WNYC Soundcheck Smackdown: The Strokes

WNYC Soundcheck Smackdown


Julian Casablancas and Co. debuted in 2001 with the critically acclaimed album Is This It and helped put New York rock back on the map. Now the Strokes are back - after a puzzling, difficult five-year hiatus - with the new album Angles. J. Edward Keyes, editor-in-chief of eMusic, and Sophie Harris, music writer for Time Out New York, join us to debate this comeback album.

Hate, Homophobia, and Hip Hop (BET.com 2011)

Hate, Homophobia, and Hip Hop (2011)

By dream hampton

Digging in hip hop’s closet is a pitiful sport.

This Tuesday I published a column on bet.com recapping the by then confirmed rumors that Biggie's former DJ and mentor had been arrested for public lewdness. I wrote that I was more interested in a discussion about decriminalizing sex work than I was in one about Mister Cee’s sexuality or any same-sex sex habits he may have. As with so many stories that happen in the world today, the Mister Cee story broke for me on Twitter.

As for many, Twitter for me is a place that invokes a buffet of feelings. A political news junkie, the thrill of breaking stories has me both checking my Twitter feed hourly and tweeting my observational predictions about unfolding revolutions or as I perhaps a bit glibly called them on Twitter when demonstrators in Yemen began protesting as March Madness was wrapping up, my ‘North African bracket.’ I “follow” on Twitter a deeply engaged, brilliant and witty group of everyday intellectuals, sports fanatics and rare groove enthusiasts. The idea that my small, eclectic group of friends were some tiny Black exception was blown out of the water when I “met,” through Twitter hundreds of folk who watch The Boondocks, memorize Zeppelin, world travel and are as passionate about Sudan as they are about Ntozake Shange. And then there are the people on Twitter, generally a generation younger than me, who have some (mostly misguided) idea of me as someone “in the industry” and send me links to mixtapes. Or worse. I've closed a Twitter account that had become for me too public, @dreamhampton, and restarted under another name. I've locked and unlocked this new account, in useless attempts to manage how public I am. Still, I am on Twitter. A lot. Because these things are on record, I know that I seldom tweet about hip hop.That my timeline, random and impossible to call one particular thing, places hip hop at its center maybe ten percent of the time.

After publishing my piece on Tuesday, the conversation about Mister Cee resumed on my Twitter feed. I received some homophobic tweets directed at me, some very legitimate responses from Black women who didn't like that I seemed to blame them for down low behavior, and a lot of support for my article. I then remembered on my timeline that Big had a friend from his neighborhood, who always appeared gay to me, but whom Big would always ‘defend’ as simply being ‘feminine.’ A few weeks before Big was murdered, when he came to L.A. where I was living, Big told me this friend had come out of the closet with no verbal announcement, but by quite boldly bringing his boyfriend on The Ave. (Fulton St., in Brooklyn) as if it were the most natural thing in the world to introduce his boyfriend to the men he'd grown up with, the boys who'd become Junior Mafia. Big’s exact words were: “Yo, you were right.... that n---a brought his man on The Ave.” I asked Big at the time, in January of 1997, if his friend bringing his boyfriend back to the hood bothered him. Big told me “Whatever, that’s still my n---a.”

The remembering of that moment between me and Big, who in 1997 had been one of my closest friends for six years, was unpacked in three or four tweets. Those tweets were captured as screen shots and used by Bossip and then allhiphop with sensational headlines that apparently poor readers took to mean I was questioning Big’s sexuality. Even if read correctly, it became an opportunity to speculate about Big’s sexuality, offering his lyrics as evidence. As I wrote in Tuesday's column about Cee, digging in hip hop’s closet is a pitiful sport.

For my part, I apologize to Big’s friend. I always admired the open way he was in his hood. Young New York Black LBGT and/or those merely exploring, often leave their neighborhoods for Manhattan’s West Village and West Side Highway piers to openly be themselves. Big’s lifelong friend, who later became Lil Kim’s stylist, impressed me when he brought a lover on The Ave. It was not only brave of him, but revealed how much he trusted the men he grew up with to, if not ‘support’ his love choices, at least not treat him anydifferently than they had their whole lives. I was inspired when Big didn't have a homophobic response to his friend’s coming out of the closet. I remembered that story on my pubic timeline because I was saddened by the discourse around Mister Cee. Still, by naming him, and tweeting a pic that was readily accessible on the Internet, I have put a spotlight on him that I never intended. As an LBGT ally, I support the position that ‘outing’ is wrong.

That the discussion has further devolved to my receiving rape threats or worse is only so much more misogyny to add to the heap of homophobia from kids who can barely read or even Google.

This Monday I received a copy of Manning Marable’s epic, definitive biography of Malcolm X. I asked my 17 thousand followers on Twitter: “If Marable’s two decades of research yields evidence that Malcolm X had same-sex sex would you abandon him as your hero?” Last week, when statistics were published that show there are more Black men in prison than there were enslaved in early America, I began a Twitter conversation about sex and silence about sex in prison. I won't stop thinking aloud about these issues. I try to do so thoughtfully.

