Month: April 2022

Megan Thee Stallion was a definite highlight of Coachella 2022’s first weekend. She was also a notable presence for at least one Chinese censor, who had a hard time properly obscuring Meg’s performance of “WAP.”

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, users on Chinese social media and messaging app WeChat were illegally livestreaming the festival this past weekend, all while censors tried their best to obscure moments that violated, as the publication put it, “China’s increasingly moralistic censorship rules.” A video that surfaced on social media showed a WeChat censor having a particularly hard time with Meg performing “WAP.” In the clip, a small black rectangle flies around the screen trying to cover the butts of Megan and her dancers, which were mostly exposed by their revealing outfits.

Uproxx’s Aaron Williams was at Coachella and in his recap of the festival’s second day, he noted of Meg’s performance, “Another huge crowd that focused more on having fun than pushing forward was the one for Megan Thee Stallion, who preceded day two’s closer, Billie Eilish. Like 21 [Savage], her set was a briskly-paced showcase for some of her bigger hits. Unlike his, hers incorporated a wardrobe change to a mini-DJ set of some of her mixtape favorites. Her set also included a confrontational new track that seemed to take some verbal jabs at a male antagonist — something that’s sure to have fans buzzing for the next few days.”

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Italian band Måneskin brought more people into their already massive fan base this weekend at Coachella with a fiery performance, including some covers. During their set, leader Damiano David prefaced a song by explaining, “As you know, we really like doing covers. More than how much we love doing covers, we love Britney Spears.” The nearly-naked quartet then launched into a heavy, electrifying version of “Womanizer.”

The Eurovision winners clearly had a fun time playing this cover; they wore bondage-like outfits, including lots of fishnets, claiming that the temperature on the stage was getting hot and “Britney Spears makes us hot.”

They also covered The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” another salacious anthem that balances rock and roll with seduction, and they dedicated it to Iggy Pop who was featured on their hit “I Wanna Be Your Slave.”

After indulging in these playful performances, the band took some time to discuss the situation in Ukraine: “Are you having fun? I’m happy to hear it. But sometimes we’ve gotta understand how big our privilege is, to have the chance to just attend a gig and have fun and be careless and have nothing to think about. And none of us have to think of, (when) you wake up, how many bombs have been launched on the city.”

Watch a clip of the Spears cover above.

Rootin’ tootin Lauren Boebert couldn’t help herself on Easter. She had to stir the pot, but shockingly enough, she didn’t post a photo of her family posing with guns. That previous bit led the owner of Shooter’s Grill to act all kinds of triggered when SNL responded with a parody sketch of Boebert’s Rifle Republican ways, and cast member Chloe Fineman subsequently described Lauren’s freakout as belonging to an “actual clown.”

So, Boebert kind-of played it safe for this holiday, but she did decide to throw a grenade into Twitter before walking away. Yet she did, as is customary for her, show off that she (as with the constitution) hasn’t studied up on the source material. And of course, Boebert used this to rail against Covid lockdowns, which are, uh, completely nonexistent at this point in the U.S.

“Jesus did not comply with lockdowns,” Boebert merrily tweeted. “Happy Easter!”

Alright, so this might have been some kind of play on Jesus rising and busting out of the cave, but at the same time, Boebert attributed her own beliefs without (again) studying what she’s tweeting about. Twitter had the receipts for her (along with a “Read your Bible”) while pointing toward a plague reference and how some kind of lockdown/plague practice was a biblical thing. As one user pointed out (with a translation that varies), Leviticus 13:46 sure as heck had a process in place for plague mitigation.

From there, people piled on to point out Boebert’s inconsistencies, including how Jesus didn’t bear arms, which would probably sting if Boebert had been reading her replies. Does she do so? She’ll never tell.

And this “Jesus was about the resurrection, not the insurrection” tweet is here for wordplay.

For the past few weeks, “Thor: Love and Thunder” has trended on Twitter every morning, with thousands of Marvel, Chris Hemsworth, Taika Waititi, Natalie Portman, and Tessa Thompson fans unifying their efforts towards a single goal: a teaser trailer. Their wish was finally granted: the Love and Thunder teaser trailer is here, and it looks fantastic.

