With shoulder-to-shoulder crowds surging through Centeroo on Friday evening, it was clear that Bonnaroo’s early-sell-out announcement was indeed accurate. The increased numbers — likely the biggest we’ve seen in a half-decade or more — were most apparent as crowds rushed toward entrance points for Childish Gambino’s set, the first main-stage headlining performance of the weekend.
“Tonight is a very special night,” Gambino, aka multi-hyphenate performer Donald Glover, told the ‘Roo masses a handful of songs into his set. “Tonight is church.”
It was a message similar to the one Glover delivered when he played Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena just six months ago, imploring folks to put down their phones and feel something. Indeed, most of the show hit the same notes as that Bridgestone stop on Glover’s This Is America Tour, from his set list to the cameraman who followed him every time he’d descend from the stage to the mid-crowd production catwalk.
But it was a message and a set — all high energy and positive vibes — that worked well for Friday night, a time slot that historically sets the tone for the remainder of the weekend. U2’s characteristically earnest performance of Joshua Tree in 2017 and Kendrick Lamar’s breakout pre-DAMN. performance in 2015 are a couple of recent high-water marks. While Glover doesn’t have the iconic catalog of the former or the nearly universal acclaim of the latter, he does have the charismatic stage presence and impressive high-end production to keep ’Roo largely in the palm of his hand for 75 minutes.
Gambino’s set kicked off with the rapper-slash-singer — shirtless with his hair partially braided and his beard grown out — standing on a spotlit platform near the sound booth as “Atavista” played. From there, he went into his tour staple “Algorithm” and the platform descended, sending Glover running up a set of stairs and onto the stage. A set of six mobile LED panels moved around the stage throughout the set, wheeled by stagehands into various positions to reveal the band, appear to fire off lasers or backlight Glover at various points. They showed a tropical background during “Summertime Magic” and appeared to send up rainbow-colored fog during “Terrified.”
Glover showed off his band a bit mid-set, cuing them on stops and doing some call-and-response with his choir. He also leaned into the Bonnaroo spirit, tucking a joint that someone had apparently thrown onstage behind his ear and telling the crowd: “We are so connected in this moment together.” He fell to the stage to writhe during “Riot.”
Of course, the whole set felt like it was building toward “This Is America,” the impactful and excellent 2018 single that — with its accompanying music video — earned Glover four Grammys. That arrived an hour into the performance, with the rapper surrounded by a small crew of dancers in school uniforms. It was a bit odd to look around the crowd and see gleeful festie girls in cat ears and festie boys in bandannas singing along to lyrics about gun violence and racial prejudice. But this is indeed America, where everyday horrors and good-time festival culture live side by side.
That’s the point where Glover has ended his main set for most of the stops on this tour, but with just 15 minutes remaining, he skipped the formality of an encore and went straight into his four-song closing run. Naturally, he wrapped it all up with “Redbone,” the absolute R&B banger from 2016’s Awaken, My Love! Then, there were fireworks as the hordes were sent off into late-night Bonnaroo — some to get down with Solange, others to noodle-dance with Phish.
