It would be wrong to call any place but Brooklyn “home” for Jay-Z, but the ties to Houston, Texas, run deep for the hip-hop legend. From inviting Houston rap kings UGK to be on one of his biggest hits, “Big Pimpin’,” to hopping on the remix of Mike Jones’ classic “Back Then,” to his wife Beyonce’s upbringing in the Lone Star State’s largest city, Hova can at least call Houston a winter retreat. Though surely he brings the goods everywhere he goes, that’s why there’s always something special about a Jay-Z show in H-town.
Performing for over an hour longer than the Austin City Limits shows he played just last month in Texas, Jay ran down a setlist to satisfy ardent hip-hop heads and casual fans alike. He wisely gave the audience head bobbers like “U Don’t Know” and his greatest hits, “Empire State of Mind” and “Hard Knock Life,” but an artist with such a deep catalog can go to the well and bring up classics from almost anywhere. “D’evils” from his debut Reasonable Doubt, “Where I’m From,” and even more recent deep cut “Beach is Better” all made appearances.
Jay leaned heavily on his newest record, 4:44, making his performance something a bit different than the typical Jay-Z show. As many reviews have stated, 4:44 is more of a Shawn Carter album than it is a Jay-Z album. Likewise, the rapper shifted deftly between his larger than life persona and his honest, soul-baring reality on stage. A perfectly structured setlist allowed Jay-Z to take a break, signaled by the removal of his jacket, and Shawn Carter to take the stage and stand perfectly still in the spotlight, spitting the painful rhymes of 4:44’s title track. Then, as the movable projector screens enclosed the stage and gave way to a brief video, the greatest of all time candidate made his reappearance, bursting back on stage, clad back in the jacket, with the opening line of 4:44 hit “Bam”: “fuck all this pretty Shawn Carter shit, HOV.”
Like 4:44, Jay’s concert was his own. Though accompanied by a live band in segments of the stage below him, Jay was alone in the spotlight. It suited him comfortably, being the superstar he is, though one definitely could have hoped for a hometown appearance from Beyonce or a guest appearance by UGK’s Bun B for “Big Pimpin’.” Instead, Bey’s presence could only be felt, not seen or heard, and B only got a shout out (quoth the prophet Hov, “I don’t know where he is, he’s sitting somewhere out there”). Clearly, Jay has re-embraced the ideals of classic hip-hop records which featured no or few guest appearances by other emcees.
But ghosts could be felt all around. Ghosts from Jay’s past, dredged up in songs like “Lucifer” and “Allure,” which reflect on his drug dealing days and those who fell by the wayside, and ghosts of those performers who the now 47 year old rapper has now outlived. Though Bun B never came on stage, his deceased partner in rap, Pimp C, appeared through an a capella performance by Jay and the crowd of his “Big Pimpin’” verse. Likewise, for the final song of the night, Jay gave a speech introducing the night’s only special guest, Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington, who passed away in July, before performing the “Numb/Encore” mashup from the collaborative EP Collision Course.
Conjuring spirits was the motif of the entire show, whether excavating his own soul, killing and then resurrecting “Jay-Z,” the tributes to fallen friends, or even the very overt and repeated references to erstwhile collaborator Kanye West (case in point: an image of West from the “Otis” video with the West produced “Never Change” sample played on repeat over it). Jay admitted that doing all this made him uncomfortable during his introduction to “4:44,” yet that uncomfortability is what keeps the magic alive. Always charting his own course, Jay-Z is now figuring out how to age gracefully in a young man’s game, and treading those waters in his unique way, with all that uncomfortability, ensures that his shows will never turn into the tired nostalgia acts of rappers closer to his own age. Instead, warts and all, Jay-Z’s shows in 2017 are both fantastic and fantastically human affairs.