And finally, I never called Big gay. Though calling someone gay, will never for me be an insult. End

Mister Cee (BET.com 2011)

Mister Cee What You Started (2011)

By dream hampton

Yesterday New York City's two major dailies confirmed the rumor that had set the Internet on fire over the weekend—that Hot 97 DJ personality Calvin Lebrun, 44, better known to music fans as Mister Cee, had been arrested last Wednesday by the NYPD for public lewdness after engaging in a sex act in a parked car around 4 in the morning with what appeared to be a transgendered 20-year-old male. Furthermore, the dailies cited two other similar arrests involving Mister Cee.

On Twitter, where Mister Cee is repeatedly and correctly identified as the man who helped The Notorious B.I.G. get a record deal, homophobic insults were parked on timelines the entire 72-hour weekend. On Monday morning, rival station Power 105.1's Breakfast Club on-air personality Charlemagne Tha God called for "transparency," asking why Cee would "hide his sexuality" in 2011. Those comments raised the ire of Hot 97 legend Funkmaster Flex, who seemed to support Cee's claims of innocence. From what we can tell, Cee seems to be claiming that he was set up by the "hip hop police".

To his credit, Mister Cee showed up for work and played his mixshow, which never involves much talking by him, as scheduled and without on-air comment.

While highly regarded in the hip hop industry and in New York, Mister Cee is not necessarily famous. Still, his arrest gave opportunity to talk about the persistent poking around hip hop's "closet," where speculation about sexual orientation is practically a sport. Charlamagne actually elevated the conversation by asking why a married 44-year-old man was seeking sexual favors from a 20-year-old, professional or otherwise, and if that, then why in a parked car? I argue that none of this would be a discussion, viral or anywhere else, had Cee been arrested with a 20-year-old woman, be she prostitute or not. I also don't believe, 2011 or not, that hip hop is a safe space for anything other than aggressively heterosexual public behavior or affirmation. While obviously lesbian women MCs and personalities remain silent if not closeted about their sexuality, there is even less space for men to appear bisexual or homosexual.

I believe that Mister Cee's sexuality is a personal matter, one he must reckon with himself and his wife. But Charlamagne's co-host Angela Yee took the position widely held by heterosexual women—that closeted bisexual men are a health hazard, exposing trusting women to AIDS and more. While I'm not dismissive of those concerns, particularly in a marriage, where condom use is expected to be abandoned, I do know that we heterosexual Black women don't exactly offer safe spaces for bisexual men to express their desires.

I'm also far more concerned that the transgendered 20-year-old who allegedly serviced him be safe, particularly if he is a sex worker. I wished aloud on my own Twitter feed that the discussion about Mister Cee would be one about decriminalizing sex work and focusing on harm reduction rather than speculating if Mister Cee is closeted. End

Jay Electronica Bio (2007)

Jay Electronica Bio (2007)
by dream hampton

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs." -Nikola Tesla

Jay Electronica is a wildly inventive Master MC who bends and shapes language to his will. His rhymes dazzle; metaphors stacked upon similes, narratives sprouting spontaneously from abstraction. His flow swarms a beat, rendering hooks optional. Were he simply a rhyme stylist, an MC committed to mere aesthetics, he'd be a mammoth talent, the "finally" true hip-hop fans have been rain-dancing for the better part of the 21st century. As it is, he's way more than a rhyme stylist; he's an exceedingly brilliant thinker, an organic intellectual student from the hood whose appetite for knowledge is matched by his ability to transmit knowledge. He's the child of an American Third World ghetto who's concerned with global community. He's an MC who gives a fuck. He's a throwback whose life was changed by hip-hop and believes still in its transformative, magical properties. He's on some serious shit, mysterious shit, an artist whose conscience mandates he be conscious. But as he likes to say---the facts, jack.

Born in New Orleans and raised with his sister by his mother and grandmother, shuttled between the Magnolia Projects and the 17th ward, Jay Electronica was a pre-teen comic book geek who was mesmerized by mythic superheroes. He'd spend whole summers with his collection, memorizing supernatural attributes as he wrote his own parallel stories in his head, complete with his mind's illustrations. His mother had an eclectic collection of vinyl and would spin Steely Dan, Prince, Al Jarreau, and the raven-haired country star Crystal Gayle one after the other. His grandmother had her eyes on the sparrow and hummed along to her gospel favorites, Mighty Clouds of Joy and Shirley Ceaser, as she performed babysitting duty.

When he was nine years old Def Jam's first superstar changed his life. "When I first heard "Radio" I can picture it so clearly...my neighbor was outside washing his car, he had it blasting, I just stood there and froze I said to myself 'That's what I'm doing!' After that I would be in the house writing stories in rhyme and drawing pictures."

