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Last night, clicking around on the Coachella livestreams while trying to fall asleep, I witnessed a magical moment. Dave, the acclaimed London rapper, was performing at the festival, and he told the crowd that he wanted to bring someone out of the crowd onstage with him. After spying one kid who was rapping along with his lines, Dave pulled the kid onstage, and the kid proceeded to achieve instant-legend status by absolutely wrecking the mic.
The kid who came onstage was a skinny, gawky young man who identified himself only as “Spike from London.” Dave and Spike then proceeded to rap Dave’s 2016 grime hit “Thiago Silva,” with Spike taking the place of Dave’s collaborator AJ Tracey. Spike did way better than anyone could’ve hoped or expected, and he was clearly having the best night of his entire life. Dave and Spike generated some weird instant chemistry, with the two of them tossing the song back and forth, Dave letting the whole thing happen and then picking up whenever Spike started to get lost. At one point, I swear to God, Spike started rapping directly into the livestream camera, like a pro. (You can’t really see it in the fan-made video below, but it happened.) These guys were truly living in the moment, and it felt great to watch.
As it was happening, I wondered if the kid was a plant, but he seemed way too genuinely excited for this to be a planned-out stunt. As it turns out, something else was going on. The Independent reports that Spike is the 18-year-old song of Richard Curtis, director of Notting Hill and Love Actually. (Spike’s sister Scarlett tweeted, “We have never seen him rap before.”) So he wasn’t a plant, but he was probably in the VIP section. At Coachella, you need VIP status to be anywhere near the stage. That makes the whole thing slightly less exciting, but it’s still cool. Watch it below.
I love to see it – Dave brings a fan for Thiago Silva at #coachella pic.twitter.com/c1K1ebjWLd
— Desiree (@dezidoesit) April 18, 2022
That. Is. My. Brother. Spike. At. Coachella WITH DAVE! He’s 18. He has school at 8am tomorrow. He was picked out of the crowd. We have never seen him rap before…. pic.twitter.com/kyEYon4e3T
— Scarlett Curtis (@scarcurtis) April 18, 2022
Dave did something similar when he performed “Thiago Silva” at Glastonbury in 2019, but that kid didn’t crush it so hard.
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