“So…let me explain the delay to you guys,” Jay-Z mumbled after performing his opening song, The Dynasty intro. It was 12:20 am, over three hours after he was expected to go on. “It was like, 10,000 people outside, and they closed all the doors because somebody rushed the doors.”
I can’t say I was surprised. When I got off the 4 train and arrived at Yankee Stadium around 7:45 p.m for Night 3 of Jay-Z’s run, it was a chaotic scene: thousands of Yankee fitteds bobbing on heads, collectively wriggling and ballooning like an amoeba. I thought to myself, I’m fucked, before overhearing from a security guard that people with floor seats could enter through a much chiller gate around the corner.
To hear Jay apologize, almost framing it as a heroic act, was a little unsatisfying. There was something ominous and intense about that three-hour purgatory. How did this all go so wrong? How do you respond to the people who went home out of frustration or couldn’t ever get in? On the other hand, shit I thought I’d see a riot if he cancelled. Jay had to deliver.
It ultimately didn’t matter to those who made it inside, as we got to witness Jay-Z in rare form. He came straight for the stadium’s soul early with the “I Know” / “U Don’t Know” one-two punch, the latter turning everybody up to 1000. He rapped slinkily, confidently, shoulders scrunched up, rap hands rap-handsing. If the first two nights stamped two of Jay’s albums as distinct, front-to-back classics, then Night 3 argued for the expansiveness and interconnectedness of his catalog: bouncing different Southern styles off each other as he rapped his “Big Pimpin” verse over the “Paris” beat, weaving together his hometown odes “Where I’m From” and “Marcy Me.” It occasionally veered into territory maybe too deep for Jay himself; I chuckled when he seemingly forgot the words over the knocking Swizz Beatz production of “Welcome to the Jungle.”
Every guest he brought out transported us to a different era of hip-hop: Jeezy took us to his chest-pumping prime with “Go Crazy”; Jermaine Dupri to the late ‘90s with “Money Ain’t A Thang”; Usher to Confessions; Pharrell to his imperial era of radio domination. P brought out The Clipse, too; after they did “Grindin” to a somewhat tepid response, a woman near me shook her head and muttered, “New York is the harshest critic.”
Nothing really hit like Rihanna, though. As soon as she popped out—and trust me, even though it was a “surprise,” there were rumblings in my section all evening—multiple women around me stood up on their chairs while dudes in Yankee pinstripes tried to act cool. “I’m rusty!” she laughed, after shakily belting the hook to “Run This Town,” but I don’t think anyone noticed or cared in the moment.
Beyonce on the other hand totally disappeared into her performance, emerging from a bulb of dancers clad in white for a flawless performance of “Drunk in Love.” Before those opening notes, Jay teased one of my favorite dumbass WTT songs “Lift Off” for a good 30 seconds, I was losing my mind hoping for her to belt the hook. It was 2:22am when she came on. I felt delirious.
Near the end of the show, Jay said, “We’ll be back next summer.” Black Album anniversary show on the way? Another tour? “Encore” was the last song he did around 2:50am. Flames shot into the air as this odyssey finally concluded.
What I’ll never from Night 3 is everything that happened around it. All the Jay fans pouring out onto the streets of the Bronx at 3:00 a.m. The fire bootleg tees (I copped two). Squeezing into a 4 train car for an hour-plus ride home with hordes of New Yorkers from all age and tax brackets. Couldn’t have asked for a better first Jay-Z show. (Ok maybe just start on time next time!)
