On Sunday, the left-wing streamer and activist Hasan Piker tweeted the above photo of himself with "the legend damon albarn," at a Los Angeles Gorillaz show. Apparently, some Gorillaz fans were surprised and/or upset at the connection. (The Democratic Party has invested tons of resources into depicting the pro-Palestine Piker as a kind of demonic antisemitic figure.) As it turns out, though, Albarn first met Piker almost two years ago, when he and his daughter Missy attended a Piker lecture in Oxford. Albarn's daughter is apparently a Piker fan, and an Albarn fan Instagram has a clip of Piker talking about meeting Albarn after his Oxford speech. (That might be Piker's last time in the UK for a while; his visa was revoked before a planned SXSW London appearance earlier this year.) The Instagram post also includes got a more recent clip of Piker talking about how Albarn invited him to see Gorillaz in LA, describing Albarn as a "pretty radical guy" and a "friend of the show, friend of the working class, friend of the revolutionaries all around." Piker says the show was "amazing." Piker went to the Gorillaz show with fellow streamers Will Neff and Caroline Kwan, and they all met up with Albarn and Gorillaz co-founder Jamie Hewlett backstage.
Less controversially, Albarn also met Wes Eisold from Cold Cave and American Nightmare. Also, Tony Hawk met Del The Funky Homosapien and De La Soul's Posdnous in that same star-studded Forum backstage area. According to Setlist.fm, that night's Gorillaz show included a couple of tour debuts, live rarities like "Pac-Man," a rare Jamie Hewlett stage appearance, and surprise guests like ScHoolboy Q, on the live rarity "Pac-Man," and Kali Uchis, on the 2017 Gorillaz song "She's My Collar." Onstage, it looked like Albarn politely declined an invitation to grind with Uchis.
Gorillaz and Kali Uchis previously shared the stage a few times in 2017, and Albarn appeared on Uchis' 2018 song "In My Dreams." Uchis' posts after the show led fans to speculate that they're working on another collaboration.
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