An hour into the Jay-Z and Kanye West concert at MSG Tuesday night, there is a quiet moment. The two middle aged men are sitting on stairs in the middle of the stage, a spotlight on them. "This is the best rap I've ever written," Kanye claims before bringing the mood of the night from Black excellence, or at least throne excellence, back to human levels: "And I’ll never let my son have an ego, He’ll be nice to everyone, wherever we go. I mean, I might even make ‘em be Republican, so everybody know he love white people…" It is such a tender sentiment, it is as if West has momentarily lifted the scowling mask from his face to share some intimacy.
Moments earlier Jay-Z had introduced the Watch The Throne track, "New Day" by asking if the duo could get real for a minute. Sure, but what had they been doing for the previous 60 minutes if not getting real? Was this an inadvertent slip, an admission that their fantasies are ours? Or haven't they thought it through that far?
Watch The Throne was a borderline great show, Hova much better than the last time I saw him at the same venue: a charismatic, cool fucker pimpin all night long, and West his obdurate, ill tempered and easily damaged kid brother, who brings so much anger to everything he does. Charm and Arrogance versus Anger and Arrogance, meeting somewhere in the middle.
The night starts really bad, the dreadful "H.A.M." followed by the irrelevant "Wha I'm Gonna" an execrable "Otis", and "Welcome To The Jungle" replete with dumbass sub Discovery Channel film on the close circuit TV ends the new album intro. It isn't until a Twister inspired "Nigga Wha', Nigga Who", a couple of songs later, that the set finds its footing and then maintains it through to the end.
The human level here isn't consistent; it comes in and out, digging through money and sex to politics and childhood pain: mostly it is big time, black excellence, superhero stuff, with a sense of proportion better than I had expected; there were no guest stars (the band invisible), and that's good, and the set design was sleek, slick, angular, simple, elegantly utilitarian, state of the art and sexy. The sound was immaculate.-MSG have been doing a major refurbishing for tens of millions of dollars, and I couldn't see one red cent in the arena but I could hear it.A nd without the chorus girls, or the big set pieces, it had an air of intimacy from time to time.
Plus, for some obscure reason, Kweezy brought out the best in Jay-Z though I wouldn't claim the reverse to be true. The first time I saw Jay-Z on stage he was dropping his pants with Busta Rhymes in the early 1990s (Puff daddy's "Victory" tour), and he steadily improved through to 2004 when the "Fade To Black" farewell show was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. And then he started getting steadily worse, the very next tour, "Best Of Both Worlds" was a disappointment and worse and worse till last years 9-11 charity show was the fucking pits; his outsized ego oozing with the revolting "I see you" ending (Hova pointing to various audience members saying crap like :"I see you in the red shirt with the wraparound sunglasses". Yuck. I skipped out after Eminem at Yankee Stadium.
But he was better on Tuesday night: He invested stuff like "On To The Next One" with so much passion and such dynamics -the "freeze" is made literal, the recording drum fill gone, "somebody send me some money please" a funny punchline. Even more fun was a three song cycle, Jay-Z nailing "Big Pimpin'" and Kanye giving the man props, explaining how Kanye used to believe he'd be a pimp when he became famous, and instead… his version of "Gold Digger" was what he got instead. And Jigga completed the trilogy with "99 Problems". A very cool check in on the differences between the pair.
There is another difference between them and put it like this, Kanye's last two albums, 808s And Heartbreaks and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, are much better than Jay-Z's last two albums, American Gangster and The Blueprint 3. Watch The Throne is the worst album West has put his name on, the same can't be said for Jay-Z.
And the most consistently great extended song run of the night belonged to Kanye. First, standing on an elevated stage bathed in red lights, in the middle of the floor , he invested "Runaway" with everything you could ask for (though I did miss Pusha T's verse) building to an extended coda with West repeating "If you love someone tonight hold on real tight" before scowling at the audience. Why the scowl? well he isn't a people person at the best of the time but but mostly because "Heartless" is the next song and he follows it off with a dirt off my shoulder moment which isn't, where "Power" becomes its inversion, a suicidal mash note. This confusion is something Jay-Z is way too confident to show.
And it is the highlight of the night as the set winds down with three versions of "Niggas In Paris" , which does what I guess they wanted, bring it out from the shadow of the album. A coupla more Throne tracks and a rousing farewell with "Jigga My Nigga and nearly two and a half hours later. it is over.
A good set by two of the biggest stars in the universe and I don't think anybody went home complaining. Me? I'd have preferred to have seen a solo West but, certainly, Jay-Z hasn't sounded so fresh since 2004.
Grade: A-