While LL served as the catalyst, it was a talent show sensation, Dr. Blue, that brought out the gladiator in our young hero. "My older cousin Mook came home from this talent show at school saying how dope Dr. Blue was and I was like 'Man, Fuck Dr. Blue! I'm better than him!' So I put on a show right there in the living room. I would take my tape recorder, loop the tape and do my little show. I'd be saying my rhymes and then I'd break from rhyming and just start telling a story, right in the middle of my rhyme."

As anyone who's every downloaded his cyber classics "Eternal Sunshine..." or "Dimethyltriptamine" knows, Electronica's penchant for digression is still very much a part of his repertoire. Jay will pass the mic to Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka (his favorite movie), the child actors from the Iraqi film ""Turtles Can Fly, or include a vintage Honorable Elijah Muhammad speech, stretching a song beyond its commercial confines.

In an effort to get his skills up, he began studying the rap game with the same scholarly discipline he'd once applied to comics. He'd videotape Yo' MTV Raps! or rally his neighbors to place simultaneous orders on Video Music Box. Premier's work with Gangstarr and later RZA's with the Wu would later influence his work as a producer. Too Short, NWA, especially Ren and Cube, The Geto Boys, particularly Scarface, and Dallas's D.O.C. were his rap education. "With each new important release I would realize I needed to go and get my game up, that I needed to vibrate on a higher level."

At 18, like a young Ronin, Jay began roaming. He'd trekked to D.C. for Farrakhan's historic Million Man March after meeting a clean and sober Muslim (his first) on Xavier's by the environment." When he returned home, New Orleans had become a size too small. So he boarded a Greyhound and set out on a path towards greatness. "I had a bus ticket, a chunk of change and some clothes in a bag. I was like 'I'm about to be a rapper, I'm headed to New York, you know, 'RapLand'."

Instead, he noticed that more than half the passengers discharged in Atlanta. He too got off the bus during the break. He noticed signs posted, advertising jobs. The Olympics were coming to town and businesses wanted help. Jay retrieved his duffel and learned Atlanta. He lived in shelters, worked in the kitchen at Morris Brown. In the men's shelter he met a fellow hip-hop head named "Q", Quinn Gilbert. They'd walk around Atlanta, Q beatboxing, Jay freestyling, no need for equipment. One day, in downtown Atlanta's Underground, a late 80s, early 90s gathering spot for the city's teens, Jay came across his first cipher.

"There were so many dudes gathered around that I knew they were either gonna fight or rhyme. So I went up to them. They were debating Farrakhan's speech from the march. Half of them were gods [Five Percenters] and the other half was Nation of Islam. The gods were arguing that it was allegorical, while the clean, NOI guys were saying it was both---allegorical and literal."

The minister's four-hour Million Man March speech had been heavy on mathematics, measuring galactic distance, the sun's circumference, man's metabolic composition.

"Because of who I am, I felt such a strong connection to the scientific aspect of the doctrine. I tapped a Five Percenter brother on the shoulder and was like 'that right there, where can I learn that? What book do I need to read to learn about the planets and all that?!'

Jay got his 120 in Atlanta and set out for a short-lived stint in Chicago, where he returned tot he NOI and rose to Lieutenant in the Fruit of Islam. "People who had been killers---guys who when they walked into a party emptied it out because everyone knew they were there to shut it down---I'd see them completely change. Not in terms of becoming robots or bean pie salesman, but real, life saving changes. When I was young and homeless it was hard. I got robbed, I did things I wasn't proud of, thugging it out to get by, to see these men change, I knew it was in me too."

The teachings of Elijah Muhammad, and the organization that Malcolm grew and Farrakhan kept relevant, was the last organized doctrine Jay adhered to but his pledge of allegiance is largely supportive, and from a distance. If you ask him today if he's a Muslim, he'll answer yes. If you ask him if he's a Christian, that answer too is affirmative.

After a Christmas break home in New Orleans, Jay returned to Atlanta. "I knew Atlanta backwards and forwards at this point, I knew the AU campus kids, I knew the homeless people from Buckhead to Bankhead." He met his future best friend, a brother named Johnny (Audible) from Detroit, coming from the masjid one Friday after juma.

"Johnny started a record label with money he won from a legal settlement. When I bumped into him he asked me to come to this spot with him and I ended up getting on this track with this hood superstar named Cool Lace."

Later Jay recorded with Gip from Goodie Mob and hopped on beats by Sol Messiah, the producer who Dallas Austin leaned on for TCL's massive hit "Waterfalls". He finally made it to New York, but by then it was the late 90's, Biggie and Tupac had both been assassinated, and hip-hop's birthplace was struggling to remain relevant. New York didn't feel like the 'RapLand' he'd boarded the bus for years earlier.

He ended up resting in Denver for a minute, after his mom moved there. "There were so many jobs in Denver, you could get one on your lunch break." He learned how to camp in the wilderness, had his first, true friendship with a white guy and celebrated Juneteenth with the Colorado's tight-knit Black community.

