Reasonable Doubt Concert

On Sunday night, I went to see Jay-Z perform at Radio City Music Hall to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of his debut album, “Reasonable Doubt.” I’m a huge Jay-Z fan and was psyched because I had some really good seats for the show. After some initial confusion, my college friend, Ilunga, came to the show with me.

I’ve seen Jay-Z in concert before (way back on that infamous trip to the “Roc The Mic” tour in Chicago with Kee Won and Arnaub), but this was ten times better. First off, Radio City Music Hall is an incredible venue. I had never been inside it before Sunday. As I’ve been discovering with New York, you really can’t judge a place by its outside because from initial viewing, I didn’t expect the inside of Radio City to be so beautiful. On top of that, the sound quality was incredible. I think it helped that Jay-Z had a 50-person orchestra backing him, but this was by far the best sound quality of any concert I’ve been to.

Jay-Z performed “Reasonable Doubt” in reverse order, which was a great idea, starting off with the surprising reflective (at least for a rap song) “Regrets” and building up to the anthemic “Can’t Knock The Hustle” which featured an amazing performance by Beyonce, subbing in for Mary J. Blige. I was happy to see Beyonce perform (her voice projects amazingly), but the woman next to me was pretty pissed that Mary wasn’t there to perform. I agree, it would have been nice to see Mary perform.

The entire performance was fairly elegant. Jay-Z, in a white on white tux, the crystal chandeliers hanging a top the Radio City stage, the full orchestra, the entrance in a old-school Lexus…it’s not what you normally expect at a hip hop concert, but it was fitting and provided an engaging interpretation of what Jay-Z considers his finest work.

However, I think my favorite part of the night was when Jay-Z came back for an encore, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, no orchestra, just Just Blaze as his DJ and Memphis Bleek as his hypeman, and he ran through probably 20 of his hits, back-to-back. The energy in the place was crazy, people throwing up Roc signs, dancing, singing along. As Ilunga describes it, it was almost kind of disturbing the way everyone threw their hands in the air, and recited word for word, in unison, most of Jay’z lyrics. But who cares. Now I understand why people want to be rockstars and why some people say that of all the celebrities, being a rockstar is the best. Who else can make thousands of people chant and move on command?