down as The Day I Switched Therapists, but I wouldn’t know because the sound was so abysmal—“Novacane” specifically sounded like it was being played from a warped cassette tape on Ariel’s boombox—that I threw my arms up in despair and hit the eject button. As in yes: I was so disgusted by what I was witnessing that I collected what remained of my sanity and bounced. And I wasn’t the only one either, as I was joined by a mass exodus of thousands of other fellow escapees, each of whom took turns chanting either “Fuck you, Frank!” or “No, seriously. Fuck you, Frank!” with pitchforks in hand.
For those of you flabbergasted by me committing the unpardonable sin of dipping out of a Frank Ocean concert early, I guess now would be the opportune time to disclose that Mr. Nostalgia, Ultra did the exact same thing: He didn’t even finish his set because since he hit the stage an hour late, he broke curfew! At approximately 12:20 a.m., he told what was left of the crowd: “Guys, I’m being told it’s curfew, so that’s the end of the show. Thank you, so much.”
Nigga, what?
Look, as much as I appreciate Black Twitter, we need a Trust Pilot for concerts—post haste. Because had I known I’d suffer through 72 hours of dust, exhaustion, and obnoxious trust fund babies just to get Nigerian email scammed by the Ghost of Frank Ocean Past I would’ve stayed my Black ass home.
So next time, I think I’ll do myself a favor and just keep my virginity.