DJ Khaled brings sloppy but endearing show to BET Experience but Khalid sets the emotional tone

When the young singer-songwriter Khalid played “Coaster,” the last song of his set Friday night at the BET Experience at Staples Center, he stood in front of a digitally chopped graphic of the American flag.

For a second, it looked like a glitch in the onstage projection. But as he sang over the song’s mournful, ambient piano chords, it was clear that the single was a kind of eulogy.

The song’s lyrics are meant for an ex-lover. But the cut took on rather mournful undertones at the BET Experience, especially in light of months of racial unrest, a divisive election season and the not-guitly verdict in the fatal shooting of black motorist Philando Castile during a traffic stop near St. Paul, Minn.

“I gave you my all, I showed the proof of your lies / And you weren’t worth it, you don’t deserve me,” he sang. “Coaster” is a beautiful ballad, but when Khalid played it Friday, he had the weight of history on his shoulders.

It was one of a few political moments at the Friday show, perhaps the most sonically gentle night of the weekend-long festival that builds to Sunday night’s BET Awards. Other nights feature more volatile hip-hop from Pusha T, Kid Cudi, Schoolboy Q, Young Thug and others.

But Friday’s set showed the festival’s range, veering from Khalid’s indie-minded R&B to au courant trap-crooning from Bryson Tiller and a hit-packed but messy set from DJ Khaled.

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Khalid performs at Staples Center during the 2017 BET Experience at LA Live.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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DJ Khaled, right, performs with special guest Yo Gotti, left, at Staples Center.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Fans cheer on the second night of the Staples Center concert during the 2017 BET Experience at LA Live.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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DJ Khaled, left, performs with special guest YG.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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BBD member Ricky Bell performs at the BET Experience.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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DJ Khaled

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Khalid

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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DJ Khaled, left, performs with special guests from the group BBD: Michael Bivins, center, and Ronnie DeVoe.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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H.E.R. performs during the 2017 BET Experience.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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H.E.R.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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The group They performs at the 2017 BET Experience.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Jhene Aiko

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Jhene Aiko

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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H.E.R. performs on the second night of the Staples Center concert.

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

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Bryson Tiller

  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)

The night was intentionally a mixed bag of modern sounds, but most acts — save the headliner — leaned toward introspection and reserve. The rising R&B singer H.E.R. and the duo They made a case that guitars aren’t dying — they’re just being reinvented by young women and people of color who exist outside the usual confines of today’s rock and roll. Songs like H.E.R.’s “Every Kind of Way” had a moodiness and atmosphere that defined the night.

Jidenna’s balmy single “Classic Man” received a wonderfully dragged-out remix in “Moonlight,” and though his set didn’t evoke that movie’s radical pastel haze, he did make subtle overtures to the BET Experience’s sense of purpose. “Long live me, long live you, long live black people,” he said to raucous applause as he riffed on anecdotes from his Nigerian background and called his band into a lovely a cappella interlude.

Khalid had a well-attended set at the Santa Monica Pier this week, but it didn’t at all dampen the young enthusiasm for his appearance Friday. Teens spun in aisles as he sang about high school heartbreak, with an ear for sad-eyed synthetic tones and guitar-shredding urgency. Whatever fans have missed during Frank Ocean’s long absence from L.A. stages, Khalid delivered something more than comparable — it was the most of-the-moment set of the night.

That rich ambience and looseness with genre also defined Jhené Aiko and Bryson Tiller’s sets near the close of the show. Aiko’s songs like “Maniac” are alluring and narcotic, but she sings them with an assertiveness that stands out on pop and R&B radio. Tiller’s mix of hard-hitting trap drums and sing-speak vocals were a little more pointed, but they each spoke to a welcome openness about how R&B and hip-hop are blending in natural, innovative ways today.

For all the control and focus of the night’s earlier sets, only DJ Khaled’s show threatened to spin out. The producer and Snapchat motivational figure, as well as the most enthusiastic new parent in rap could never have appeared in any era but our own — he doesn’t perform music so much as saunter onto stages and supercharge them with his presence.

It makes for perhaps the sloppiest live show in contemporary music — he rarely gets through 30 seconds of even his biggest hits, and his reliance on special guests renders him weirdly irrelevant at his own shows. But it’s hard to totally hate a guy who will give up his headlining Staples Center show to Bell Biv Devoe and 21 Savage cameos alike. Even when the Staples Center stage preemptively started turning around before he finished his last song, it was a little endearing.

Other sets and workshops at BET Experience and the BET Awards wil probably address more of the American malaise right now. But as a diversion from all the dread right now, Friday’s show was welcome and needed.

For breaking music news, follow @augustbrown on Twitter.

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