Lebron James is here, despite rumors that he and Jay fell out over his decision to move to Miami. When Jay realizes that Herc came to the first show without a ticket and held court outside the stadium where he and Eminem were performing, he made sure that on the second and final night, Herc is front and center and that the camera operators capture the moment on the stadium’s 168-by-48-foot wall of video, designed by Mark Rodgers of Tribe Inc., the same firm that designed the look, sound and execution of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver’s Mile High Stadium where Barack Obama delivered his nomination acceptance speech. Hip hop architect DJ Kool Herc shows up on a whim, having walked the few blocks to the venue. That apartment, where he’d have cookouts when he was home from his frequent trips down South, probably won’t survive being demolished to make way for the stadium he broke ground on this past May, where his basketball team- the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets- will ball.Īnd once again here he is, here we all are, at the still-new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium-not far from 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the apartment building where hip hop was invented-witnessing this arena’s first-ever concert on September 13th and 14th.
Jay z vibe professional#
Years later, there he was, Rap’s El Presidente, sharing a victory float with professional sports’ most dominant team and New York City’s billionaire mayor-rapping about cooking up work at his old State Street apartment on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. In an ironic self-reflexive nod, Jay and his partners had named their company after the law and its billionaire architect.
The last time Jay had taken the stage at City Hall, he was Russell Simmons’ special guest at a 2003 rally to repeal the Rockefeller laws, notoriously unfair drug sentencing rules that filled the state’s prisons with Jay’s generation of hustlers. At the celebration, Jay stood in front of City Hall with New York's Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who was also enjoying an extension on his reign. That song, possibly his biggest in more than a decade of huge singles, became the Yankees’ official anthem when he performed it again at the Yankees' 27th victory parade. His biggest single from The Blueprint 3 had him performing “Empire State of Mind” at the old Yankee Stadium during the 7th inning stretch of Game Two of the Yankees vs. Having released his four-star classic The Blueprint on the fateful day of Septemhe returned to Madison Square Garden for a televised benefit concert when he released the follow-up to that album eight years later. He put on a tux to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of his debut, Reasonable Doubt, at Radio City Music Hall in 2006. Indeed, during the past few years, Jay has turned in one first-ever historic performance after another. “But I feel like I waited too long for it to be over this fast.” “My whole career I been thinking of a night like this… a night where all the stars align.” he said in Fade to Black, the DVD that was supposed to document his retirement at age 34. Hip-hop's brass came to the storied arena to perform their biggest hits with and for him-simultaneously saluting Jay and celebrating how far the genre had come. It was a monumental staging of his victory lap. As Sinatra had Howard Cosell for his 1974 show in the Garden, Jay enlisted sport’s most recognizable voice-the world-renowned fight announcer Michael Buffer-to introduce him. He just sold out the shit himself in five minutes.” Nothing was left to chance, down to the last detail. “This is history right here,” said Sean Combs, no stranger to historic hip-hop accomplishments. When Jay-Z staged his farewell concert at Madison Square Garden on November 25, 2003, it seemed that hip-hop was having a moment. Once Again It’s The Life (Vibe December/January 2011)
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