Heart of the City

I checked out the Heart of the City Tour with Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z last night and it was worth the wait. After some character that calls himself Dream (he looked and sounded more like the love child of MC Shy D and Baby D from JJ Fad. He's got some song called Falsetto that all the little kids in the crowd seemed to know) came out to open the show, Mary and the Jigga Man were shown in a documentary short, sitting for an interview. After the mere sight of their faces on the screen sent the crowd roaring, they calmed down a bit to hang on the every word of Mary and Jay. They did this whole mutual-admiration, Brooklyn-Love thing and then talked about the impact that each other has had on hip-hop and pop culture. It was pretty cool. They came back to a different portion of this film whenever there was a costume change or some other break in the action.

It was really cool how they, being co-headliners, came out together to do Jay's Reasonable Doubt classic "Can't Knock the Hustle" with Mary singing the hook. The crowd went absolutely nuts. Jay left the stage and then Mary proceeded to give 100% of herself for the next hour and 15 minutes. Jay emerged once during that to do the Biggie Smalls rap on the remixed version of "Real Love". Mary put on a great show and showed strong vocals that even the most die-hard of fans had to admit were much more refined than performances early on in her career. She can bring it for real! She was also doing her role model/inspirational artist thing, giving uplifting messages to sistas out there, as a nice contrast to alot of the other messages being played on the radio. She left it all out on the stage, and then without intermission, Jay-Z came back.

One of the really nice aspects of the show was how both of them played with almost a full orchestra, equipped with a horn section, several guitars, percussions, back-up singers, and even violins. Of course, Jay-Z had a DJ for parts of his performance too. Jay rocked the house for about an hour himself, and then Mary re-emerged for their collaboration on "Dead Presidents", which then led right into Mary's "Take Me As I am".

I've got to say this about Jay-Z. His was not the most entertaining hip-hop show I've ever seen but it was definitely top notch. (I have to give that nod to the Roots, who I've seen rock the house 2 or 3 times, and Run DMC). It was kind of like seeing Clyde Drexler, or Hakeem Olajuwon or Charles Barkley in person during the Michael Jordan Era. They were great, but...well...you know.