Outside Lands 2025 Day 2: Tyler the Creator Closes a Day Owned by LaRussell and Ludacris
If Day 1 of Outside Lands felt historic, Day 2 proved the festival still had more to give. Saturday was a balancing act between nostalgia and discovery, with Ludacris pulling one of the weekend’s biggest crowds, LaRussell turning the main stage into a hometown sermon, and Tyler, the Creator closing the night with a set that was as much about restraint as release. It was not the most stacked lineup of the weekend, but it was one of the most eclectic, and the variety gave the day its own charge.
LaRussell: Lands End Stage
LaRussell walked onto the Lands End stage in the early afternoon and carried it like a block party. A year ago, he was still on the breakout stage at BottleRock, promising but peripheral. Now, in front of his hometown, he sounded like an artist who knows the main stage belongs to him.
He arrived with a live band, a flutist adding bright accents, and an entire choir backing him. The sound was wide, joyful, and rooted in the North Bay, proof that he could scale up without losing the intimacy that makes his shows feel like community gatherings.
True to form, he broke the barrier between stage and crowd almost immediately. Within minutes, he was in the audience, trailed by nervous security guards, rapping shoulder to shoulder with fans. The energy fed both ways: The crowd surged toward him, and he gave it back with even more presence. By the midpoint, what started as a modest afternoon crowd had swelled into a sea of people stretching toward the back of the field.
What set him apart was not only the music but the constant conversation threaded through it. He paused to talk about gratitude, mental health, the grind of playing to nearly empty rooms, and the patience it takes to get to moments like this. The way he framed the set felt almost pastoral, like he was giving a sermon between verses. That mix of vulnerability and confidence has become his signature.
The family-style atmosphere deepened when he brought out an 11-year-old rapper from Vallejo named Avery Rose, who performed with striking poise, and later when his own manager stepped up for a short piece of spoken word. A LaRussell show is never just a show. It is a rotating door of friends, collaborators, and surprises that make the performance feel alive in a way a pre-programmed festival slot rarely does.
By the end, the music itself was only part of the story. What lingered was the sense of witnessing an artist who represents his city with unshakable pride and who insists on bringing his community along for the ride. His career is built on unorthodox choices that have become part of his identity: selling albums and tickets through pay-what-you-can models, offering fans a chance to invest directly in his projects, and refusing to wait for the traditional industry gatekeepers to grant permission. It is a strategy rooted in trust and in the idea that art can circulate like community currency.
The approach might never fit neatly into mainstream formulas, but that may be the point. LaRussell is proving that you can build momentum without the machinery, and that innovation is not only possible but powerful when it is tied to authenticity. In a festival landscape built on spectacle, he turned a Saturday afternoon into a family gathering and a business case study at once.
Flipturn: Twin Peaks Stage
By late afternoon the Twin Peaks stage had become a wind tunnel. Fog whipped through Golden Gate Park with the force of its own light show, but Flipturn made it feel like a headline night. The Florida quintet have been together for nearly a decade, first as college friends, and their January album signaled a band pushing past early promise into a sound both polished and restless.
Their set balanced jangly indie-rock brightness with a surprising weight, songs that sounded timeless without being stuck in retro mimicry. The vocals had a haunted edge that landed somewhere between Roy Orbison and Matt Bellamy, yet the arrangements carried the kind of shimmer often associated with British guitar bands. That transatlantic ambiguity is part of their charm: they may be rooted in the South, but their songs conjure Manchester drizzle as easily as Florida humidity.
The crowd grew steadily as they played, expanding from scattered clusters to a dense audience that stretched toward the food stands. For a festival heavy on hip-hop and pop this year, Flipturn’s set felt like a reminder of how euphoric a rock band can sound when they lean into groove instead of irony. Their stage presence matched the music’s uplift: tightly wound rhythms, guitars bouncing off each other, and a frontman whose theatricality never tipped into excess.
Much of their material wrestled with early-adulthood contradictions: the thrill and collapse of relationships, the fog of codependency, the ache of addiction, the kind of heavy themes you only stumble through once before experience makes you harder. There was lightness too, an eternal-youth quality that made even the darker cuts feel like they could soundtrack a road trip.
Flipturn may not have reinvented indie rock, but they performed with the conviction of a band already testing bigger stages in their heads. On a freezing Saturday, they turned the Twin Peaks field into something closer to Red Rocks. If they continue to pair their melodic instincts with the urgency they showed here, it is not hard to imagine them climbing into the same lane as bands like Alvvays or Lovejoy. For now, it was enough that they turned cold fog into something electric.
Ludacris: Lands End Stage
By five o’clock on Saturday, the Lands End field looked like it had been pulled back into the early 2000s. Ludacris walked out in a sports jersey with a huge afro, greeted by one of the largest crowds of the weekend. The sheer size of the audience said it all: His catalog is stacked deeper than memory allows.
The set unfolded like a masterclass in pop-rap saturation. His own hits landed one after another: “Stand Up,” “Move Bitch,” “Area Codes.” The real surprises came when the features rolled out. Hearing his verses on Fergie’s “Glamorous” or Justin Bieber’s “Baby” reminded the crowd just how omnipresent he was across genres in the 2000s and 2010s. Few rappers of his era moved so easily between club rap, radio pop, and crossover collaborations, and the crowd reacted like they had been waiting all day for those hooks.
