Frank Ocean cancelled last minute, and it was announced Kanye was replacing him. You’ve probably heard about this already; there were plenty of confused and halfway-incensed blog posts about it, questioning just what in the hell Ocean is up to this year. Who cares. It would’ve been cool to see Ocean, but him pulling out suddenly, then being replaced not by someone lackluster and eminently available but by Kanye West — one of the biggest and most important stars out there, one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen — made FYF exponentially more exciting just days before it started. It changed the whole vibe and scope of the festival last minute; there was that throbbing intensity in the air before Kanye like there always is, like you have to imagine there definitively isn’t before a moody Frank Ocean gig. Wish You Were Here boomed from the main stage in almost its entirety, the giant light rig Kanye had along at Glastonbury idling in the air in wait. It just feels like an event when you’re able to see Kanye live.
When West did take the stage, it was for one of the most simultaneously hard-hitting and jubilant sets I’ve yet seen him do. He opened with “No Church In The Wild” — which one could take as some kind of nod to the fact that he was stepping in for Ocean, but it’s hard to say whether it would’ve been a slight or a tribute — and proceeded through one of the most ruthlessly exhilarating sets of songs imaginable in 2015. “Stronger,” “Power,” and “Black Skinhead” formed a kind of thematically spiraling trio of heavy-hitters early on; there was another trio later, with Cruel Summer tracks “Cold,” “I Don’t Like,” and “Mercy,” grouped together. This is the kind of set where he can bring back “Niggas In Paris,” everyone loses their shit, and then he can just keep rolling through to “New Slaves” and “Blood On The Leaves.” He just feels unstoppable.

But as much as the FYF set was as raw and sweaty as any of the other post-Yeezus festival slots, Kanye was also obviously in just such a great mood. He smiled and laughed, jokingly cut himself off when he realized he could play “Runaway” for forty minutes but that he still had ten years of hits to play for everyone. Rihanna showed up suddenly for “FourFiveSeconds” and again for “All Of The Lights,” amidst West’s promise of doing one hit a minute, for ten minutes, at the end of the set. It was a little more than a minute for each, but still: the end of the set consisted of West blasting through bits of “Jesus Walks,” “All Falls Down,” Gold Digger,” “Touch The Sky,” “All Of The Lights,” and finally “Good Life” before closing on a more meditative note with “Only One.” I mean, there are not many other artists who could fill a set approaching anything like this. Every now and then it’s easy to get caught up in the Kanye of the moment, and to forget that other guy he used to be, to forget just how long he’s been on top and casually delivering this century’s most immortal songs. FYF might’ve been my favorite time seeing him, because it was a night where he seemed to be celebrating that, too, and because it was a show on a level entirely different from almost everything else I’ve seen in my life.