Jay-Z, West Combine Talents To Create Illustrious Show

Posted: Dec. 10, 2011 | 6:02 p.m.
Updated: Dec. 10, 2011 | 6:41 p.m.

Their contrasts were illuminated even though the arena had yet to be.

On one riser stood Jay-Z, motionless, cool as the crisp December night air outside the sold-out hall.

Across from him, on another riser elevated to the rafters, Kanye West paced in the dark, all pent-up energy and anticipation, looking ready to spring, the way a tiger might when approaching a wounded gazelle.

Then the beat dropped and it was on, two-and-a-half hours of smiles (mostly Jay-Z), scowls (mostly West) and hip-hop craftsmanship as exquisite as a supermodel's curves (both of them).

The show began with "H.A.M.," a blustery, triumphant taunt from Jay-Z and West's collaborative album "Watch the Throne." It's a game of verbal one-upmanship where they graciously take the time to reassert that which you should already know: when it comes to hip-hop, it's Jay-Z's and West's world and no other rappers are living in it.

"You talk it; I live it," West barked, addressing detractors real and imagined. "(People) fantasize about the (stuff) that I do daily," Jay-Z added later in the song, sounding a similar note.

But if Jigga and 'Ye -- to employ two of their many appellations -- are united in their high estimation of their own awesomeness, they're very different in approach.

Jay-Z is the superior technician, by a wide stretch. He's a streetwise sophisticate who doesn't try to relate to his audience so much as celebrate his achievement, which is meant to awe and inspire -- in that order.

"Pablo Picasso, Rothkos, Rilkes / Graduated to the MOMA / And I did all of this without a diploma," he rhymed on "Who Gon Stop Me," a fierce "Throne" salvo that registered like a series of finger jabs to the chest.

But whereas Jay-Z is an emotional ice cube who never really lets us know how he! feels, West does so to a fault -- and his faults are the best thing about him.

They humanize West.

Hip-hop is frequently posited on certainty, a complete lack of equivocation when it comes to asserting the merits of one's abilities, akin to an athlete's will to win.

West engages in plenty of this, to be sure, but he also frequently punctures his own hot air balloon of hyperbole with insecurity and blush-worthy candor.

On "Heartless," a piano-infused, breakup song, West rapped and sang of betrayal and loss, sounding both angry and wounded, scorned and scornful.

"In the end, it's still so lonely," he acknowledged.

It's hard to imagine Jay-Z ever performing a song so vulnerable.

West is an instinctive, impulsive presence, and his mood swung back and forth like the gold chains that dangled from Jay-Z neck.

He followed the defiant, granite-hard "Can't Tell Me Nothing" with the more reflective "Jesus Walks," which he delivered, in part, on his knees.

Throughout the show, which intermingled "Throne" songs with hits from Jay-Z and West's solo catalogs that they performed on their own, you never saw Jay-Z sweat, but that's all that West did.

His face was perpetually drenched in perspiration, like he was in the middle of running a marathon, and at times it looked like he was, as he bounded across the stage during especially invigorated numbers like "Touch the Sky" and "All the Lights."

West would catch his breath on more contemplative "Throne" tracks like "Made in America" and "New Day," the latter of which saw West and Jay-Z sitting down next to one another on stage, looking like a couple of buddies perched on a neighborhood stoop.

They remained seated for the next tune, Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life," as West bobbed his head and mouthed the lyrics, looking rapt, like any other fan in the house, while Jay-Z rhymed.

Jay-Z returned the love in kind, anointing West a "genius" for his production work on Jay-Z's " Izzo," the MC's first top 10 hit.

Times l ike these made the show feel like a series of victory laps, in places, the height of which came when the two performed a current "Throne" single -- which we will abbreviate to "Paris" -- six times to close out the evening.

Why?

Because it was audacious.

Because it was maddening.

Because few, if any, had ever done it before.

Because they could.

"Savor this moment for the rest of your lives," West exhorted as they played the song over and over, seemingly trying to make the moment, in fact, last the rest of everyone's lives. "This is real life right now. This is really happening."

And this show was nothing if not a happening, a combined force of will that West wasn't going to let anybody deny.

"Y'all having the time out of your life out there," he said at one point.

In most cases, an artist would pose a line like that in the form of a question.

But for West, it was an assertion, a statement of fact.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.