Quarantine is a disorienting time machine. On one hand, any lockdown, even a partial one, transports us back to a world in which humans are less connected, more sensitized to our environment, and more attuned to the tactile rhythms of domestic activity. But we can also feel thrust, prematurely, into a strange new future. These days, N.B.A. fans are digitally rendered inside a makeshift basketball arena owned by Disney. Presidential candidates address the nation from a mostly empty convention center, and wedding officiants dial into ceremonies via Zoom. For many, the coronavirus pandemic has ushered in a genuine dystopia. But the pandemic’s downstream effects, especially in the culture, can suggest not so much a fallen world as a shoddy, awkward version of the utopia that technology always promised.
This is the feeling I had while watching two virtual concerts over the last week. In lieu of real-life tours, Lil Uzi Vert and Megan Thee Stallion—two young rappers who’ve ascended from breakout talents to full-on superstars—each staged their own virtual take on stadium shows. Together, their acts announced a shift from the scrappy, D.I.Y. performances of the early-quarantine era to a new phase of COVID-19 entertainment—the big-budget livestream. Both events partnered with the entertainment giant LiveNation, set ticket prices at fifteen dollars each, and required audience members to sign up for the music-streaming service Tidal before entering the show. Both were highly produced and carefully planned, or at least more so than an Instagram Live stream. And both were executed with the theatrical vigor of a major tour, with a handful of vague, tossed-off nods to the unusual circumstances. “There’s a lot going on, but I just want to make sure y’all good,” Uzi told the virtual audience near the top of his set. He was perched alone on a slick black platform, with a d.j. in the distant background and an elaborate light show flashing around him. Then he launched into “XO Tour Llif3,” a lively emo-rap song that dominated the summer of 2017. “Push me to the edge / All my friends are dead,” he sang, the song’s chorus taking on an eerie cast.
Uzi, a twenty-six-year-old Philadelphia native beloved for his flamboyance, did not need to deliver a monologue about quarantine to capture the odd state of music today. For most of his hour-long broadcast, he did not perform so much as sing along with a backing track, adding emphasis here and there. There were no backup dancers; everything he did felt improvised. At times, the stream acquired the texture and comedy of a TikTok video. Uzi occasionally paused to smoke his joint or remove an article of clothing. Lacking feedback from a physical audience, he treated the spectacle as what it was: a dress rehearsal for real life. Two summers ago, Uzi was best known for his death-defying stage dives. Those stunts are hard to replicate on the Internet, and it was no surprise to see the artist look constricted onscreen. At one point, he pulled his knit beanie over his face and swayed, seemingly overcome with boredom.
If Uzi did not show much interest in the virtual-concert experiment, Megan Thee Stallion approached it with special care. Fresh off two No. 1 hits this year—a remix of “Savage” with Beyoncé and, more recently, the confidently bawdy “WAP,” with Cardi B—the rapper treated her show as a would-be inauguration, sporting a bejewelled costume, employing a group of acrobatic backup dancers, and using an elaborate stage design that shifted thematically with each song. (The choreographer was JaQuel Knight, one of the minds behind Beyoncé’s Coachella performances.) Megan infused the act with grandeur and physicality, introducing her dancers at various interludes. At one point, the stage went dark, in tribute to Black Lives Matter; onscreen, the names of victims appeared, along with details about their deaths, followed by a slide that read, “Why is it so hard being Black in America?” By the third song, Megan was glistening with sweat. Still, watching her perform with such gusto, without reciprocity from an audience, felt disheartening, as though a compact had been broken.
Musicians love to talk about their relationship with fans, and particularly about the soul-nourishing experience of performing for people who draw meaning from their work. Fans, too, cherish the communion of a live concert. Given how much cultural performance has shifted to the Internet, there is increasingly a premium on physical proximity. That premium is partly why ticket sales are such a huge percentage of revenue in the music business, and why quarantine has posed such an existential threat to the industry. Watching Uzi and Megan, it was clear that adding virtual “live” events to an already digitally saturated world may not be the future—or even the near-future—of music. This is to say nothing of the term “live,” which has been so mangled in recent months that it’s become synonymous with “prerecorded but now airing online.” Uzi and Megan may very well have prerecorded their shows—both were exceedingly, suspiciously smooth, until, near the end of Megan’s set, the camera struggled to find the right angle, and the music halted for a few seconds. “This is our first time doing this kind of show, so bear with me,” Megan said. “I ain’t perfect and never said I was.”
Oddly, this hiccup was invigorating—the first moment, in either concert, that conjured the flesh, blood, and intimacy of a live performance. Megan’s fans might have felt a similar intimacy just a few days prior, when she used her Instagram Live feed to address an incident that had been dominating the news. In July, the rapper was shot in both feet by her fellow-musician Tory Lanez, prompting weeks of online gossip, confusion, and glib jokes. On her stream, a hoodie pulled over her head, Megan confirmed that the story was true, and explained that she’d initially tried to cover up the shooting in order to protect herself, Lanez, and their friends from police violence. “I’m thinking the doctors is the police, and I’m still trying not to tell them,” she said. “I’m scared. I’ve never been shot before. I don’t have to lie about that.” In other streams about the incident, she broke into tears. These were raw and candid moments shared, live, between an artist and her fans. It was almost as if one were in the same room as her.