In any great hero's journey there are supporting characters who arise like angels to push the protagonist along on his journey. For Jay Electronica these supporters were made manifest in Junior Mafia producer Rashad "Tumbling Dice" Smith who passed Jay's music along to Just Blaze, the super-producer who'd served Jay-Z some of his hottest beats. Just was inspired by Electronica's willingness to take risks, to "go all the way left with it." Then there was Supanova Slom, who after Dave Chapelle's Brooklyn taping of "Block Party" introduced Jay to the maverick singer Erykah Badu, who was so inspired by Jay Electronica's talent she decided to launch her label Control Freaq in 2005.

Badu's wingspan was both angelic and pragmatic; she loaned him her rent controlled Brooklyn apartment and one night he finally settled in and watched Michel Gondry's innovative film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in its entirety. "...for some reason every time it would come on I'd catch it while Jim Carey was regressing into a child, the scene where he's cramped under the table. I thought it was some silly Jim Carey shit. But this one night I actually watched the whole thing."

The scene where Kate Winslet's character Clementine whispered "Don't forget me on Valentine's Day" had a spare piano riff that stayed with Jay. He went online, downloaded the soundtrack and in a fit of inspiration looped it and recorded his own rhymes over the score on Garage Band. "I played it for my boy and he was like 'This is garbage, no one's gonna like this. It started out ok but you always gotta go left...' I was like 'fuck it', I posted it to myspace and the response was incredible. It went from 200 plays a day to a million times that."

Jay had experienced a certain amount of positive response on the Internet before; his "Hard to Get" was ripped so many times by his core fans, each dub degrading the sound quality, that he relented and made the track downloadable. But the response to ESOTSPM created traffic that was so overwhelming that Jay, who'd written the codes for the myspace page he'd designed himself, made the decision to shut down the page altogether. Bloggers carried the momentum, creating fan pages, maintaining a buzz that landed him on the cover of URB's next 100. "My myspace page played a HUGE part in my career, I'm not gonna knock it, but ultimately I had to delete the page to preserve the integrity of my project, to present it with continuity."

Jay considers the current state of hip-hop to be nearly posthumous, he likens today's popular hip hop to "dead fish, on the beach stinking."

His vision for his own project is wide. He imagines live shows that read like dinner theatre. "I want a set that's like a pop-up book, upright piano, an orchestra in the orchestra pit..." He wants the kind of continuity and pageantry that Public Enemy maintained from song to video to concert, a consistent threat that makes you "feel the way you do when you read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment."

Like a yound Cassius Clay calling his fight against the Goliath Sonny Liston, Jay has his future mapped out. He's reconnected with his man Johnny from Detroit, who did indeed build the studio he dreamed aloud about when they were in Atlanta. The D is Jay's second home; he was on Detroit's west side when the government-erected levees were breeched, failing to protect New Orleans from Katrina. He collaborated with the legendary J Dilla a couple times before the genius producer died. He builds bombs in the lab with his comrade Denaun Porter, "Mr.Porter" from D12.

Eventually the songs he's laying now will serve as material for his second and third suites. Jay has given himself assignments to complete. Inspired by the great scientist Nikola Tesla, who believed the Earth's electromagnetic field could be harnessed for energy (and whose radical ideas consequently threatened the existence of at least a half dozen industries) and the movie about Tesla, The Pledge, Jay plans to unveil his music in the three acts. Act I and the cyberspace sensation that is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is Jay Electronica's version of "The Pledge". Act II will be his "Turn." The plan is to make the third act, "The Prestige", his commercial reveal, his offering to the marketplace.

"I'm just a human being. I look at shit and I'm like 'Here's the history of nations, here's the history of geography....' I don't want to waste oxygen", Jay Electronica humbly submits. Then asks himself aloud, as if he's checking his mic: "What's my purpose? How am I perfecting things?"

The Trouble with Chris Brown (BET.com 2011)

The Trouble with Chris Brown (2011)
by dream hampton

This morning Robin Roberts from Good Morning America interviewed Chris Brown, who is on a promotional tour in support of his new album, F.A.M.E. During the interview, she asked Brown questions about his attack of pop star Rihanna, which enraged the singer. He apparently threw a tantrum, smashing soundproof windows at the ABC studio and soliciting building security's attention. He then stripped to his shirt, stormed from the building and logged on for a two-tweet Twitter tirade.

At the 2007 MTV Awards I became a fan of 18-year-old Chris Brown. He gave an epic performance that began with a nod to master mime Charlie Chaplin and ended with an homage to the King of Pop. Brown lip-synched most of his seven-minute spectacle, but what he proved that night was that he is a prodigious entertainer. When they turned his mic on he sang well-crafted R&B songs in a serviceable, throaty falsetto, but, my God, the boy could dance. He was as athletic as the Nicholas Brothers (his favorite crowd pleaser is a series of back flips), but as tall and as seemingly weightless as Michael Jackson. He leaped along the guest tables that night, ending up on Diddy's, who openly bowed to him when he finished. That night he invited his then 19-year-old girlfriend Rihanna onstage to sing a few bars of her huge pop hit “Umbrella.” They were absolutely adorable, their eyes aglow with young love. They appeared publicly and affectionately for the next year and half, supporting one another as they navigated the wilds of new fame at impossibly young ages.

