Every year at SXSW, alongside the many up and comers, there’s a strong contingent of established acts looking to promote their new releases and generally remind us that they’re still a going concern. Among those acts were Deftones, promoting their upcoming album Gore and playing a show at Stubb’s for SPIN magazine’s annual afternoon party. Though they played a few from the new album, they stuck mostly to the hits during their set, including Change (In the House of Flies) and My Own Summer (Shove It). (The Deftones really do seem to like using brackets in their song titles, don’t they?) The band also tossed a snippet of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” into one of their songs and, in one of those “this could only happen at SouthBy” moments, were joined by Bushwick Bill during “Digital Bath” to do his verse from “Mind Playing Tricks On Me.”
Earlier that afternoon on the same stage, Vince Staples played an impressive set, though you could tell he was feeling a little awkward and outside of his comfort zone. “How many here know who I am?” he asked and when he got some cheers, he decided it was a decent margin. It’s likely that a lot of people were there to see Deftones or CHVRCHES rather than him, but Staples made the most out of his time there regardless. The most memorable moment of his set wasn’t one of his songs, however, but a moment when Staples made reference to Black Lives Matter and then went on to mock those who say “all lives matter” for missing the point. His DJ/hype man added, “That’s like going to the cancer rally and talking about AIDS.” He also made a few sarcastic references to Spin Magazine (“a fine publication”), Reader’s Digest, and Spotify (who he dissed earlier in the week at a Spotify sponsored event). Overall, Vince Staples’ stage banter was on point.