Lauren Halsey and Erykah Badu Give the Hollywood Bowl a Single Night of Funk

The Hollywood Bowl hosted a one-night collaboration between Lauren Halsey and Erykah Badu, and Vogue described the result as a full funk spectacle. The Bowl is about as Los Angeles as a stage can be: a shell set into the hills under an open sky, where many famous evenings have played out. Putting two names together there, for a single date, made this one worth a closer look. Halsey explained to Vogue why this project felt different. She said an art commission usually moves in a straight line: the job comes in, the piece gets made, it goes to the gallery, and it's done. Her answer is cut off in the excerpt we have. Still, she set up that familiar routine so she could say this time was something else. That contrast is the reason we're covering it. An artist used to finishing a piece and shipping it to a gallery made something for a stage that exists for one evening and then is gone. Anyone who wasn't at the Bowl that night missed it in person, because it was never going to be shown again.

With reporting from Vogue.