Ariana Grande made history this weekend as she became the youngest female artist to headline Coachella, performing on Sunday night and absolutely killing it (of course).
The whole show was made even better by surprise guests making appearances throughout the set, including *NSYNC.
Of course, Ariana's BFF Nicki Minaj also popped up for a little bop, performing the rap from "Bang Bang".
However, things didn't quite go to plan as Nicki seemed to run into some ~technical difficulties~ and ended up rapping slightly off time to the music.
Look at her face Nicki was over it. If this was her performance that this happened to, this wouldve went differently. You can tell Nicki has so much love and respect for Ariana to not interrupt her show and keep it together the best she could. These are pro's. #Coachella
Although Nicki and Ari have yet to comment on the issue, it seems that the music Nicki was hearing through her ear might've been out of time with what everybody else was hearing, or that her earpiece wasn't working at all.
Ariana tried to help Nicki by singing the words but it seemed to make the situation worse. At one point, Ariana can be heard saying "we can't hear anything", backing up the theory that there might have been a problem with their ear feed.
Y’ALL KNOW WE STAN ARIANA & NICKI BUT WHAT WAS THIS MESS 🥴 #ARICHELLA
Fans of Nicki were quick to come to her defence over the issue, praising her for keeping her composure and doing her best despite the issue.
Nicki looked BOMB at Coachella and held her composure despite facing technical difficulties 🔥
Obviously there were technical difficulties during Nicki Minaj’s performance with Ariana but she handled it very professionally, like ALWAYS. #Coachella #weloveyounicki
Others, of course, tried to make light of the whole thing and turned the videos into a meme.
My last two brain cells trying to form a sentence
Me and my girls at drunk karaoke
In fact, the jokes were basically endless.
Cardi B backstage messing with the sound to nicki music #ARICHELLA
Ariana performing Nicki’s verse of The Light Is Coming because Nicki is DESTROYING the audio team backstage ⚰️
But fans weren't happy over some of the meaner comments, reminding people that it wasn't Nicki's fault and she did her best under the circumstances.
For anyone coming at Nicki, since the beginning of Ariana’s performance there were some technical problems with the sound, Nicki was actually rapping and sounding good. If I see any Nicki Minaj slander I’ll snap. Y’all aren’t even at Coachella, keep your mouth shut.
Its not Nicki nor Ariana’s fault about the earpiece but of course Onika gets shit for everything for no reason #ARICHELLA
Nicki wasn't the only person to apparently suffer technical difficulties over the weekend. Other artists such as Billie Eilish, *NSYNC, and Blackpink also appeared to experience issues while performing.
Let me make this clear: #Coachella had Blackpink, Nicki Minaj, Ariana Grande, Diddy, Lizzo, Vince Staples, *NSYNC, Mase and Billie Eilish ALL struggling to perform due to technical difficulties, and NICKI CARRIED ON REGARDLESS. So if you have smth to say, address the responsible.
With the amount of technical difficulties that have happened at Coachella this year we are NOT going to come for Nicki #Arichella
Videos quickly surfaced of other performances experiencing issues, including Lizzo, whose music completely cut multiple times.
WOW shout out to the back up dancers for Lizzo's #Coachella set... WHO KEEP DANCING WHEN THE AUDIO BREAKS
And judging by what Lizzo apparently said on stage, Nicki and Ariana weren't the only ones to have problems with their ear pieces.
“this is my first time at Coachella so ain’t nothing gonna fuck it up” “so when I headline next time bitch i’m gonna need my ears to work” - @lizzo a queen who need to be RESPECTED
As a result of the drama, people began criticising Coachella.
coachella really shouldn’t have all these technical difficulties. i mean... they make SO much money, tickets are quite expensive& it has such a huge hype... ugh
Let me repeat this one more time so your pea brain can understand. Coachella had TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES with microphones, lighting and ear-monitors. The audience randomly coming IN & out of songs proves there was a difficulty as it was supposed to be muted. Their control was off. https://t.co/aLAR0Wqaql