JAY-Z RHYMES INTO MIDDLE AGE

The first time I saw Jay-Z perform live was at the Hammerstein Ballroom on 34th Street, a cavernous venue with two balconies and a large dance floor/standing room area in a building that originally opened in 1906. This imminently old school room had likely hosted big band dance contest back in the ‘30s. On this night the Hammerstein main floor was filled with ‘90s hip hop fans who didn’t really danced, but did shout, gyrate and rap along to Jay-Z’s then state of the art flow. The crowded Hammerstein floor was mirrored by the posse members, Brooklynites and Roc-A-Fella employees who surrounded the MC. It looked like half the twenty year old males in the Marcy projects had bum’s rushed the backstage door and inserted themselves into the performance, eliminating any gap between Jay and his audience. But make no mistake - Jay-Z was a star. He had his vociferous business partner Damon Dash acting is hype man, on stage and off. He was living in Manhattan, not Brooklyn. If you stopped by Nobu in Tribeca on a random night Jay could be seen dining with a young singer he was dating from Destiny’s Child.

JAY-Z AT YANKEES STADIUM LAST WEEKEND

My favorite Jay-Z performance was a few years later at Madison Square Garden where he and Kanye West performed most of their epic Watch the Throne album, trading verses like the Cold Crush Brothers of hip-hop lore. Kanye was dynamic and odd, while Jay-Z was masterful, surely the greatest rapper alive at that golden moment. They performed “Niggas in Paris” four or five times in a row, driving the crowd into a frenzy each time the opening keyboard riff began. Too many hip-hop shows have a repetitive quality as one looped beat bleeds into another. Watch the Throne had the power of an arena rock concert with the crowd to match — supermodels, non-music celebrities and monied shot callers in the orchestra. Mostly in the Garden’s upper reaches was where BK was in the house.

I ran into Jay-Z in New York at events and restaurants quite a few times during this era. Our interactions were mostly brief but always memorable, from a brief discussion of the original 50 Cent, a legendary Fort Greene stickup kid, to whether the seats at the Barclay Center, for which he’d been a spokesman, were too tight and stiff. After hearing my complaint Jay was walking away and, as man used to having the final say, turned, smiled and said “Lose weight.” I laughed and then checked my waistline.

Jay-Z moved and spoke with an air of utter confidence. When he rapped, “I guess I got my swagger back,” I thought “When did you lose it?” If you encountered Jay-Z and Damon Dash together it felt like the loud talking record executive was the artist and Jay was the calm business partner. It was not a surprise when the two split apart. Jay-Z became his own very effective hype man as he built a business empire.

Stopping my the Jay-Z 30 pop up store in Dumbo a few weeks ago, the fruits of Jay-Z’s ongoing efforts to build a mythology around his journey from Bed-Stuy hustler to corporately endorsed power broker filled the space. Curated with items from his past, along with merchandise that promoted his upcoming Yankees Stadium dates, the pop up was a testament to the all-American rags to richest story its subject is obsessed with retelling as a defense against critics and irrelevance. On line black activists, disgruntled ex business partners (Google Damon Dash) and younger MC’s have used podcasts to attack him for bailing on old friends, riding his wife’s coat tails and, most profoundly, partnering with politically problematic brands like Target and the National Football League. Jay-Z has used free styles at concerts in Philadelphia and New York to clap back, resolute in his “black capitalism” attitude to racial progress and unmoved by those who felt left behind as Roc-A-Fella evolved into Roc Nation.

Convincing a middle aged black millionaire that the actions that made their fortune aren’t the formula to lift up the black community is an impossible task. I’ve had those conversations and it rarely moves their emotional needle. To them to agree to that viewpoint is to undermine the narrative they’ve constructed of their life. Not gonna happen. Plus, as his reply to my jibes about the Barclay Center seating suggest, Jay-Z likes to have the last word.

For the largely forty years old and up crowd of ticket buyers who took the 4 and D trains to 161th Street last weekend to his three concerts, Jay-Z is too central to their ‘90s and early ‘00s memories to be erased by business deals he’s making now. The same people who crowded the Hammerstein Ballroom back in the day, paid minimums of $500 for seats in the upper deck and over $5000 in front of the stage to hear songs that defined their teenage years and young adulthood. I’m not sure that his tales of stash houses and list of luxury items from another era means anything to social media bred listeners.

What I am sure of is that being the Rolling Stones of hip-hop at age 57 puts him in a unique position. Aside from an unlikely Outkast reunion in Atlanta and a returning Eminem rocking Tiger Stadium, I don’t know what other over 50 year old rap stars could sell out three nights in a stadium in their home town. Dr Dre? Lil Wayne? Kanye West, now known as Ye, is doing fine on his global jaunt, but its important to note he’s seven years younger than Jay-Z, which in hip-hop years is like the gap between Kurtis Blow and Rakim. It’s a very singular achievement to be pushing sixty and selling thousands of hard tickets (as a opposed to be part of a festival where customers are buying into a stacked bill.)

Though social media obsessed over his combative free styles, the fans at Yankee Stadium traveled uptown for the boasts of “Public Service Announcement,” “Hard Knock Life” and “Empire State of Mind,” which, like his pop up store, serve as monuments to his rise out of Brooklyn. The concert was both a show of strength and a bow to his reality. He hasn’t been part of a rough neck community in decades. He’s a husband and a father. One wonders even he, a man of boundless self-confident, must cringe a bit reciting lyrics composed by the twenty year old who once inhabited the same body. But, solidifying your legacy with the people who’ve helped construct it, is what the middle aged do as morality’s faint whispers grow loud.