If you remember the 90's
right now, put one hand in the air right now.
That's a cleaned-up
version of what Funkmaster Flex said as he warmed up the crowd in Radio City
Music Hall on Sunday night. He asked, "How many people 25 and older?"
And thousands of old-timers made some noise. This was a night devoted to
ancient history, which explains why Jay-Z rolled onstage in a vintage
automobile: a decade-old Lexus.
The occasion was the 10th
anniversary of Jay-Z's debut album, "Reasonable Doubt," which is now
widely — and properly — celebrated as a hip-hop classic. If his life had
imitated one of his own dopeman narratives, his quick rise would have been
followed by success, excess and a slow decline. (Or maybe, if he made one enemy
too many, a quick one.) Instead, he got on top and stayed there; he was the
rapper to beat even when he wasn't topping the charts. He retired in 2003 and
became president of Def Jam Recordings, but no one believes he's gone for good.
Back then he bragged about having "matching VCR's, a huge Magnavox."
A decade later that boast sounds impressive in a way he couldn't have
predicted: the flashy Brooklyn rapper has outgrown Magnavox and outlasted
VCR's.
For this celebration,
Jay-Z was joined by ?uestlove, the drummer from the Roots, and a band called
the Illadelphonics. There was also an orchestra ("the Hustlers Symphony
Orchestra," he said) and a D.J., Just Blaze. Together they evoked the
three basic musical elements of "Reasonable Doubt": hard beats (the
band), plush arrangements (the strings) and well-chosen samples (the D.J.).
Jay-Z and the musicians
had what was billed as a rehearsal on Saturday night, at the Nokia Theater,
though it turned into a concert: the tickets, priced at $100, disappeared
immediately, and fans got their money's worth. And Sunday's show — the whole
album, with the songs played in reverse order, plus half an hour of "bonus
time," or greatest hits — was an extraordinary achievement. This might be
the best hip-hop concert since — well, since Jay-Z's legendary 2003 show.
The decision to run the
album backward was a smart one. The night started with the album's elegiac
finale, "Regrets." And he built toward "Can't Knock the
Hustle," an exuberant statement of purpose originally featuring Mary J.
Blige; on Sunday Beyoncé filled in.
Sauce Money and Memphis
Bleek, two other rappers with verses on the album, also appeared, although
Jaz-O (then Big Jaz), Jay-Z's former mentor, was conspicuously absent. (In the
new issue of XXL magazine, which includes an invaluable feature on the making
of "Reasonable Doubt," Jaz-O says he's "very disappointed"
that Jay-Z has "downplayed" his contribution to the album.) Foxy
Brown, the rapper who has been battling hearing loss, appeared for "Ain't
No"; she lost the beat, but persevered.
And what of Cristal? The
Champagne company offended Jay-Z when its managing director gave an interview
in which he seemed ungrateful about rappers' patronage. There were rumors that
Jay-Z was going to remove all Cristal references from his rhymes. In "Dead
Presidents II," he changed one line to, "Maybe this rosé will change
your life." But he slipped up in "Can't Knock the Hustle": he
was back to drinking "Cristal by the bottle." (Honest, he can stop
any time he wants.)
Like most great hip-hop
albums, "Reasonable Doubt" is designed to delight word nerds. Part of
the genius of the album was that Jay-Z realized you could deliver complicated
rhythms and rhymes in a casual, conversational voice. His predecessor, the
Notorious B.I.G. (who was killed in 1997), loved to stretch out words to
emphasize meter; Jay-Z did a little of that on Sunday, when he rapped both his
and B.I.G.'s verses from their duet, "Brooklyn's Finest." (In XXL the
hip-hop mogul Irv Gotti says that when Jay-Z and B.I.G. recorded that track,
they were "very competitive"; each was gunning for the other.)
Jay-Z's tough but
laid-back style, which would dominate New York hip-hop for the next decade, let
rappers break down the competition without breaking a sweat. (Speaking of
which, how did he stay so cool and composed on that hot stage, in that
three-piece suit?) In "Dead Presidents II" he exhaled those
tongue-twisting opening lines as if he were merely thinking out loud: "Who
wanna bet us that we don't touch leathers/Stack cheddars forever/Live
treacherous, all the et ceteras?"
Jay-Z took this
conversational style to its logical extreme on "Friend or Foe," a
prose monologue that scans:
You're twitching. Don't
do that, you're making me nervous.
My crew? Well, they do
pack — them dudes is murderers.
So wouldja please put
your hands back in sight?
They don't like to see me
nervous. You can understand that, right?
And in the geekiest
moment of the night he added a new verse to "22 Two's," his
literal-minded rhyme exercise. In the original he rhymed, "I been around
this block too many times/Rocked too many rhymes/Cocked too many .9's
too," and so on, until he hit 22. In the new verse he rhymed,
"Roc-a-Fella forever, Hov for life/Classic debut, first album's four
mics," and the video screen kept count until, inevitably, he hit 44 fours.
After a night like this
it might be tempting to talk about how "Reasonable Doubt" was a
singular achievement, about how 1996 was a special year for hip-hop, about how
they don't make them like that any more. But "Reasonable Doubt" isn't
really an anomaly: it's much better than most hip-hop albums of those days, or
these, but it's not much different. It's the sound of a slick-talking hustler
making old stories sound new and making a few bucks along the way. In 2006 an
album like this is less likely to come from Brooklyn and more likely to come
from, say, Atlanta. It might have fewer words and weirder beats. But the
tradition is much the same. That's the most exciting thing about the
"Reasonable Doubt" era: It's not over yet.