And then, on February 7, 2009, Chris Brown violently attacked Rihanna, beating her and threatening he'd kill her. He left her on a sidewalk in the middle of the night in L.A.'s upscale Hancock Park, where a resident called the police. They photographed the beautiful Cover Girl spokewoman's fresh wounds and then leaked them to the hungry press. Within hours the world witnessed the brutality of his domestic violence.

I am not objective when it comes to domestic violence. I am against it. I ceased being a Chris Brown fan. I read my Twitter timeline and listened to urban radio in horror as they typically assigned blame, partial or otherwise, to the victim, Rihanna. Rihanna, of course, did an Oprah-style recount with Diane Sawyer. Brown wore a regrettable blue bowtie to Larry King, where he hedged a public apology without taking complete responsibility for his actions. Then, disastrously, he released an album six months later and publicly whined (on Twitter) when, to his surprise, the public hadn't "moved on" from his attack of Rihanna. Major box-store chains refused to even stock the album.

What he didn't seem to understand was that it was way too early for an album. Not only had we not moved on, but Rihanna had barely healed from the emotional trauma (when she attempted an even march forward on her ABC special it only further belied her fragility). Just as important, and I don't always consider attackers just as important in domestic abuse cases, Chris Brown had clearly not even begun to heal. Early in his career, teenage Chris Brown gave a heart-wrenching interview where he said watching his stepfather beat his mother had made him both so enraged he wanted to fight the man and so afraid of him that he'd wet his pants. When 16-year-old Chris Brown said in a magazine interview that he'd wet his pants at 13 he was a mere three years away from his abuse. Children who witness abuse are abused. When Brown abused Rihanna he was five years away from his own abuse.

He clearly doesn't have the kind of support system that is encouraging—even insisting—him to seek mental health treatment. His mother is an enabler, and his handlers huddled him into a truck the night he boxed in Rihanna's face, leaving her to fend for herself—an incredible misstep. Even if they hated Rihanna, they had to know leaving her there would lead to a publicity Chernobyl. These handlers were twice his age.

In lieu of therapy, Chris Brown has Twitter. His small army of fans uses the hashtag #teambreezy to avoid forcing the still young, imploding star to seek the therapy he so desperately needs to not become his stepfather. It is tragic. He's young enough to be saved. Imagine what a true public healing would do for young Black teenagers entangled in the deadly dance that is domestic violence.
End

Jay-Z (Vibe 2011)

Once Again It’s The Life (Vibe December/January 2011)

by dream hampton

When Jay-Z staged his farewell concert at Madison Square Garden on November 25, 2003, it seemed that hip-hop was having a moment. One of its biggest to date. “This is history right here,” said Sean Combs, no stranger to historic hip-hop accomplishments. “Jay-Z in the Garden all by himself. He just sold out the shit himself in five minutes.” Nothing was left to chance, down to the last detail. As Sinatra had Howard Cosell for his 1974 show in the Garden, Jay enlisted sport’s most recognizable voice—the world-renowned fight announcer Michael Buffer—to introduce him. It was a monumental staging of his victory lap.

Hip-hop's brass came to the storied arena to perform their biggest hits with and for him—simultaneously saluting Jay and celebrating how far the genre had come. “My whole career I been thinking of a night like this… a night where all the stars align.” he said in Fade to Black, the DVD that was supposed to document his retirement at age 34. “But I feel like I waited too long for it to be over this fast.”

Indeed, during the past few years, Jay has turned in one first-ever historic performance after another. He put on a tux to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of his debut, Reasonable Doubt, at Radio City Music Hall in 2006. Having released his four-star classic The Blueprint on the fateful day of September 11, 2001 he returned to Madison Square Garden for a televised benefit concert when he released the follow-up to that album eight years later. His biggest single from The Blueprint 3 had him performing “Empire State of Mind” at the old Yankee Stadium during the 7th inning stretch of Game Two of the Yankees vs. Phillies World Series.

That song, possibly his biggest in more than a decade of huge singles, became the Yankees’ official anthem [supplanting Sinatra’s “New York New York”] when he performed it again at the Yankees' 27th victory parade. At the celebration, Jay stood in front of City Hall with New York's Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who was also enjoying an extension on his reign. The last time Jay had taken the stage at City Hall, he was Russell Simmons’ special guest at a 2003 rally to repeal the Rockefeller laws, notoriously unfair drug sentencing rules that filled the state’s prisons with Jay’s generation of hustlers. In an ironic self-reflexive nod, Jay and his partners had named their company after the law and its billionaire architect. Years later, there he was, Rap’s El Presidente, sharing a victory float with professional sports’ most dominant team and New York City’s billionaire mayor—rapping about cooking up work at his old State Street apartment on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

That apartment, where he’d have cookouts when he was home from his frequent trips down South, probably won’t survive being demolished to make way for the stadium he broke ground on this past May, where his basketball team— the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets— will ball.