Onstage it was just Ludacris and his DJ, but their chemistry was enough to carry the field. They bantered like old friends, clowning each other between songs and working the crowd with the confidence of veterans. It felt loose, even improvised at times, the kind of showmanship that only comes from thousands of performances.
If there was any disappointment, it was personal: he skipped “Saturday,” a cult favorite that would have landed perfectly in the weekend slot. But what he delivered was a full-throttle reminder of his stature. Back then, his voice was on the radio, in the club, blasting out of car windows. It was the soundtrack to the decade.
Walking away, it felt like the definition of a festival surprise. I had no idea how much fun his set would be, and it ended up being one of the most satisfying of the day. Nostalgia can feel cheap when it is played only for easy applause, but here, it was backed by charisma, humor, and undeniable hits. Ludacris made the trek across the park worth every step.
Walker & Royce / Claude VonStroke : SOMA Stage
By late afternoon, I finally made it over to the SOMA stage, tucked into its own shady grove on the far side of Golden Gate Park. It used to be an enclosed tent, but now the stage is open-air, and the setting feels almost too perfect for dance music. The trees kept the sound contained while the sky overhead gave it room to expand. You could imagine this space hosting its own standalone EDM events, long after Outside Lands packs up.
Walker & Royce were already in full swing when I got there. They are pure fun, two DJs who thrive on keeping things bright and messy in the best way. No moody atmospherics, no self-serious experimentation, just straight-up party music. Their sound makes you feel like you stumbled into the top floor of a Chinatown dumpling shop at three in the morning, bodies pressed together, lights flickering, bass thumping. I even got to hop onstage while they were filming a video, which added another layer of chaos. Say what you want about dance music, but ravers know how to take care of their people.
Then the mood shifted. Claude VonStroke took the decks as the sun dipped below the trees, and the whole stage seemed to exhale. Where Walker & Royce pile on sounds like mad scientists, Claude strips everything down to its essence. A single bass line, a clean riff, a transition so precise it feels inevitable. His approach recalls the early German techno tradition: minimal, intentional, and hypnotic. Watching him mix is like watching water carve into stone, one groove flowing into the next until you lose track of time.
The triangle light fixtures arching over the crowd came alive as darkness fell, glowing like a geometric canopy. The scene fit the music: deliberate, immersive, timeless. Claude VonStroke has been a Bay Area legend for decades, from founding Dirtybird Records to experimenting with bass music, and this set reminded everyone why. Less is more, and when the timing is perfect, nothing else matters.
Tyler, the Creator: Lands End Stage
By the time I peeled away from SOMA, night had settled over Lands End and Tyler, the Creator was already mid flow. From a distance the stage looked stripped, down. No band, no hype crew, no dancers. Just Tyler on a long rectangular riser, pacing and throwing his whole body into the beat. The minimal staging turned every twitch and stomp into part of the music.
I am neutral on his records, but I am a fan of his brain. He writes, produces, designs clothes, builds worlds, and treats each era like a new architecture. Live, that imagination reads as discipline. He kept the frame simple and made the performance about control. Long pockets of stillness, sudden bursts of motion, and a voice that jumped from bark to croon to something close to spoken word. It felt closer to theater than a typical rap set.
The catalog moves across lanes. Some songs land like R&B, others like jazz sketches that spike into anger, then soften again. He has said he writes with live brass in mind, and you can hear how these arrangements would slot into a marching band. Even without horns onstage, the phrasing made space for that weight and swing.
What hit hardest was the crowd. Up close, phones were up, and mouths were moving in unison. Farther back, the field bobbed like one body. Super fans carried the show’s emotional temperature. When the camera found their faces on the big screens, you could read everything at once. Joy, release, that full-body relief you only get when a song you love finally meets the moment you are in.
There is a queer charge to his writing that makes the yearning feel specific and wide open at the same time. Some songs reach toward women, some toward men, most toward the mess in between. Look through that lens, and the tenderness, the volatility, and the refusal to posture make more sense. In a lane that often rewards shine and noise, he lingers on private feelings and complicated desire.
Tyler collaborates with luxury houses and dresses with care, but he has never played the blinged out caricature. He comes off like an anti-archetype. Charming, fussy about details, uninterested in the default rap stage flex. That choice made the quiet beats of the set feel intentional. The negative space did the heavy lifting.
Was it the most spectacular headlining show of the weekend? No. Was it worth crossing a cold field to watch thousands of people have a communal catharsis? Absolutely. I did not leave converted into a diehard, but I left understanding the devotion. He gave something different. He trusted silence. He made a polo field feel like a private room, and the field sang every word back.
Day Two showed how wide Outside Lands can stretch in a single afternoon. From LaRussell turning the main stage into a family gathering, to Flipturn pushing indie rock into widescreen drama, to Ludacris reminding everyone just how deep his catalog runs, the day balanced nostalgia with discovery. Walker & Royce and Claude VonStroke transformed the SOMA grove into a rave, and Tyler the Creator closed with a set that felt both minimal and monumental. It was a day that refused to stay in one lane, proof that the festival still thrives on contrast as much as consensus.
