“They say everybody has two lives, and the second life starts when you realize you have one,” Childish Gambino revealed to the crowd while headlining night one of Camp Flog Gnaw at Dodger Stadium. “You should be living your life how you want, because if we have to do this again, it can only get better.”

The words hung in the air as he paused mid-set, seated at the edge of the stage beneath the lights, the audience unusually quiet for a festival of this scale. It was just one of several unexpectedly vulnerable confessions.

Stories of surgeries, medical scares, and the moment he learned he’d had a stroke and felt he was letting everyone down. It wasn’t the tone many anticipated, but it became the defining character of the night, the product of a festival that arrived under unusual circumst

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