And once again here he is, here we all are, at the still-new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium—not far from 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the apartment building where hip hop was invented—witnessing this arena’s first-ever concert on September 13th and 14th. Hip hop architect DJ Kool Herc shows up on a whim, having walked the few blocks to the venue. When Jay realizes that Herc came to the first show without a ticket and held court outside the stadium where he and Eminem were performing, he made sure that on the second and final night, Herc is front and center and that the camera operators capture the moment on the stadium’s 168-by-48-foot wall of video, designed by Mark Rodgers of Tribe Inc., the same firm that designed the look, sound and execution of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver’s Mile High Stadium where Barack Obama delivered his nomination acceptance speech.

Lebron James is here, despite rumors that he and Jay fell out over his decision to move to Miami. Also in attendance are Puff and his teenage son Justin- born just after his father was fired from Uptown Records and starting to build his run at Bad Boy- Puff's ex-boss Andre Harrell, Jay's sister-in-law, Solange Knwoles; and Kelly Rowland. Havoc from Mobb Deep, the lesser known target of Jay’s “Takeover,” whose partner, Prodigy, Jay once splashed over the Hot 97 Summer Jam screen, is here—a quiet nod to peacemaking and adulthood. Before joining Jay onstage, Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, and Coldplay’s Chris Martin (accompanied by his wife Gwyneth Paltrow) all catch most of the historic night from the 40-foot-riser in center field.

Some 42,000 fans have paid good money to bear witness to history as the "Home to Home" tour wraps up in the Bronx. Baseball is in September elimination season, so the Yankees are at away games while Jay makes their home his. His good friend Alex Rodriguez, who flew to the Dominican Republic to bring in Jay’s 40th, is pissed he’s missing the big show. The fitted that the Yankees made in honor of Jay, who rhymed he "made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can" is on sale next to Jeter’s jersey.


Attempting to deny Jay-Z’s status as the greatest rapper is becoming an increasingly hard debate to win. Album after album, summer after summer, Jay has melted the opposition. He arrived in 1996, an era we only now understand to be a zenith in hip-hop. The field was stacked with talent. Lyricists were learning to craft pop hits, street artists were posting multiplatinum numbers and myths and legends were writing their history.


Tupac was recording what we now know to be a half a dozen albums in a prescient, inspired trance at a breakneck speed. Nas was promoting the follow-up to his classic Illmatic, Lauryn Hill was a superstar on the rise with mic skills that matched her poise as a vocalist. And Biggie, Jay’s friend and neighbor, had settled into the studio to record his cinematic magnum opus, Life After Death.


Like Mary, Big recognized real and hopped on Jay’s classic Reasonable Doubt, trading verses on “Brooklyn’s Finest”, one of the greatest collabos in rap. It would have been easy for a lesser MC to disappear in those charged times, no matter how nice he was with a mic. But Jay has always been a lot more than nice with a mic, and a lot bigger than an MC. From the beginning, he established himself as a boss; and not in some empty, braggadocio way that only means something over beats.


It was clear we were dealing with an awe-inspiring MC.

Jay could say in three bars what it took other writers three verses to communicate. (You draw, better be Picasso—y'know, the best/'Cause if this is not so, ah, God bless/You leave me no choice, I'll leave you no voice..." —"Friend of Foe.") What he didn’t say seemed as important as what he did, his pauses had gravity, he dealt with space like a hot block, dipping in and around a beat, painting a pictures with inflections as often as vocabulary. But when he decided to settle in, to paint a complete picture, it was pure authenticity. He presented the streets documentary style, and not as a narrator who’d witnessed the drama, but as a conductor who’d created the story. The hustler had become hip-hop’s everyman, and for good reason—the streets had employed kids in the hood the way the NYPD employs high school grads from Staten Island. Before Jay, those stories had been painted broadly. Jay filled in the details, and more importantly, profiled the psychic collateral damage of the lifestyle. Sure, a successful hustler could charter a yacht to sail the West Indies, but he’d have to lay awake at night wondering if the boat’s staff were undercover Feds. Paranoia, envy, greed and addiction were the price of success.

When Jay spoke of using his music as therapy, he created a space for black boys who’d been sketched in stats and sentences. He fearlessly opened up about being fatherless. At his most vulnerable he was acting as therapist: “People going thru pain/I’m just talking them thru it… I’m just walking ’em thru it.” He wrestled with regret, mourned fallen soldiers and bemoaned the disintegration of street codes of conduct. He searched for honor in dubious choices and admitted when he’d acted as a victim of his poverty, a painful admission for a man whose hallmark characteristic is his self-determination.

The last man standing, Jay carried hip-hop through its least inspired period. When labels shrank to a handful, when a once ever-expanding market began to tighten, when true talent was scarce, he threw the whole game on his back.

