Come on, admit it. You didn’t think they’d be able to pull it off.
That’s the thing about huge events like Paradise IMF boasting an international line up too incredible to be legit, there’s always the uncertainty of all of it actually pulling through. We heard a lot of rumors, a lot of background noise, certainly a lot of buzz, and of course, an unending slew of questions: is Kanye West really headlining? Do you think he’s gonna pull a Chris Brown and not show up at all? Seriously, Austin Mahone? Now Wiz Khalifa? Is Wiz gonna smoke one on stage? (He did.)
And it went on and on and on until that fateful Saturday morning, April 9, 2016 when none other than Kanye Omari West himself landed in Manila rocking the very apparel that DONDA designed for his debut on Manila shores. As early as 9:00AM, fans flocked to the ASEANA Events Grounds to enter Paradise.
For their first ever run, the squad behind Paradise IMF deserve a good, solid round of applause for a spectacular event. There were a few hiccups that we could’ve done without such as the struggle of getting in and out of the mosh pit when Wiz and Kanye took the stage, all that dust that got into just about everywhere, taking the bottle caps off our water bottles (we still don’t get why), and some glitches in the sound system particularly during Kanye’s set.
Well that’s basically it. Because other than that, the whole thing was LIT.
Here are just some of the reasons why Paradise International Music Festival is gonna be one hard party to top:
Wiz Khalifa opened with a Filipino-favorite (someone must’ve told him), ‘Black & Yellow’. The moment Wiz went, “You know what it is…” the whole crowd went berserk and fought their way into the mosh pit, rapping along to the lyrics and jumping up and down along with Wiz who took the stage and made it his own, even bringing in a few of his posse to help hype the crowd up.
The appearance of Wiz Khalifa on the festival line-up was one of the biggest “Ohhhh shiiiiiiit..” moments in Filipino music festival history. Mostly because of the very recent Twitter feud between Wiz and Kanye (if you wanna know, just Google it) that the whole world bore witness to. But none of the animosity from that feuding found its way onto the stage as Wiz rocked it out–his unbuttoned, summer button down billowing in the wind, uncaring of anything and anyone that he even lit one up on stage, to the delight of his fans in the audience.
It was an incredible blessing to watch a uniquely stellar artist such as Kanye West perform for the Filipino crowd, on Filipino soil. And Kanye himself didn’t disappoint. He sang a lot of crowd favorites even from ‘the old Kanye’: an amalgam of hits from The College Dropout to Late Registration, Graduation to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and of course Yeezus and The Life of Pablo, the latter of which was the first time Kanye performed a full-length show to debut a number of singles from the album such as ‘Waves’ and the controversial ‘Famous’ which he sang three times. Yes, THREE TIMES.
Paradise also found itself lucky to be the stage that Kanye first decided to perform his verse on Drake’s track ‘PopStyle‘, freestyling some lyrics here and there over auto-tune and piano chords. The crowd, who was treated to this performance for the first time, all stood in awe, likening the moment to a religious experience. Almost.
There’s also that one moment that many people didn’t talk about mainly because not everyone saw it happen. But we have to say this: to that dude who FOR SOME REASON got past security and trolled Kanye on stage for what must’ve been 5 seconds, you sir, have got balls. That is until Kanye’s security beat them off of you then, well, we hope it was worth it.
With all that has happened, it’s very hard to say what or who else can top the bar that Paradise International Music Festival has raised and set. Because one thing is for certain, their goal to put the Philippines on the map as an international music festival destination has come to fruition. And no one is going to forget it any time soon.
Words by angelathejedi (@angelathejedi)
Photos by Joseph Maquirang (@salitanaw) and Victoria Avenido (@toia.ph)
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