Set to “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses, the teaser finds Thor retiring from his “superhero-ing days” for a life of becoming a romance novel-looking pirate, hanging with everyone’s good friend Korg, and looking into the eyes of the person that he loves (Star-Lord). There’s no Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher and only a quick shot of Jane Foster wielding Mjölnir, but Love and Thunder looks just as colorful and fun as MCU highlight Thor: Ragnarok.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

The film finds Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on a journey unlike anything he’s ever faced – a quest for inner peace. But his retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi) and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who – to Thor’s surprise – inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance and stop him before it’s too late.

Here’s the poster.

As Nicolas Cage continues to make the promotional round for his latest film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, the actor has been an open book, which has made for some pretty entertaining interviews. In his latest sitdown, Cage fielded a question about DC Comics fans hoping to finally see his live-action version of Superman come to live. Now, that the DC films are embracing the multiverse at the same time as Marvel (the two comic book companies have famously copied each other for decades) fans have concocted a theory that Cage’s Superman exists in the same universe as Michael Keaton’s Batman.

With Keaton set to return in The Flash — if that film ever sees the light of day — Cage was asked if it’s possible that his Superman could also make a cameo. The actor seemed to be very careful about his response, which he attributed to realizing how quickly these things make headlines, but there’s always the possibility that there are some NDAs involved.

“I have to be careful what I say about this stuff. What is it about comic books that [everything] just goes everywhere exponentially within split seconds?” Cage told Rolling Stone before adding later. “It certainly would be interesting. It certainly would be interesting.”

For now, the actor is still of the mind that it’s actually a good thing that his Superman film never got made. “It’s a positive in that it left the character, and what Tim and I might have gotten up to, in the realm of imagination — which is always more powerful than that is concrete.” That said, Cage also considers it a negative that no one got to see the finished product. “I think it would have been special.”

(Via Rolling Stone)

What we have on our hands here is a classic Good News, Bad News situation.

The good news is that Barry is back, finally, almost three full years after the end of season two, with enough real-world events packed between the dates to make the gap feel somehow both shorter and massively longer than it was. It’s good when good shows are back. Barry is a good show. It was good in its first two seasons and, I am pleased to report, it is still really good in its upcoming third season. Maybe even better than ever. There’s always been a balancing of dark and light at play here, which can be tricky to nail, with one building and building like a balloon filling with air until the other comes along and punctures it. It appears that the show’s solution to that is “just commit fully to both.” Bold, brave, and deeply silly. I respect it.

This, however, brings us to the bad news: No one on the show is doing too great right now. Everyone has a lot going on, much of it murder-related, all thanks to two seasons of the show and its characters trying to keep the light and dark separated to whatever degree they can as long as they can, and then… I mean, just failing pretty hard at it. Worlds are colliding now, fast and hard, with those light and dark aspects along for the ride. It’s pretty impressive, honestly. I realize as I’m typing this that what I identified as bad news is actually just more good news. This is a decent problem to have.

A refresher will help, though, probably. Again, three years and various global calamities will fuzzy things up pretty good. A season two rewatch is ideal, and doable considering it is just eight 30-ish-minutes episodes, but let’s hit the highlights, quickly:

• Barry (Bill Hader) just took out most of the Burmese and Bolivian mob in a monastery shootout during a hunt for Fuches (Stephen Root), who a) had just negotiated a truce between the gangs, and b) revealed to Gene (Henry Winkler) that Barry was responsible for the death of Detective Moss, Gene’s girlfriend
• Sally (Sarah Goldberg) just delivered a career-making performance in a play she wrote about her abusive relationship, although she altered the story at the last minute, on the stage, to make herself a hero instead of a victim, facts and truth be damned
• My beloved NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) was left as the last man standing in the mob war, thanks to Barry’s monastery massacre, which the higher-ups think Hank pulled off alone
• Barry may or may not have framed Hank for Moss’s murder

It was a lot. And it explains the thing I said earlier about no one doing too great. Because of the murders. I cannot stress this last part enough.

Season three picks up pretty much in the aftermath of season two. Barry is depressed about, well, all of it, with one mentor (Fuches) betraying him and another (Gene) about to confront him about the Moss thing. It is generally not a great sign for a character when there are pre-air promotional images of him standing alone in a desert with days of stubble on his face. This is where I would direct you to the top of the screen again. I would not describe anything in that image as an inaccurate portrayal of Barry’s headspace.

