Metal Lungies

We saw Kanye West perform live twice this past weekend, and no, we didn’t hop on a PJ to do it. ML didn’t make it to ‘Made In America’ this year but we took the consolation prize of streaming Kanye West performing live on back-to-back nights from the comfort of our sofa (shout out to our MVP, our Chromecast (its name: ‘Lil Plug)). With Kanye headlining both the Philadelphia (Saturday) & Los Angeles (Sunday) editions of ‘Made In America’, it was irresistible not to compare how Kanye’s performance changed and to see which would ultimately be the better show. Being able to see Kanye on back-to-back nights on a stream in today’s major-festival-streaming-performances era is unique because: A) not all big headliners make it to a festival’s stream; B) you don’t see the same big act streaming on back to back nights ever.

While the setlist was pretty much identical in the two performances, Los Angeles was clearly the better performance (from the sofa vantage point) purely because the LA crowd’s energy was a notch above Philly. They sang along at the top of their lungs– louder than Kanye at times–which you could tell he was feeding off of. The crowd made way better “circles” (Kanye’s roundabout way of getting the crowd to mosh) for Blood On the Leaves. The lighting & camera guys were on point in LA as opposed to Philly where Kanye dedicated a ‘stream of consciousness’ to those gaffes. The closing at each respective performance showed which Kanye enjoyed more– in Philly the show ended with a mic drop and an exit from the stage, whereas LA  got an extended encore and an “I love you, LA” shout out with no mic drop when Kanye exited the stage.

If you watched both, what did you think?