Archive for October, 2005

You know, it’s no secret that the New York Times irritates me to no end, with their cracked out reporting, pretension and tomfoolery. While I do enjoy kicking the crossword’s ass from time to time, even that gets a little too “ooh we’re the NYT, la la la” for me. But I’ll take the crossword and put the rest in the litter box, if I had my choice. So you can imagine my excitement when my boss (my boss!!) passed along the URL for The New York Times: Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list. I generally don’t care for lists like this of any kind, because, really… really, now. But the best 1000 movies ever made? Really? According to whom? The New York Times, you say? Heaven help us.

1000 movies? Isn’t that a bit much? Doesn’t it lose its punch a bit after movie #265? And where’s Dirty Dancing? Soylent Green? New York Times, don’t even waste my time like that.

(Editor’s Note: Once again, I’m proud to present my roving reporter and one and only Literary PIMP, Levi Asher, who’s reporting in on the apparently fabulous “Jay-Z and Friends” concert last night. As for me, I held down the fort, watching Survivor, The Apprentice and ER — as always TMFB is making sure nothing is left behind. –Caryn)

Jay-Z’s show at Continental Airlines Arena ended 12 hours ago, I’m low on sleep and the music is still pounding in my head. I don’t want to gush, but this was some kind of extraordinary show.

We all knew there would be many special guests, because this is Jay’s only New York area concert this year, and the guy has a lot of friends. Still, I don’t think anybody in the audience was prepared for all that would follow.

First, even though I’ve been to this Arena many times, I managed to get lost on the way and arrived half an hour late. Jay-Z is the kind of artist who you can count on to make a big entrance, so I was really angry about this until we walked in at 8:30 and saw that the show was nowhere near ready to begin. It was a big party atmosphere in the corridors, and the stage was shrouded in secretive black.

I was sorry that my wonderful girlfriend couldn’t get free for the show, but this was good news for my sister Sharon who is also a big hiphop fan. We definitely stood out for our whiteness in this crowd, but everybody around us was very friendly and talkative, and there was no reason to feel out of place.

The lights finally went out and Jay made an entrance that lived up to my expectations. The stage revealed itself to be a replica of the Oval Office, and “President Carter” sat waiting with his back to the audience in a big leather chair behind the desk, flanked by suited bodyguards (we were seated to the side of the stage so we could see his face, which seemed to be breaking into an unwilling smile). Finally he swiveled his chair around and burst into his standard opening line from ” P.S.A”: “Allow me to re-introduce myself, my name is HOV”.

The show was hot from that point on, and never let up. Beanie Sigel joined Jay for songs like “Jigga What” and the great “U Don’t Know”. Tierra Marie did a short R&B section, Jay did another song or two and suddenly stopped and repeated the line “Bring Em Out” from the “Black Album” so that T.I. could come out and do “Bring Em Out” (based on Jay’s sampled voice) and a few other songs. T. I. was okay, but I was glad when he was joined and replaced by Young Jeezy, who I really like a lot. Jeezy’s signature bit goes like this: “Heeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyy”, sometimes alternated with “Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh”. It’s as infectious as Lil’ Jon’s “What?!”. Anyway, the real reason I was psyched to see Young Jeezy is that I wanted to hear “Soul Survivor” by Jeezy feat. Akon. This is a great song, my favorite song on the radio right now, and if you’re one of these people who goes to music blogs looking for new songs to download, I urge you to find and download this one. Akon is batting 1000 with me — he did “Locked Up” last year, “Soul Survivor” this summer — what the hell is next? Anyway, Jeezy and Akon really brought the house down and were a definite highlight to the evening, which had barely begun.

Yes, it gets better. Jadakiss and the whole D-Block/L.O.X. crew showed up, which made me very happy because I like Jadakiss just about as much as I like Jay-Z and really didn’t expect him to turn up. My only complaint is that the show pretty much peaked at this point. I didn’t need anymore. Jay-Z, Young Jeezy and Akon, and Jadakiss with the whole Block. Who could need any more hiphop than that?

Well, yeah, there was more hiphop to come. P. Diddy — or Diddy, or whatever Ben Stiller is calling him these days — joined Jadakiss for “All About The Benjamins”, a historic coming together of beefing rappers (Diddy produced the first L.O.X. album, apparently not to their satisfaction, and things haven’t been friendly since then). Freeway and Juvenile and Young Gunz and Memphis Bleek and many others I can’t identify or remember came up for their bits. Then Kanye West burst into the oval office for a powerful set including “Jesus Walks” and “Golddigger”. At this point my energy was flagging and I also try to avoid hearing “Golddigger” any more because the beat is a little too infectious and won’t go away, so I took the opportunity to find a seat (I’d been standing at the railing the whole time) and text my girlfriend.

But my texting was interrupted when suddenly Nas was on stage with Jay. First of all, this is a grouping of two of the very very best lyricists in hiphop, and a historic moment just for that reason. The fact that Jay and Nas have been in one of the most famous beefs in hiphop history made it more so. They ripped into Jay’s “Dead Presidents” together, and then Nas did a whole set including his greatest songs like “New York State of Mind”, “The World Is Yours” and, with P. Diddy, “Hate Me Now”.

At this point the stage was starting to look like Live-Aid, with everybody who’d been in the show up there together mingling around, yelling into the mic and looking really happy. The whole group managed to get some more music out — Nas’s great “Made You Look” and Jay’s “Encore” but we were all exhausted, it was midnight, and at this point I didn’t even want to see any more guest stars. I was thinking, please don’t bring out Snoop Dogg, this crowd can’t even take anymore, and I can’t either.

It was one of the more memorable concerts of my life (and I’ve seen a lot of memorable concerts). The crowd energy was great, and the sound system was mostly good although some of the mics were clearer than others. The best thing about the sound system was the booming bass, which shook the stadium so much that by midnight I felt like I’d had a three hour foot massage. Seriously, the bass was so strong, a deaf person could have heard this concert.

It was a night of legendary classic gangsta rap, with an overriding message of peace and love. “The beef shit was fun, but it’s over”, Jay said as he stood next to Nas. I happily agree.

–Levi

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a few days, but I’ve been busy with being a webcam superstar, snack food pundit and music critic. You know how it is…

A while back my boyfriend announced he got two tickets to see Jay-Z. I had planned to join him and prove just how cool I really am — unfortunately, since I can’t be in two places at once and plans got complicated, I ended up not being able to go after all. I’m pretty sad about this, not just because I think it will be a great show and I want to see Jay-Z, but more that this would have been a fun night out on the town for us, doing things we like to do and it’s a little reminder that there are many times we just aren’t able to do that as much as we would like. So, I may mope around for a few days and be seethingly jealous and maybe even cry a little bit as I sing along with “H to the Izzo“. Fortunately for all 5 of you TMFB readers, he’s promised to write a recap and review of the show and experience, like he’s done for a few other events in the past. I know you all will make sure to check back later in the week for that. Make a note of it, f’shizzle.