BASH OF THE TITANS
The question isn’t why rap’s reigning king, Jay-Z, would undertake a real, honest-to-goodness double-bill with Mary J. Blige in a year when his popularity is at an all-time high. It’s why the two have never hooked up for a co-headlining tour before.
The two, who are sharing the stage in the most celebrated urban music tour of the year, will play their “Heart of the City” concert on home turf at Madison Square Garden for three nights, starting Friday.
The double bill is a natural because the pair has a long history. Jay’s second chart single was a 1996 duet with fresh-faced Mary, then a rising talent who hadn’t yet been crowned the queen of hip-hop soul.
So when Mr. Z and Ms. J. step onto the expansive stage at MSG and open the show with that song, “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” they’re doing it to say this is where it all began. Meanwhile, years have passed and the musical flow is still there – as is their friendship.
It isn’t the first time Jay-Z has attempted to merge his star power with another hip-hop juggernaut. Three years ago, he and Chicago R&B crooner R. Kelly mounted the “Best of Both Worlds” tour. But when Kelly and Jay-Z played the Garden, the tour imploded.
Kelly claimed concertgoers were waving guns at him while he was performing, making him fear for his life and prompting him to run off the stage, where he was pepper-sprayed.
Jay-Z saved the show by turning that performance into an all-star hip-hop extravaganza in which most of his Roc-A-Fella crew, as well as Foxy Brown and Usher (all there to watch), ended up performing. One of the guest stars who helped keep fans from rioting that night was Blige. That, Jay-Z said, was the genesis of this tour.
“This comes out of the botched tour that I had with [Kelly] – it was fun while it lasted, but it didn’t last,” he told David Letterman on a joint “Late Show” appearance with Blige last month. “That tour turned into the Jay-Z and Friends tour, and Mary, being one of my friends, was there to help me out.”
Recalling the Friends tour, he added, “Mary and I’d do a set together and everybody who saw it said, ‘You two should tour together.’ So the idea was really in front of us the whole time.”
Blige agreed, but said the seeds of the tour were really planted years ago.
“We’ve know each other all of our careers and we’ve watched each other grow. I first met Jay on [his debut] ‘Reasonable Doubt’ when we did ‘Can’t Knock the Hustle.’ We’ve been friends since then.”
So do these friends ever fight?
“No, because we’re open with each other,” Jay said. “We know [fights happen] so we cut those things off at the pass.”
The magic that powered that original Jay-Z and Friends show is conjured again for “Heart of the City” by these markedly different, yet totally like-minded performers.
Music producer Shelia Rogers, who has booked the musical acts on “Late Night With David Letterman” since 1992, was impressed by the pair’s chemistry when they played the talk show.
“The audience was very excited about this booking,” Rogers said. “Jay has a great connection with an audience, and Mary just blew them away with her voice. It was dynamic, one of the most exciting bookings we’ve had.”
Rogers also says there is synergy when they’re together onstage: “They play off each other so well.” She added that chemistry even extends off stage. “Jay told me that when you’re on a tour like this it makes a real difference when you’re with somebody you already hang out with.”
The fans who’ve already seen the “Heart of the City” show agree.
After a warm-up concert at the Izod Center at the Meadowlands, one blogger wrote: “It was an unforgettable night of empowerment for both genders. Gut-wrenching songs of love and loss from Blige and hard-hitting anthems of hustlin’, fame, money and women from Jay-Z.”
Besides being similar performers and sharing the same audience, Jay-Z and Blige are also alike in how they fit into the marketplace. Both move fewer records nowadays than six years ago when the hip-hop/rap market was peaking, yet both artists have retained their fan base and musical relevance.
That’s evident in Jay-Z’s $150 million “360 degree” deal with Live Nation – the producer of this tour – and Blige’s most recent success with her Grammy-grabbing album, “The Breakthrough.” That said, either one of these singers could have had their share of solo sellouts at Madison Square Garden.
The strategy of the pairing lends the concert a feeling that this gig is a historic hip-hop/rap summit with two undisputed headliners. That way, the $300-plus top ticket might not hurt quite as much.
Those tickets are expected to gross the Heart of the City tour $33 million over the course of its 20-show run, which concludes May 8 at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Caseville, Conn. That means Jay-Z’s tour is doing slightly better then his bride, Beyoncé, who was last year’s top-grossing hip-hop act. Beyonce raked in $24 million, but did so over the course of 28 shows.
Whether you snagged one of those pricey front-row seats or one of the more economical nosebleed tickets, what you’ll see and hear in concert at the Garden is the duo in a round-robin program.
After they take their bow together with “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” Jay-Z leaves Blige in charge of the stage for a set of her crowd-pleasing hits such as “You’re All I Need,” “Mary Jane (All Night Long)” and “Real Love,” during which Jay returns to interpolate a few rhymes.
Blige’s music chronicles her history of relationship abuse and heartbreak. Many say she wears that unhappiness on her sleeve in her music. After all the Mr. Wrongs, for the past five years she’s been free of drama and living in marital bliss with producer Kendu Isaacs and his two children.
In concert, you know when she’s about to remember the bad old days because she leads off the between song patter with “Ladies” to get the girls’ attention. Blige’s songs of contentment are in the set, but the powerful heartbreakers like “No More Drama” and “Not Gonna Cry” are the showstoppers.
Jay-Z knows Blige is a hard act to follow. He does so with the minimalist rap-rock of “99 Problems” and a few numbers from his recent “American Gangster” record. One of the best of those new raps is the party song “Roc Boys.”
If the Garden gig follows the footsteps of previous concerts, Blige will join Jay-Z for “Song Cry” and again during the encore “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love).”
While Jay-Z is also happily married (his nuptials to Beyoncé earlier this month were confirmed with a hearty on-stage congratulations from Blige), during his set he makes no mention of marriage and instead gets serious about politics.
At recent West Coast concert, he projected the image of President Bush on the screen while he rapped about the horrors the people of the Gulf Coast have suffered since Hurricane Katrina. While he’s raised this dark chapter in recent American history before, at these shows Jay-Z has added the need for new government management by flashing a photo of Barack Obama on the screen as he gives the senator the hip-hop endorsement for his presidential candidacy.
While Obama might take Clinton flak for getting an old gangster’s endorsement, he’ll have to remind the Clintons that Jay-Z isn’t a thug, he’s the king of rap.
The Heart of the City tour featuring Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige plays Madison Square Garden Friday, May 6 and 7. All three shows are sold out.
‘Heart of the city’: guide to the Set List
* Opening Number: “Can’t Knock the Hustle” Mary and Jay tag-team the 1995 duet that helped launch his career.
* Mary’s Turn: She’s on her own for an hour-long set that includes classic tunes such as “You’re All I Need” and “I’m Going Down.”
* Jay’s Back – for just a second. He tosses a few fresh rhymes into “Real Love.”
* Her Big Finish: Mary knocks ’em dead with the heartwrenching “No More Drama” and “Not Gonna Cry.”
*Hova Takes Over: With a massive orchestra behind him, Jay-Z rocks hits from “American Gangster,” including “Roc Boys.” He moves on to smashes like “99 Problems” and “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.”
* Jay’s Guests: Depending on who’s hanging backstage -and at the Garden, there’ll be plenty of folk in the wings – Jay calls on Kanye West, Memphis Bleek, Young Jeezy or Timbaland to help him out on “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and “Good Life.”
* Mary J. and Jay – one more time: After “Song Cry,” the two come back for a final encore performance of “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love,” complete with flashypyrotechnics.
