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“Tonight y’all will understand why I been here doing what I been doing and why they say the things about me,” Don Toliver promised newer fans in an interview with Billboard hours before taking The Stage at SXSW on Friday (March 13).
The hard work has paid off for Toliver, as 2026 has been a year of raising the bar. He earned his first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with OCTANE, which arrived in late January, and saw all 18 tracks from the LP hit the Billboard Hot 100.
Following performances from openers like Chase B, Yakiyn and Sosocamo, Toliver hit the Moody Amphitheater stage shortly after 9:30 p.m. CT in front of nearly 5,000 raucous fans in Austin.
It was a victory lap of sorts for Toliver, who has been steadily climbing the ranks in rap’s food chain before making the quantum leap to join his mentor Travis Scott as part of the genre’s A-list with OCTANE.
Draped in a dove white jacket with matching pants and boots courtesy of designer Dingyun Zhang, the Texas native kicked off his set with a slowed-down intro riding into his OCTANE opener “E85.”
The temperature got turned up several notches on a mild Austin night with Toliver’s Justin Timberlake-sampling anthem “BODY” sending the crowd into a frenzy, which was followed by the moshpit-inducing nature of “OPPOSITE.”
With the 31-year-old on his fifth album, the anniversaries are starting to pile up. Friday also marked the sixth anniversary of Toliver’s Heaven or Hell, which was released just before the world shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
The Houston native thanked the fans for being on this ride with him and commemorated his debut’s anniversary by taking them back to Heaven or Hell staples like “Cardigan,” and finished the 75-minute set with “After Party.”
The crowd saw a mix of Gen-Z ragers and millennials filling the Moody Amphitheater, as Toliver jumped around his discography for his 2018 ASTROWORLD introduction “Can’t Say” to fan-favorites like “No Pole,” “Bandit” and “Lemonade.”
Fans were still rapping along to OCTANE deep cuts such as “TMU,” “Call Back” and “Pleasure’s Mine,” a testament to the project’s staying power (it remains in the Billboard 200’s top five).
It’s only a taste of what’s to come with Toliver’s OCTANE Tour, which will take over arenas across North America starting with his headlining set at Rolling Loud in May.
Watch the full set below.
