Saturday Night Live returned from its Winter Olympics break yesterday with Charles Barkley hosting and Migos as musical guests. Good though that lineup may have been on paper, it was always going to struggle to live up to the sheer oddness of Barkley’s first time hosting the show back in 1993. Here, in case you missed it doing the rounds, is a picture of Barkley, Nirvana, RuPaul, and Muggsy Bogues:
Magnificent.
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Twenty-five years on, Barkley seemed less-than-enthusiastic about the prospect of watching Quavo, Offset, and Takeoff on the Studio 8H stage. He sounded downright depressed when he turned the stage over to them for “Stir Fry,” and had the uptight demeanour of a pissed-off principal when he introduced them before “Narcos.”
Despite that, both performances were, by Migos’ modest TV-performance standards, pretty good. The trio rarely manage to muster the energy on screen that they do on stage or on record—they usually seem disinterested, honestly—but there was energy this time. The live band helped on “Stir Fry,” with Quavo embracing his role as the frontman and Takeoff pitching in some honest-to-God harmonies. “Narcos” didn’t quite fizz in the same way, but it still beat that time they performed inside a salad with Katy Perry.
Watch both performances below, then join us in asking whether or not Culture II is good.
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