The idea for the book Decoded (Spiegel & Grau) began in 2005 when Jay decided that The Black Book, an autobiography that he and I worked on for two years, was too revelatory. His fans were deeply disappointed, hoping for Jay to relax his guard at last, to drop his obsessively private approach to being a pop star. Decoded began as him examining his lyrics, the metaphors and allusions, the double and triple entendres (as in Monster of the double entendre/Coke is still my sponsor" on Do U Wanna Ride.)


But it also became an exercise in historicization. By reflecting on what was going on when he wrote certain songs, he began to contextualize—his lyrics, the eras he's surfed, his legacy itself. That kind of reflection is usually saved for retirees, for artists whose best days are behind them.

That Jay was recording material that matched the best of his first on his eigth (The Black Album) was unheard of. That he did it again with his 10th (American Gangster), is nothing less than abusively unfair. He may—as he’s conceded—have given chorus-happy fans anthems when they needed them, but his intelligence has always served as a beacon, a sign that hip-hop is first and foremost a thinking man’s sport.

Hip-hop is a genre that's used musical samples as footnotes, constantly creating a catalog, looking back. But this idea of it minding its history, placing plastic on its good living room furniture, is fairly new. There are hip-hop museums being planned, anthologies and autobiographies being published every day. Like a 30-something who’s constantly rewriting their own obituary, hip hop seems to be worried about both its death and its long-standing desire to be taken seriously.

When we began collaborating on Decoded, Jay told his editor and I that he wanted to create a book that could be teachable. But hip-hop has to keep in check its desire to be taken "seriously" outside of its own terms. In a world that privileges written texts over oral traditions, hip-hop has to remember that it conquered the world with a mic as much as a pen. Jay's lyrics don't become more important because he wrote them down, but in writing them down the consummate freestyler demonstrates how thoughtful he's always been about this music, about his process.

Outside of the studio, Jay’s accomplishments have provided inconceivable inspiration. Sun Tzu, the author of The Art of War, once wrote that opportunities multiply as they are seized. In Jay we have a living example of the possibility of a life mapped by focus, purpose and direction. His moves on and off the mic, only reaffirm his grasp of that elusive thing Jay left his mom’s house as a teenager to pursue—power.


When Jay takes the stage at Yankee Stadium, he opens with the "Intro to The Dynasty", the 2000 album that became his Chronic when he made room on most tracks to pass the mic to his Rocafella team, Roc La Familia. Of that original unit only his wingman Bleek is still standing. Kanye West—who got his first real shine as a producer on Dynasty—felt trapped in a custody battle at the time of his label heads’ divorce. He joins Jay onstage for “Run This Town,” his oversized Horus medallion—the Egyptian god of Kings—crashing against a questionable fire red leather suit meant to signal his sartorial superiority.

Kanye, of course, is in the middle of his own rehabilitation, having squandered most of the good will that poured out after he lost his mother on the operating table. He’s risen from star producer status to become Santino to Jay’s Michael Corleone, trafficking in the same wild public emotional outbursts that made Tupac such a hero. Jay believes in Kanye, though—always has. He appreciates his protégé’s naked truth, the way Kanye examines his interior space aloud.

At its best, Jay’s music laid bare the inner psychological space of his generation’s everyman, the hustler; detailing his fear and guilt. Kanye is no drug dealer though. His man in the mirror is major celebrity in the age of persistent identity. And he’s as self-aware about that celebrity as Madonna.

Jay sharing this important stage with Kanye the same week he made his comeback penance performance at the MTV Awards is a major sign of support for his mentee. Jay won’t completely clear the stage for the next school by retiring, but he will lord over it while they vie for his spot. Kanye performs two of his own songs, “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and “Good Life,” before launching into “Monster.” Lil Wayne, another contender for the crown, is of course across the river on Riker’s on this night, but Jay lets Young Money’s other stars, Drake and Nicki Minaj,
have a decent part of his set too. “You could be the King but watch the Queen conquer,” Nicky spits during “Monster,” stuffed into a pair of painted on jeans.

At 40, Jay avoids coming off as “Uncle Hov” to this newest school, still in their 20s, mostly because he shows up on guest appearances in perfect shape. On Drake’s “Light Up” Jay Godfathers young Drake—an unlikely heir given his straight-and-narrow path to the top (but in the Obama era, a superstar because of his straight-and-narrow path to the top). It’s unlikely Jay will ever need to talk him out of jail, but his advice to Drake about success couldn’t be more perfect: “here’s how they gon come at you / With silly rap feuds trying to distract you / In disguise in the form of a favor / The Barzini meeting, watch for the traitors / Uhh, and I’ve seen it all, done it all…”

Which begs the question, as someone who’s seen and done it all—whose steady reign at the top has seen sensational contenders explode then sputter (50 Cent)or at least stumble (Eminem)—what’s truly left for Jay to do?

As Jay likes to say, “I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.”



