My Night: So I Paid A Visit To “The House That Hov Built,” Last Night………..

Let me just say this: I’m STILL pissed at Mr. Z for removing the Nets from East Rutherford, NJ because he decided to live a lifelong dream of building a stadium in his hometown in which he’s a minority owner to the team that plays in it. Selfish ass. Aside from that, last night was, again….one for the books.
Since last Friday, we’ve been getting stories, videos, pictures and Twitter recaps from the who’s who of the music industry in regards to their experience at The Barclays Center with Jay-Z. Some interesting, some redundant and some….give me a minute…well, pretty awesome. A majority of my friends and peers have seen Jay a HANDFUL of times: festivals, surprise appearances, WTT, Summer Jam, award shows. Yeah he performs the same cuts and stands in the same spot with his awkward, rich b-boy demeanor. Yeah we sing along to those same cuts as if we’re in the club with our crew, because that’s essentially what a Jay-Z concert is: clubbing with your crew. Yeah, it sounds repetitive every time we go see him but this Barclays experience was a bit different.
No, not because the stage set up looked like a makeshift amusement park slides that would be fun as fuck to slide down if you were drunk during the summer. No, not because there was a 40/40 club built INSIDE the arena, to which I didn’t find (don’t worry, I will when I go to a game). No, not because there was a basketball court, aside from the obvious one in the arena, visible when you first walk in to your left. And no, not because even though he’s Jay-Z, a CULTURE icon, he still had those corporate and suburban white folks in Brooklyn N.Y. walking around without a care in the world. Nah, bot because of any of that stuff.
More so because for once, and this is just me observing from the outside in, he looked EXTREMELY comfortable on a stage he helped build. Nah, not his set. I’m talking about the arena. He smiled a lot. Put it like this, Jay performing in that arena for these 8 shows is like the kid who FINALLY got what he wanted for Christmas and couldn’t WAIT to show it off to alllll his friends AND naysayers. “Told you I’d get that toy when you said I couldn’t,” was the expression Hov wore ALLLL night.
But it resonated throughout the arena. You could tell the Brooklyn natives from the other NY natives. They beamed the same way. They walked with their chest out with their Brooklyn accents hanging on to each sentence they spewed. No one was territorial, at all. It was like they all wanted to say “On behalf of Jay-Z, welcome to Brooklyn. The ladies at the food stands were even extremely friendly and elated to be there. Joking it up with EVERYONE. And trust me, those folks can be rude as fuck….RUDE. But these ladies weren’t. They relished in the fact that they were apart of history. Something that probably a little more to them than anyone might know or understand.
Jay’s strut onstage was loose. His commentary with the crowd was extremely candid. Yeah, the portion at the end of the show where he points folks was done, but he did it with a lot more finesse than usual. At certain points, he was having full blown conversations with some of the fans. Pointing out lunatic fans who were jumping up and down which made said fan even more crazier. Of course she was from Brooklyn….Brownsville to be exact. He saluted a young whipper snapper who was attending a Jay show for the first time. “Everyone say what’s up to Jaden real quick,” he ordered the crowd. And the most thoughtful gesture of the night came when he saw someone waving that #4 Brooklyn Nets jersey so hard that he actually signed it for him. Jokingly, he told the security guard who retrieved the Jersey “Yo, don’t step on my set man.” Loose Jay was on a roll.
The Roc Boys, his band who was hoisted a couple feet above him, were like kids in a candy store. During certain songs, each Roc Boy would try to out due the other with their specific parts in the songs. “Nah nigga….my shit bang harder than yours” is the demeanor shown through their body language. Like they were keeping each other on their toes. And Young Guru, sporting his platinum Roc piece was rapping along to every word as she should. Then I saw the OG Lenny S in the pit…watching his best friend go to work. And it’s crazy to me because I’m sure he’s just like “Yeah, that’s just my buddy up there having some fun. Nothing special.” But to us? It’s crazy.
I could go on and on and on about the things I saw and observed last night, however, we’d be here all night and I have a bus to catch in 30 minutes and I’m not even dressed yet. But I just wanted to share some details that some of these recaps might have missed. Yeah, the music was on point, as it always is during a Jay show. But like the man of the hour says on “Three Kings”, last night? “It’s Just Different.”
Jas, I know man. But THANK YOU. In more ways than one.
Ok, bye!

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