What’s interesting, though, and something I’m enjoying about the third season so far, is that the show is finally showing Barry at his worst. Even when things got weird in the first two seasons, even when he shot a woman in the head for the crime of… solving the crimes he committed, Barry was mostly trying to do right. Or at least he was trying to stop doing bad, occasionally through one or more additional bad acts. (“Riiiiiiight… now.”) Now, he’s just spiraling, flailing, breaking things without knowing how to fix them, yelling at people he loves, kidnapping people he loves, still allegedly in the name of fixing things but mostly just because he never learned how to solve problems without violence. It’s not ideal.

It’s also kind of important for the show to acknowledge, this thing where Barry isn’t a great dude, no matter how likable Bill Hader is. He has trauma, sure, and there is blame on a system that failed him and a series of bozo Svengalis who manipulated him, but Barry is a dude who kills people for money and to get himself out of trouble. None of this is going to end well for him. It can’t. It shouldn’t. This is the ride we’ve signed up for, whether we realized it at the time or not.

(That said, if anything bad happens to NoHo Hank, I will not get out of bed for a week. Yes, I know he is a monster, too, technically. I know he has ordered killings and profited off crime and the suffering of others. I’m aware I’m not being completely consistent here. I do not care. I love him very much.)

But also, and I cannot stress this enough, it’s all still very, very funny. Borderline goofy in parts. There’s a bit in the second episode involving Henry Winkler and dogs that made me full-on shout-laugh at my computer with my headphones in, to the degree someone asked if I was okay. NoHo Hank is back and teaming up with Cristobal in more ways than one and I can’t wait for you to see what he is up to. D’Arcy Carden pops up every once in a while to steal scenes so flawlessly that you could consider it a heist. The show is pulling off one of the cooler high-wire acts on television with this tone-hopping. Please do not take it for granted.

So this is where we are. For now. Barry’s past is chasing him, always, and he’s not going to be able to lose it. Most of what he’s doing is making it all worse, really. But that’s what makes Barry such a special show. You should not be able to have this much fun watching Bill Hader ruin his life and terrorize the people who try to help him. It’s a dark show, and it gets even darker in the early parts of this new season. And yet, again, the shout-laughing. It’s… cool. It’s cool. That is maybe not the most professional or articulate way to end a review of one of the best shows on television, but I stand by it. It’s cool that the show is taking chances. It’s cool that the show isn’t afraid to tell you who the characters really are. It’s cool that there’s a show on television in 2022 that stars both Henry Winkler and Stephen Root. It’s all just really, really cool. We are blessed to have this show back in our lives, even if things get a little weird.

The third season of Barry debuts on HBO on Sunday, April 24

The first weekend of Coachella 2022 has come and go, with The Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia closing things out with their headlining set last night (in place of Kanye West after he pulled out of the fest last-minute). It was quite the way to put a cap on the big weekend, especially since it appears The Weeknd’s set included a nod to Bella Hadid, his ex.

During an outro of “Save Your Tears,” a voicemail could be heard, in which a woman’s voice says, “Hey, it’s me. I know it’s been a while but I was just thinking about you and I’m sorry about everything. I miss you.”

A prominent theory is that the voice in the recording belongs to Hadid:

Hadid and The Weeknd had an on-and-off relationship between 2015 and 2019. It been theorized that even before last night, Hadid was part of the Dawn FM universe, as a lyric on “Here We Go… Again” has been interpreted to be about her: “Your girlfriend’s tryna pair you with somebody more famous / But instead you ended up with someone so basic, faceless / Someone to take your pictures and frame it.”

Check out a clip from The Weeknd’s “Save Your Tears” outro above.

It’s interesting that the teaming of Alexander Skarsgård and director Robert Eggers on The Northman was kind of an accident. Skarsgård and Eggers did have a dinner scheduled to discuss another project, but it’s only after the two started talking about their mutual interest in Viking culture did Skarsgård realize, oh, maybe this is the director for The Northman. And the result is a vicious tale of revenge, culminating with a naked sword fight on top of an exploding volcano.

