We all know that there’s a time and place where it’s acceptable to be fashionably late. Bonnaroo is neither the time nor the place. Kanye West was scheduled to perform at the Bonnaroo Music Festival at 2:15AM Saturday night/Sunday morning on June 14th/15th 2008. His original performance time was pushed back from 8:15PM Saturday night at Which Stage, due to the fact that Kanye requested a later time and a bigger stage to accommodate his critically acclaimed Glow in the Dark tour.

Pearl Jam, who performed on What Stage prior to Kanye, did not help the problem when they went 1 hour longer than scheduled. Pearl Jam’s closing song “Alive” ended at around 1:15AM Saturday night. This gave Kanye 1½ hours to build his set and get on stage to perform. That’s a decent amount of time, right? Well, no. This was because there were major difficulties disassembling Pearl Jam’s set and assembling Kanye’s.

As an observer in the front row of the pit, I noticed that the majority of the stagehands were just standing around doing nothing. It was actually quite appalling. A heckler near me called them out for standing idly, and they seemed to disappear backstage after that. If they actually contributed to assembling Kanye’s set, it would have been assembled in half the time. About 5-7 people out of 20+ were doing all the work.

When 3:50AM rolled around, the set looked to be finished, but Kanye was nowhere to be seen. Fans began to grow restless. Glowsticks, water-bottles, toilet paper rolls and numerous other objects were hurled onto the stage and at the set. It was an endless barrage of flying objects. Chants of “BULLSHIT”, “WHAT THE FUCK”, and “FUCK KANYE” were being shouted throughout crowd. One pissed off fan threw either a glowstick or water-bottle (I’m not sure which) at Kanye’s huge, hanging LCD screen that took forever to assemble. The LCD panels were cracked and seriously malfunctioning. It was hilarious.

Finally, at approximately 4:30AM, Kanye emerged from backstage and onto his set. By this time, the sky was just beginning to lighten, and most fans had passed out or retired to their tents. When Kanye took the stage, he made no effort to even acknowledge the crowd, let alone his extreme lateness. Kanye stuck to his lame, scripted act with a female computer named Jane for the entire performance. It was like the audience wasn’t even there. Throughout his performance, he was forced to avoid the constant barage of glowsticks and bottles being hurled at him.

His entire performance lasted about an hour. After his last song, he just left the stage. No goodbyes. No apologies. Not one acknowledgement. Nothing. I had heard that Kanye West had a big ego but never thought much of it. This experience definitely changed all of that. I was a pretty big Kanye fan and super excited to see him live because I heard he was amazing. But, all I ended up seeing was his gigantic ego. He was the only person on stage for the whole performance for God’s sake. No backup dancers, no DJ, no musicians, no guest rappers. There isn’t a single person who witnessed Kanye’s Bonnaroo performance that will think of him and his music in the same way. He basically slapped all of his fans in the face. I should have seen Lupe Fiasco and Talib Kweli instead.

Be sure to watch the videos.

Below: Kanye performs “Heard ‘Em Say” and dodges glowsticks thrown at him. Notice the cracked LCD screen.

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Below: Kanye performs “Champion” and dodges glowsticks.

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Below: Kanye performs the end of “Get ‘Em High” as colorful flames shoot out from the stage.

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Below: Kanye stands idly as “Stronger” plays in the background. By this time it was basically bright outside.

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So on Friday June 13th, Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., performed at the Bonnaroo Music Festival
in Manchester, Tennesee. All I have to say is HOLY FUCK. Her set was probably the most intense, high energy performance at Bonnaroo. I know this because I was lucky enough to witness it first hand and up close.

After an amazing set by !!! (chk chk chk), M.I.A. was scheduled to perform. !!! had set the bar quite high, and it was questionable whether or not M.I.A. could top it. There was even speculation that M.I.A. would literally be missing in action – nobody was even sure if she would show up for her Bonnaroo performance. This was because the Sri Lankan MC canceled her European tour, citing exhaustion as the main reason.

Right around 6:15 PM CST though, the heavy bass of “Bamboo Banga” could be heard emanating from the DJ booth. At this time, everyone knew that M.I.A. was ready to deliver the performance of a lifetime. She came out donning white sequined short shorts, a large orange t-shirt, wayfarer sunglasses, and big 80′s hair and earrings. M.I.A. kept telling the sound technicians to turn up her bass in order to blow everyone away. She and her 2 dancers passed out horns to the audience. Then, in somewhat of a surprise move (I say ‘somewhat of a surprise’ because !!!’s singer had hinted to it an hour earlier), M.I.A. then told the crowd in her heavy British accent that,

“This is my last show, and I’m glad that I’m spending it with all my hippies! Peace and love! Aight! They’re kickin’ me out, but I’m goin’ in peace! I will be back though, they ain’t gettin’ rid of me that easily!”

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During her electric performance, M.I.A. blasted her horn, danced on top of the speakers, jumped into the front row, and even invited tons of people to dance on stage. Everyone on stage and in the audience was going absolutely crazy. The energy throughout the performance was through the roof.
As RollingStone put it,

“M.I.A. delivered a mind-blowing set of ass-shaking jungle-disco tonight”

Check out the videos. I apologize in advance for the shakiness.
Below: M.I.A. invites girls onto the stage and performs the end of “Jimmy” and the beginning of “Boyz.”
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Below: M.I.A. dances and grinds with the huge speakers on the left.
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Below: M.I.A. comes into the front row about 3 feet away from me. I am really upset over this because I thought I was recording the entire time, but I wasn’t, and the video ended up being 7 seconds, instead of 2 minutes. Noooooooooo!!
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Below: M.I.A. wraps up a song from behind turntables.
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Below: M.I.A. comes back for an encore with her crew. Nigeria’s own Afrikan Boy makes his first appearance of the night.
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Below: M.I.A. ends the show with “Paper Planes.”
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