Fivio Foreign came laced with hits when he performed during halftime at the Brooklyn Nets’ season opener on Wednesday (Oct. 19). Unfortunately for him and his fans, the energy of records like “Big Drip” and “What’s My Name” were unable to divert attention away from the technical difficulties he experienced.
After seeing the onslaught of jokes and critiques of the airballed performance, Foreign opened up to TMZ about what all went wrong. For starters, he claimed the staff responsible for his audio was off their mark at showtime.
“That’s not really my production team, that was a different team I don’t really use all the time. I did the soundcheck, sh**t was good at soundcheck. I just gotta use my production team from now on,” he said in an interview on Friday (Oct. 21).
When further questioned about the production team, Foreign said the Barclays Center was responsible for the crew and reiterated that the lackluster sound quality was not his fault.
“But you know, I f**k with them. I f**k with the Barclays, you know what I’m saying? I f**k with the Nets, and I wouldn’t want to let Brooklyn down. … I don’t want to let the town down. I’ma have to redo that s**t,” the Grammy Award nominee added.
Further into the conversation, the New Yorker said his inner ears also played a role in throwing off his performance timing. Throughout his set, it appeared like he was rapping ahead of his tracks. “What I think what happened was, it was lower than the crowd or something. I don’t know, it was good at soundcheck,” the XXL 2020 Freshman Class rapper explained.
As for how he has handled the backlash, Foreign said he took it all in stride. “It happened to me one other time … when I performed at one of the Donda [events] with Ye,” he said. “The same type of s**t happened. The s**t was, like, off. So I wasn’t really tripping, I know how people be talking already, so I don’t be tripping off that.”
Watch Fivio Foreign explain the performance blunder in the video below.