The beauty of watching Jay-Z live is more than just watching him calmly spit bars that effortlessly prove why his career has been this long and brilliant; it’s also the complex but lovely feeling of watching an audience (and the artist himself) relive the past. It’s almost unfathomable that 30 years ago, Jay-Z was starting out as a relatively unknown rapper from Brooklyn chronicling his life as a hustler. Quite possibly the greatest pure MC of all-time – encompassing flow, patience, humor, live ability and his taste as an auteur – Jay built a career on restrained tales of wide-eyed dreams and braggadocious stanzas about financial gain.
His 1996 debut album Reasonable Doubt was the start of that career, and Saturday night at New York City’s Yankee Stadium, Jay-Z will perform the album in order, front to back, making it impossible to forget its legacy in a visually stunning show that will split the difference between close connection and grand spectacle. At times, with a wide, movie-like screen backing Jay that shows funerals of presidents, footage of Mike Tyson, or his wife, Beyoncé, cutting his hair at the ballpark, the show feels influenced by previous tours like Watch the Throne mixed with the street romance of the 2002 movie Paid in Full. Yet, the care and attention to detail ensures that the 50,000-capacity venue will feel intimate, for the folks who heard the album and felt seen through its songs of regret and paranoia.
The show opens with Beyoncé singing Can’t Knock the Hustle, filling in for Mary J Blige. Beyoncé has no real connection to Reasonable Doubt outside of familial bonding but it is surprising, and successfully cute, to see her join in on one of Jay’s most spirited hustler songs. Wearing a pinstriped suit, cut off at the legs like a baddie at the function, she looks startlingly hip – less fussy and in line with the urban but still grown environment of the night to come. The lush R&B of Politics as Usual, a premiere example of Jay’s excellent taste in beats, offers the crowd a smooth song in the midst of the evening’s grimy hustler tales. Nas will join for a medley of Dead Presidents, The World Is Yours, Empire State of Mind and Where I’m From, with the crowd sure to bask in the mutual respect the once-rivals have for each other’s craft.
The show is not without some clumsy aspects: Blue Ivy Carter comes out to play the piano before her father raps a clean version of Feelin’ It that strips out certain cuss words. Jay-Z is a family man, and although some of the uncs in the stadium tonight are too, the father-daughter moment lands a tad awkwardly on a night celebrating an album where her dad spits about some of his most gutter, grimiest, primal urges. And while a 60-second freestyle is a startlingly impressive showcase of his skill, the billionaire businessman runs the risk of earning some rolled eyes when he goes a capella and freestyles about “social media activists”. New York is in a triumphant moment after the Knicks’ NBA win, yet Alicia Keys coming out to do her Empire State of Mind hook is jarring compared with hard-hitting songs like Regrets or Public Service Announcement (Interlude).
Still, it will be a celebration, a stadium full of joy and emotion, an appreciation of 30 years of an album that changed a man’s life and gave a voice to the voiceless. At a time when rappers do photo-ops with politicians who used to run from them, it is easy to forget that at one point, MCs were crafting records not just for themselves, but for the genre and the culture at large. Reasonable Doubt was the start of a career that would put hip-hop on a pedestal. So, when Can I Live played, with its story of hustling out of hopelessness, eyes may get watery. Jay-Z manifested this: born into unfortunate circumstances, he willed himself to greatness with the talent he had honed and practiced his whole life. Tonight dares you to ask the question: where would hip-hop be without Shawn Carter?
