I spent 6 hours on my feet last night for the Jay Z show at the Hammerstein Ballroom (NYC). 2 hours in line to get in. 2 hours waiting for Jay to come out and 2 hours of actual show. Completely worth it. Billed as the American Gangster show, I was hoping he’d performed the whole album in sequence. Instead he did a lil back and forth with new and old material.

Surprise and not so surprise guests: Lil Wayne, Diddy, Memphis Bleek, Beanie Sigel, Freeway, Young Chris, Tru Life, and Jadakiss.

The show opened with the Intro to American Gangster, then the curtains went and Jay went in on Pray, backed by a live band and backgroud singers. He skipped America Dreamin and did No Hook.

Next up was Where I’m From which Jay let the crowd perform most of the lyrics. At the line “who’s the best MC’s? Biggie, Jay Z or Nas?” The music stopped and everyone was on their tippy toes trying to see if Nas was going to come out.
Instead the thunderous beat of Hello Brooklyn proceeded to make the whole room shake and we hear Weezy’s recorded voice on the chorus. Jay performed his first verse and it wasn’t until the 2nd chorus that Lil Wayne came out and received the biggest crowd response of any guest performer.

After, Hello Brooklyn, Jay gave Weezy some solo shine and let him perform the chorus to Duffle Bag Boy which sounded ill backed by the live band. Upon completion, Lil Wayne threw up the Roc and said Jay was the greatest rapper alive and he was the greatest next in line (or something like that).

I can’t really remember the exact order of songs but Jay performed I Know, Party Life, and Blue Magic off American Gangster. American Dreamin and Fallin, my favorite 2 songs off the album, were not performed. (insert sad face here).

The 2nd best crowd response was received by Beanie Sigel. He came out with Freeway and Bleek to perform You, Me, Him, Her, Roc Da Mic and What We Do. Young Chris came out for Can’t Stop Won’t Stop sans Young Neefy.

Jay let everyone shout out their release dates: Free Nov 20th, Beans Dec 11th, Young Chris at the top of the year, and Memph…..nothing was said for Memph, but no worries he’s “in the will somewhere.”

After the rest off the Roc exited stage left Jay called Beans back out to get ignorant. Then they did Ignorant Shit (duh!)

When the beat for I Get Money dropped everyone was again on tippy toes lookin for 50 to come out but instead we got Diddy who half heartedly did his verse, then Jay did his forgetting some words which the crowd knew better than him which made him laugh and fuck up some more.

Jay did sprinklings of past hits including Heart Of The City, Hovi Baby, I Just Want To Love You, 99 Problems, U Don’t Know, Show Me What You Got, PSA, Jigga My N*gga, Jigga What, Jigga Who and Big Pimpin in which he recited 5% of the words and let the crowd do the other 95% then proclaiming “y’all don’t even need me,” and walked off stage. The Live band entertained us with some Roots-esque covers like Ain’t No Nigga, Soul Cry, and TI’s What You Know About That. Questlove watched from the balcony and i think Omar Epps was up there too.

Before giving us the showcloser, Jay asked the crowd for a moment of silence for Kanye’s Mom. Some idiots chose not to be silent….

The funniest part of the night is when Jay called all the Roc Boys out to perform, uh, “Roc Boys.” Out comes Free, Beans, Bleek, and Young Chris from before. Then out comes Tru Life…………….and the newest member of the Roc…………Jadakiss. Everyone one was rocking out to the song especially Tru Life who looked absolutely thrilled to be there, except Jadakiss was hardly moving and was whatever about the whole thing. Mid first verse Hov stops the music and introduces everyone like “you already know Bleek, you already know Beans,” etc. Then he gets to Jada and announces the Ruff Ryders/Rocafella collaboration, the crowd goes wild and Jada is still like ‘whatever.’ So Jay hands Jada the mic and Jada does his singnature laugh.

Green Lantern drops the beat to Benjamins (oh yeah, Green was DJin the whole time, whattup homey!). The crowd goes wild and Jada tells Green to “shut that shit off.” “I don’t wanna do that song, that’s Puff’s song. Find me something else.” After a few minutes of searching, Green drops “The Champ Is Here.” Jadakiss says he doesn’t “remember the words” and “the crowd don’t wanna hear that.” At this point Jay has had enough of Jada’s lack of enthusiam and grabs the mic back and proceeds to bring the house down with the show closer, “Roc Boys.”

I was disappointed when the house lights came on, I still wanted American Dreamin and Fallin. Oh well, next time.