If you paid for a show where your favorite artist barely even performed, you’d probably be booing too. Recently, Donald Glover, aka rapper Childish Gambino, was sworn at by fans and eventually booed off stage in Australia.
Although Glover had agreed to the terms of a standard show, according The Guardian, the rapper turned the event into a mixtape performance that featured other artists. All the while, Glover sat on stage and when it came time for him to perform a single song near the end of the “show,” the audience had simply had it.
And rightfully so. Even the term “mixtape performance” would be confusing to Glover’s audience. The rapper has released a total of seven mixtapes, which include songs that could easily be performed according to the standards of any other rap show. For example, the mixtape Royalty is what got me hooked on Childish Gambino in the first place. If I heard that he was performing the mixtape, I still wouldn’t expect him to simply sit on stage behind a DJ set. As Stereogum put it so gently,
“If you’re going to do a DJ set rather than a regular show, you need to make absolutely f***ing sure everyone knows it’s a DJ set.”
