Lil Pump plays short set at Rave — thankfully
He performed for just 35 minutes. For his encore, he did a song he had played perhaps 15 minutes prior. With the mugging obnoxiousness of those Budweiser “Wazzup” guys from the late ‘90s, he screamed his token catchphrase — “ESSKEETIT” (rough translation: “Let’s get it”) — five times.
And he sold out the 3,500-personcapacity Eagles Ballroom at the Rave Tuesday.
Welcome to the strange phenomenon that is Lil Pump.
The 17-year-old Miami rapper born Gazzy Garcia was the third-most searched artist on Google in 2017. His breakout single “Gucci Gang,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 last month, was the sixth-most searched song on Google this year. During the song, which served as the not-so-thrilling, two-minute climax Tuesday night, Pump yelled out the title 53 times.
That’s one way to create an earworm, I guess.
Like most millennial breakouts, there’s a sense of authenticity to Pump’s demeanor, but he’s also a cartoon.
He took the stage Tuesday sporting his signature dreadlocks with the color palette of a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. During his cover of friend Smokepurpp’s “OK,” Pump yelled out the track’s title at least 35 times around boneheaded lyrics about sexual conquests and popping Xanax. For “Flex Like Ouu,” animation of a yellow Porsche appeared on a screen on the stage, a reference to that time in May that Pump crashed his yellow Porsche hours after he bought it, and posted a photo of the damage on Instagram.
Clearly, some of Pump’s juvenile antics connected Tuesday with the teen and early twentysomething crowd. He barely had time to work up a sweat but was shirtless by the third song, whipping a smoke gun around. For “Boss” (the first performance, not the encore reprise), Pump got on a security guy’s shoulders and was carried into a pit in the middle of the floor, frequently flinging himself onto bodies for brief bursts of crowd surfing.
There’s a cheap thrill to his sound, too — a frequently distorted, lo-fi take on trap generally dubbed “SoundCloud rap.” With the tragic death of highly promising star-in-the-making Lil Peep last month, Pump is now the poster boy for the surging scene.
The scene’s other well-known figure, XXXTentacion, is facing 15 felony charges, including aggravated assault of his ex-girlfriend, who was pregnant at the time. In a disturbing sign of small-minded disconnect, Pump led the crowd in a “Free X” chant Tuesday, then hopped on the security guy’s shoulders again while the DJ played XXXTentacion’s “Look at Me!”
But even at just 35 minutes, Pump’s Rave set Tuesday was a tedious slog. He repeated his same stage gimmicks multiple times, and lost the crowd with a few lifeless performances, including of the track bearing his name.
That crashed-Porsche stunt may have been a funny post for some, but if Pump has nothing better to offer, it’s going to serve as an all-too-fitting metaphor for his own career.