The ‘Summer of Jay-Z’ is real and goes far beyond his Yankee Stadium residency
TheGrio...
Three nights, online streaming parties and more made it all the more real: when Jay-Z moves, people pay attention, both young and old.
New York City was already having an epic summer, one of those periods when you look back fondly and every story gets a tad more exaggerated for effect. Then Jay-Z decided to hold court in the Bronx’s most hallowed ground for three nights.
Including one where the concert started well after midnight, ended near 3 a.m., and still felt like the greatest rap concert ever for some.
Jay-Z’s cachet is effortless cool. Even when rapping with the feelings of a C-suite CEO about Target boycotts and Amazon, there’s a light sincerity that shows up when he references the trials and tribulations of his debut album and his 2001 album, which properly crystallized all the self-mythology he had cooked up in the years prior. But the question remained. Would a 56-year-old Jay-Z, one who has been removed from crafting any new solo music for nearly a decade, command the attention of the world at large? Or was it nostalgia that led people to enjoy a “Hov Summer” for the first time in ages?
The answer? Depends on who you ask.
For a generation of music fans, three nights in New York romanticized Jay-Z the rapper and, in many ways, Shawn Carter the person. One night was dedicated to the joy of seeing his wife and his eldest daughter take in the moment; another to a mostly solo effort to remind people there are levels to this. There were surprises, even slights, from so-called online activists over his recent Target deal and more. As he thanked fans for staying late due to a four-hour delay caused by unverified ticket holders rushing the gates, he urged caution.
“I didn’t want to see people get trampled,” he told the crowd that endured for the long haul.
Chatting with friends who booked flights, bought tickets, and booked hotel stays just to experience this, I understood the moment. Over the weekend, they relayed back what they witnessed, whether it was Beyoncé in full shimmering glam for “Can’t Knock The Hustle” or the mini-city that sprouted up near Yankee Stadium. They purchased bootleg T-shirts, laughed with strangers, playfully argued about which album was better or meant more and left as a community.
“You should have come!” was their main reply.
Durags, Timbs, Yankee hats and Hov merch were everywhere. Some fans dressed like ‘ 90s-era Mary J. Blige or even Beyoncé circa “’03 Bonnie & Clyde.” If there was a “dress code” as there was for the “Cowboy Carter” and “Renaissance” tours, everyone got the memo. Even the younger crowd who wanted to be part of the moment.
“The people at Yankee Stadium understand the significance, as did Roots Picnic,” Justin Tinsley, senior writer at ESPN’s Andscape, told theGrio. “Now, does my 15-year-old cousin? He understands the hype. The same way we would’ve understood Prince at 15.”
Tinsley has written extensively on Jay-Z for years, recently focusing on the midpoint of rap’s biggest mythmaker and his status as the leader of America’s biggest show: the Super Bowl Halftime Show. He stood inside Yankee Stadium on Saturday, the celebratory night for “The Blueprint,” and laughed, knowing people near him shed legit tears to “Song Cry.”
“Jay doing all this is important, just from a cultural context,” he said. “It’s not about being his biggest fan. But seeing something like this in real time isn’t lost on me just from a documenting history standpoint.”
He added, “I can’t expect a [NBA] YoungBoy fan to understand. Not even questioning their intelligence or anything. But the same way my mom used to ask why I listened to Jay, UGK, or OutKast when her generation was right there? You get it when you get it.”
During the course of a weekend, internet FOMO raged. Some streamers lifted the live TikTok streams for attendees, so those not in NYC could watch with them; the equivalent of paying your neighborhood bootleg man whenever he had the newest DVDs. Small physical watch parties developed across the country, and those who hadn’t bought tickets for announced shows in London, Paris and Los Angeles began plotting their way to see the show.
At 56, Jay-Z has become his own prophecy. On “Encore,” the triumphant, buoyant swan-song affair from 2003’s “The Black Album,” he proclaimed himself rap’s Grateful Dead, a nod to the band fronted by Jerry Garcia, with a devout fanbase that would follow them everywhere. Watching people wait by the hour to get inside Yankee Stadium on Sunday night, going into the early stretches of Monday morning, made that sentiment all the more real.
Every small moment became its own headline. Packing 120,000 people into a baseball cathedral over the course of three nights is no small feat. All the talk of irrelevancy seemed dead the moment a small video of Beyoncé sheering down his fro into a fade and the crowd erupted.
No matter what, a “Jay-Z Summer” remains a thing. Whether it’s a nostalgia tour or people wanting to hear one last battle with perceived foes and slights, he can still command the center of the rap world at a moment’s notice.
Look no further than the thousands who waited outside to catch even a small glimpse of history.