The last time I interviewed Skarsgård was for Godzilla vs. Kong and he was a good sport about realizing not many people were going to watch Godzilla vs. Kong to see his character, famed geologist Dr. Nathan Lind. (By the time that interview ended, the questions had devolved into things like, “Did you film on location in the center of the earth?,” and “How long did you train as a geologist?” with Skarsgård giving hilarious answers.) But, this time, Skarsgård is front and center as Amleth, who is hellbent on avenging the death of his father by the hands of his uncle, who has no sense married his mother. (Yes, The Northman is based on the same source material as Hamlet is, but, as Skarsgård points out, Hamlet doesn’t feature a naked sword fight on top of an exploding volcano.)

And speaking of Godzilla vs. Kong, Skarsgård has some troubling news about King Kong himself, who sounds like he’s fallen into some of the traps of Hollywood and fame.

This movie rules.

Oh, thank you.

That’s the whole interview.

Thank you. That’s a great chat.

So I spoke to Robert Eggers. Last time you and I spoke, you said you courted him for The Northman. How do you talk him into this? Because he seems like a very headstrong fellow.

He is. I didn’t have to court him much, to be honest. It was meant to be, it really was, to speak Viking language, fated. I knew the type of Viking movie I wanted to make. I knew I wanted it to be an epic Viking adventure story. But I wanted it to be based on the Icelandic sagas. I wanted it to kind of have that tonality, that laconic language: The harsh, stark, language of characters — it was something I had never seen on a big screen. I’d never seen that captured.

But now in retrospect, it’s nothing like really his other two movies. Which I didn’t realize back then. How did you know then he would be perfect for this? Considering it’s a lot more action than we get in his other movies.

Exactly. And I didn’t go into that meeting thinking like, oh, he’s the guy.

Oh?

The Witch was playing in the theaters when we met. So I had just seen it. And, like you said, it’s a completely different movie, but it’s evident that you’re dealing with a filmmaker whose attention to detail is absolutely extraordinary. Who has an ability to make the audience feel transported to a different time and place. And who deals with the supernatural in a very unique way – where it feels alien and supernatural to us watching it in modern-day society, but to the characters on screen experiencing it, it’s not supernatural to them. It’s real because they genuinely believe in the supernatural. But, again, there was nothing in that movie that made me think, oh, he can pull off a big old action-adventure movie.

Well, that’s what’s kind of remarkable about you two teaming up like this.

But that meeting, we were supposed to talk about another project. Rob had just returned to New York from Iceland and had fallen in love with the culture and the people and Norse mythology. So we ended up just talking about Viking culture and I was really impressed by his knowledge and his take on it. And him talking about spirituality in the mindset of the Viking. I knew that the essence, the core of the movie is exactly what I was dreaming of making. So after that meeting, I called Lars Knudsen, my producing partner on it. And just said, “I had the most amazing meeting with Rob. And for some reason I think he could be perfect for our Viking movie.” Again, because of his interest, his passion, his knowledge, and the way he wants to blur the lines between the natural and the supernatural, was something that was so fascinated by. And then that’s how we kind of got started on this.

He mentioned that the final fight scene on the volcano was very tough on you.

Yeah. It was an intense week. It was towards the end of the shoot. So it was almost Christmas and freezing cold. And obviously at night. And we’re naked, covered in blood and sweat…

I mean right there, just even saying that out loud, there’s a movie. “We’re freezing, we’re naked, we’re covered in blood.” You guys got yourself a movie right there.

Yeah! And not only are there a lot of long choreographed fight scenes in the movie, but this was also the emotional climax. So this demanded more of all of us. But I was just so excited about the possibility of that scene. I’d seen the storyboard. There’s an image made by an artist of these two Vikings fighting on top of an erupting volcano. And it just was the most extraordinary image on something out of a Renaissance painting. And that got me through that week of pain and fatigue. If we can get even close to that, then it’s totally worth it.

It’s one of the more stunning-looking fight scenes I’ve seen in a long time.

Oh, wow. That really means a lot, man. It’s the climax of the movie, so there are a lot of pretty technically difficult and pretty impressive fight scenes in the movie. But you got to go out with a bang. You’re making a big Viking epic and you’re dealing with Norse mythology. You’ve got Valkyries, you got gods, you have a character at that moment who is about to enter Valhalla. You kind of got to go big in that moment. And you can’t go much bigger than a fight on top of an erupting volcano.