Beyoncé, still in the dangerously tight sequined minidress she wore onstage when she joined Jay to perform “Young Forever,” is sitting on the black leather couch in Jay's private green room, watching him wrap the final night of his and Eminem’s "Home to Home" tour at Yankee Stadium with “Encore,” a Kanye West–produced track from The Black Album. He's ended big nights like this before. With its roaring chorus and audience participation, “Encore” is a sure shot. When Jay recorded the song at Bass Line Studios, he was visualizing live arena shows. “Encore” was meant to be his goodbye kiss, but his victory lap at Madison Square Garden was seven years ago—back when he and Mrs. Carter were merely dating and she had just one solo album under her belt. “For one last time I need y’all to roar,” he commands, and the crowd does not disappoint. Jay’s onstage like he never left it, mostly because he never did.

Jay stands still, taking the moment in, the all-epic-everything of the night, the roundtrip hip-hop has taken, around the world and back here in the Bronx, onstage in center field at Yankee Stadium, Kool Herc in the first few rows. He is overwhelmed by emotion. Beneath his fitted Yankees cap, Jay is nodding, tucking his upper lip in the way he usually does, that way that says, "Don't make me shoot you." But beneath his brim you can see him getting misty.


"Yeah, I almost lost it," Jay says the next day about tearing up onstage in front of his wife and most of New York City. For him the night was not just about the roaring adoration of his fans, but the connection to what he calls again and again in Decoded, his “culture.” In the end it’s all about how far rap’s come, how much the game needs him, and how much he needs it.

SXSW 2011: Saturday, Kanye steals the show (again)

Kanye West interrupts. Besides being this decade’s big musical genius, interrupting is his thing: Katrina, Taylor, the fact he bumrushed every single end of year musical poll in 2010… And in 2011, he hijacked SXSW. Those who tried in vain to get tickets to Kanye’s show at the Bowery Ballroom will be familiar with the particular type of heartache the secret Kanye show delivers—the fact it’s seemingly impossible for you as a fan to get tickets, the fact a bunch of models got in free... You know the deal.

And so it was this week at South By, when Vevo announced that yes, Kanye would be playing a show on the last night of the festival (of course!) at a disused power plant (POWER!) to celebrate his G.O.O.D record label in the company of Mos Def, John Legend, Kid Cudi, Pusha T, Cyhi Tha Prince and Mr Hudson. Time Out was therefore duly astonished to get hold of two coveted Kanye laminates, and even more astonished to find itself at the front of the line before the show, somehow lumped in with a gaggle of models, coatless and shivering at midnight outside the Power Plant.

After a two-hour wait while Kanye and co soundchecked, we were let in, and so ensued something of a model stampede, the thunderous sound of a hundred odd pairs of stillettos on wood. Inside the building looked like the disused factory in Kanye’s “Runaway” video; huge, clean, industrial. Bars were set up at the side and exotic dancers showed off their moves on metal staircases. An enormous GOOD sign was illuminated on stage. So far, so awesome.

The only weird thing about the night was that it was far less a gig than a TV performance; TV cameras swooped around, and there was nary a word of banter from Kanye himself. So if you’re wondering if you missed out on the show of the year, fear not. This was a hell of a spectacle, however. The show opened with all Kanye’s guests lining up at the front of the stage, wearing balaclavas, naming their hometowns. “Cleveland, Ohio.” “Brooklyn, New York.” Wearing a sparkly eyemask (well, why not?) Mos Def played the first set. Once the initial excitement of the fact that at around 1am the show had finally started wore off, Mos’s 40 minute set seemed a little excessive. Solid but unexceptional performances followed from Pusha T, Cudi and co. until Kanye took the stage—at last!—at around 2am.

Click past the jump for the full review


Dressed in a fancy leather jacket and shades (which he kept on for the duration), Kanye was all steely professionalism last night; no rants, no chit-chat and no real experimentation. This didn’t dent how great it was to see him play songs from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, live, but it was hard to feel a connection with what was going on onstage.The sound too, was pretty bad; immaculately mixed for sure, but the acoustics of the building meant it boomed and echoed at the front and back of the crowd.

But who wouldn’t be thrilled to see John Legend sit himself at the piano for “Blame Game” (which sounded gorgeous)? Legend also played his own “Ordinary People,” and Cudi joined Kanye for “Gorgeous.” The show was heavy on songs from My Beautiful…, though we did get a peek of “Say You Will,” and “Can't Tell Me Nothin'”.

Funniest moment? Kanye returning for an encore, resplendent in a red suit, for “Power,” only to discover seconds in, that the beat had become somehow mangled. Rather than apologize or laugh, he stormed off-stage (“He’s so gonna punch someone” said a dude behind me), returning, wordless, once it had been fixed. For a thrilling “All of the Lights,” an elaborately decked-out marching band strode up. The real treat though, was Jay-Z, who joined Yeezy around 3.30am. Tearing through “Monster” and ”HAM,” it was the first time Kanye seemed expressive (rather than performing), grinning and cracking off-mic gags with Jay. The show closed at 4am with Justin “Bon Iver” Vernon coo-ing a beautiful “Lost in the World.” Well done, Mr West, you did it again