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On “Addicted to the Game,” a fan-favorite Blueprint-era loosie, Jay-Z sums up his career with one of my all-time favorite lines of his: “Thoughts are sporadic, I gotta un-confuse it/Sort of like a Rubik’s Cube is/Every album’s a color, but I fuck up the other color.” With 25-odd years of distance, it’s hilarious that he said this at what we now know as merely the halfway point in his discography; like most of his lines, it now holds a more prophetic weight than maybe even he could’ve imagined. Over the span of a weekend-residency at Yankee Stadium, Jay-Z tried to make sense of the Rubik’s Cube of his career with fascinating—at times thrilling, at times emotional—results.
Back in January, staring down the barrel of the 30th anniversary of his career, Jay played coy about how much he’d celebrate this milestone, even as he promised a year defined by “all offense.” Fast forward to July, and here he is in a bulletproof vest, standing before his hometown ready to receive love, but also take on all smoke. No locs, no fro, no plaits—a 10-year hair odyssey finds him back to his trademark Brooklyn money cut. All hail, Caesar’s home, now get your ass up off the throne.
Jay’s pulled off a lot of impressive live feats over the years—eight straight sold-out shows to open Barclays, Carnegie Hall—but this stadium weekend had a different resonance. It was a victory lap and more importantly—in the face of claims that he’s lost relevance that was over-inflated to begin with—a full-throated reminder. It’s been years since we’ve seen Jay do anything music-related (from new offerings to live shows) that wasn’t fleeting or a one-off; as the years march on and his activity wanes, his legacy only holds more gravity. This isn’t simply Jay-Z back outside, it’s Jay-Z back outside in a way we now know not to take for granted, in a way we could very well not see again.
Courtesy of Roc Nation