I saw you were saying how you didn’t get cast in smart roles…

I’m definitely not complaining about the roles I’ve gotten in the past 15 years. I’ve been one of the luckiest motherfuckers on the planet and had the privilege of being able to kind of choose projects for at least 10 years now. I was referring to the beginning of my career.

Well, I didn’t want you to forget Dr. Nathan Lind. Last time we spoke we talked about all the time you put in training as a geologist…

I’m all about authenticity. Method actor, man.

Also, I did some research after that interview. It turns out you did not actually film Kong vs. Godzilla in the center of the earth on location. That was a sound stage.

The aftertaste is quite sour, because of the success at the box office of that movie, Kong turned into a fucking diva.

Oh no.

No. He won’t even, like, pick up my call anymore.

That’s not right.

He was a pure talent man. He was really something and sweet and humble when we shot the movie. And then now, dude, just hanging out at the clubs, like with sunglasses and just a bad crowd. An entourage, moving around with assistants. He’s just being mean to people. And it’s really sad to see when that happens to someone who had so much potential.

The people who seem to get ahead in your industry are the people who are kind. And to hear this about Mr. Kong, that is disappointing.

That’s why he hasn’t worked since.

Oh, by the way, the interview you did with Kirsten Dunst, you brought up Tootsie and how your first crush was Jessica Lange. And it hit me, both you and Jessica Lange have worked with Mr. Kong.

That’s true! That’s true.

If you ever run into her, you can share your experiences with King Kong.

I met her at an awards show years ago. But I got a bit… obviously because that was my first crush on Tootsie. So I got a bit awkward and uncomfortable and I kind of had to extract myself from that conversation.

I mean, what are you supposed to say in that situation?

Yeah. I know.

I was thinking, I’ve seen the comparisons of The Northman to Hamlet. Do you want people thinking it’s Hamlet? This feels a lot different than Hamlet.

Sure. Why not? I mean, yes, you have the family structure, the dynamic is based on Prince Amleth of Jutland from the 12th century. And it’s by Saxo Grammaticus, but it’s probably an even older story. So it’s probably from Iceland in the 10th century, the original story.

I feel like Hamlet just tries to kind of annoy his uncle to death. Your character has a different approach.

Hamlet is also quite passive. A lot of the play it’s him, internally, should I, should I not? Amleth is…

Not passive. He’s not a passive guy.

No. Hamlet does not end up fighting naked on top of a burning volcano.

He certainly does not.

Shakespeare really dropped the ball on that one.

He did.

He’d have real success if he only fought his uncle on top of a burning volcano.

I think we can all agree Hamlet needs a rewrite with a naked sword fight on top of a volcano.

That’s the one.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Rudy Giuliani‘s “passion” for making the most grotesquely embarrassing comments possible was in peak form on Easter Sunday. Instead of enjoying a nice ham dinner or holding hands with a bespectacled bunny, the former-New York City mayor launched an attack on Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of The 1619 Project, which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative,” according to the New York Times.

“All that stuff we’ve been going through with burning the flag and kneeling during the national anthem and taking down statues of George Washington is to get us to hate our country. It’s not just meaningless or silly conduct or annoying conduct. There’s a purpose to it!” Giuliani said. “The people that organize it know what they’re doing. They’re getting us to hate America when you write [The 1619 Project], that stupid woman is the one that said parents should have nothing to do with the educations of their children.”

The Masked Singer contestant Giuliani also called Hannah-Jones “this New York Times arrogant jerk,” which is rich coming from a guy who worked for Donald Trump. In all fairness to Rudy, though, he may have gone on a sexist, racist rant, but his Easter could have been worse: at least he didn’t cut the line at the White House Easter Egg Roll.

(Via Raw Story)

When it was first announced that Kanye West had dropped out of Coachella’s Sunday night headlining slot just weeks before the festival, one of the names floated during the flurry of speculation about who would replace him was Doja Cat. In the time since her name had first appeared on the flyer for the canceled 2020 edition of the festival, that name had jumped up three lines and gotten several font sizes larger. Now that that long-delayed Coachella debut has happened, it’s clear that Doja’s name should have jumped up one more line.

