Jay-Z and Kanye West delivered on their combined promise at the New Orleans Arena
The closestrock equivalent to Jay-Z and Kanye West's ongoing Watch the Throne summit is perhapsElton John and Billy Joels joint tours. But those lucrative excursions were exercises in Baby Boomer nostalgia; both Joel and John were years beyond their creative peaks.
Thus, their Watch the Throne CD and subsequent tour were burdened with the enormous weight of sky-high expectations. Reviews for the album were mixed. And at a full New Orleans Arena on Saturday night, Jay-Z and West initially tested fans allegiance and patience.
Headliners dont generally hit the stage until around 9 p.m., but usually an opening act fills the time. On Saturday, there was nothing. No opening act. Not even a deejay. If you arrived at 7:30, the time on the ticket, your only entertainment for nearly two hours was people-watching.
Finally, at 9:20, Jay-Z and West materialized on two small stages at opposite ends of the arena floor. West wore a black leather kilt, Jay-Z his trademark Yankees cap, also black. The stages blossomed intovideo cubes as! the rap pers traded verses on H.A.M. and Who Gonna Stop Me over footage of barking Rottweilers and swimming sharks.
They made their way to the main stage, a severe, flat-black industrial landscape bellowing great plumes of pyrotechnics, for Otis. A brace of lasers bisected the arena, as if Pink Floyd and Rush served as lighting consultants.
Over the next two-and-a-half hours, West and Jay-Z would mostly collaborate, disappearing briefly for solo turns by one or the other. Curiously, a show built solely on the star power of the two principals often hid their identities. They frequently remained in shadow, visible only as silhouettes. Neither appeared on the towering main stage video screens until the fourth song.
Instead of the full band that backed Jay-Z on his 2010 tour, the Watch the Throne trek deploys three keyboardists. One occasionally played live guitar; Public Service Announcement featured a bout of hard rock-style soloing, complimented by pyro.
The National Geographic video theme continued. A cheetah took down a gazelle in slow-motion in Welcome to the Jungle. Monster featured a procession of lions, tigers and bears. Made in America shifted gears to depict Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
West and Jay-Z charged through Run This Town and Monster. In a potent Power, a coiled West bore down and rapped with purpose. The duo sat for New Day; for the first time, many in the audience sat as well. The downshift continued through Jay-Zs old-school, relatively modestHard Knock Life; his swagger returned for Izzo (H.O.V.A.).
He interrupted the Frank Sinatra sample that prefaced Empire State of Mind to caution an overly exuberant fan down front. Dont disrespect, he said. Im not joking. The offender having sufficiently chilled, Jay uncorked an epic Empire State of Mind, doffing his NY cap at its conclusion.
Then it was Wests turn. At the 2011 Essence Music Festival in the Superdome, he framed his self-psychoanalysis with a dramatic arc and bevy of Black Swan-like dancer! s; it wa s the most ambitious and compelling rap presentation Ive seen.
Sharing the show with Jay-Z meant neither artist could fully articulate his own vision. Still, West explored the psychology behind conspicuous spending in All Falls Down. Deep in the second hour, bathed in red light, he nearly hijacked the night with Runaway and the Auto-Tuned Heartless. He scolded folks for checking email before heaving himself into Stronger, demonstrating why he, at his best, is the most intriguing of the major emcees.
But Jay-Z would not be upstaged. He knocked off On to the Next One and, hidden in a hoodie like a boxer, Dirt on Your Shoulder, with phonetic precision.
They were strongest together. Good Life went over huge, as did Touch the Sky. In All of the Lights, West asked for the stage lights to blaze: I want New Orleans to get what they paid for. It'sa scripted line, but effective.
His partner roared back with a lickety-split, tongue-twisting Big Pimpin. A joint Gold Digger and 99 Problems kicked momentum into overdrive.
Without warning, the rappers went silent as Louis Armstrongs What a Wonderful World accompanied a litany of disturbing video images: Hurricane Katrina damage, a Ku Klux Klan rally, fires, tornadoes. The set piece was meant to introduce No Church in the Wild. It also served as an unfortunate, ill-timed buzz kill, an awkward attempt to inject gravitas.
The final fireworks of N----s in Paris, the current, exuberantsingle from Watch the Throne, reignited the party. How to top that in the encore? Repeat it. Then again. And again. In total, they heaved themselves into N----s in Paris seven times, including five successive encore run-throughs.
Unusual? Yes. Fun, yes, at least through the first, say, three repeats. By the fifth, it became clear they would play nothing else. With midnight approaching, folks started streaming for the exits; West finally chucked his microphone toward the rear of the stage, turned to Jay-Z with an exhausted smile, and said, Im done. So, ! too, was everyone else.
Were questionable creative choices made? Absolutely. But within the context of the whole, they didnt matter. The depth of Jay-Z and Wests combined catalogs, coupled with charisma equal to their egos, carried the night.
Simply put, for rap fans, Watch the Throne rules.
Keith Spera can be reached at kspera@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3470. Read more at www.nola.com/music
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