While Doja isn’t technically a total Coachella rookie – she joined Rico Nasty onstage in 2019 – this is her first time appearing on the festival’s lineup. In 2019, Doja was still primarily known as the “Mooo!” girl in most online circles but since then, she has proven that she’s no joke. Her Hot Pink song “Say So” was the breakout hit of 2020, climbing all the way to No. 1 on the Hot 100 propelled by a TikTok trend, a Nicki Minaj remix, and a spicy (and ultimately unfulfilled) promise.

Yet, throughout that incredible run, Doja was never afforded the opportunity to perform it for real, in front of an audience of fans who were there to see her rather than whatever award show she happened to be on. Likewise, when “Streets” also took off thanks to its own massive viral moment on social media (Google “silhouette challenge” if you’re unaware), Doja was unable to take the show on the road, so it was probably hard to get a bead on just how big she’d gotten in over the course of the year leading up to the release of her third album, Planet Her.

But now, we’ve definitely seen all the evidence we need to say that Doja should have headlined Coachella 2022 – and will more than likely do so in the near future. An exuberant set with flash and color, Doja’s performance had all the components of legendary sets like Beyonce’s. She gave us costume changes and a creative stage design; she served choreography and dazzling live arrangements of her growing collection of past hits. She even returned Rico Nasty’s favor, bringing out her old friend for a zany rendition of their collaboration “Tia Tamera.”

That last one is notable because that’s the sort of thing a headliner does: Lend their platform to bequeath just a bit of their notoriety to a deserving successor. Doja and Rico are more like peers, but it’s likely that bringing Rico on during Doja’s set exposed her to a much wider audience of both attendees at Coachella and fans watching the livestream at home. Just imagine how much bigger that audience could have been with Doja closing out the festival.

Doja’s set synthesized all of the experiences and strategies she’d picked up over a year of performing almost solely for television. Sure, she’s always had a gift for showmanship, but that confidence doesn’t always translate to a big stage – it did Sunday night, though, and in spades. She showed a picture-perfect handle of how to perform to both the crowd at the polo grounds and to the cameras, flashing her broad, genuine smile at just the right moments to accent a particularly deft show beat, and display her well-practiced vocal skills with ease and charisma.

It’s fitting that she was also just about the culmination of Sunday’s showcase of genre-bending hip-hop (and yes, Doja Cat is very much a hip-hop artist). If Friday and Saturday were about surveying where hip-hop is and its probable future, then Sunday saw the various permutations the genre can accommodate when the boundaries are ignored. Throughout the day, hip-hop spread its wings, delving into acts that challenge the genre’s status quo with their sonic experimentation – acts like Compton house-hop rule-breaker Channel Tres, rebellious rabble-rousers Run The Jewels, and eclectic journeyman Denzel Curry, who brought his own X-Wing from Star Wars to the Sahara stage.

It gave me a lot of joy to see the crowd spilling out of the Sahara tent at Channel Tres electrifying afternoon set (probably stemming from hometown pride), while Run The Jewels drew a sizable crowd of their own to the main stage just a few minutes later. Vince Staples, fresh off his tour with Tyler The Creator, worked on expanding his set with nods to his newly released album, Ramona Park Broke My Heart. During his set, he bantered with a fellow Long Beach native in the front row, teasing him for confusing the city’s east side with Vince’s beloved Norf Norf.

UK rapper Dave ended up being one of the few exceptions to the unofficial “hip-hop at Sahara” rule in effect this weekend, blessing the Mojave tent with a scintillating performance that saw him rap, sing, play his guitar (sadly, not the flamethrower one from the BRIT Awards), and share the stage with an enthusiastic fan from London named Spike. Spike didn’t just know every word; he performed with Dave like they’d been rehearsing all week, blowing away the artist as much as the crowd.

Doja Cat capping off this lineup inadvertently became a pretty pointed statement on how expansive hip-hop has become. In recent weeks, the debate over whether or not she counts as a rapper intensified after veteran rapper Remy Ma refused to classify her as one. With a Coachella set that leaned into displaying her rap skills, backed by a wide array of musical styles from Afropop to hard rock, Doja Cat didn’t just prove that she’s a rapper. She also made a pretty solid argument that she is one of the biggest and best rappers — and performers — on the planet. The next time we see her name on a Coachella flyer, it might just be in the big print after all.