JAY-Z IN MANCHESTER

I was one of the lucky 13,000 to witness Mr Carter in MEN Arena on Monday night, had these pricey tickets since the start of this year so I was rather excited by the time it came around… However it was not the first time I’v seen Jay on the big stage, back in July I caught him in Chicago at Charter One Pavilion. Ciara and Fabulous opened for him back in 2009 so i was expecting big things again, and only found out the day before that ’special guests’ were Mr Hudson and Drake…

Personally I’m not a fan of either, not into Mr Hudsons stuff and I don’t really favour the Auto-Tune style of Drake but he did give a good performance and it was his first time on stage in the UK. He opened with ‘Forever’ and played a good 35 minute set including hits ‘Bed Rock’ and ‘Best I Ever Had’ but kept interrupting the songs to show love for Lil Wayne who is in prison after pleading guilty to gun possession charges. It is confusing however that Jay-Z likes the 23 year old rapper seen as Drake uses Auto-Tune in all of his songs and Jay is the artist who dropped D.O.A. but thats a whole other conversation…

A good 10 minutes after Drake had left stage a countdown came onto the screens starting at 9.59… With 90 seconds left Drake was escorted down the side of the arena to the soundbox in the centre of the floor, accepting and giving another loud applause and then he took a seat to observe and I guess take notes on Jay’s performance.

Jay-Z cannot put on a bad show… He is now 40 years of age and has spent more than half of them in show business, the energy he gives and the way he narrates the night can be matched by none. At one point he waited 5 minutes for a girl to take a video recording of him replacing lyrics with her name. Jay played a solid 90 minutes not even leaving the stage for the typical ‘go and come back for an encore’ instead he just played through until about 11.20 when ‘Encore’ got the crowds loudest reception of the night.

Another crowd pleasing trick Jay pulled out was the ‘Roc-Wave’ basically a mexican wave where the audience throw up their ‘Rocafella Diamonds’.

In conclusion the concert was awesome… Although I’m not a fan of Drake I feel blessed to witness his first time on British soil, and as for Jay-Z well I’l happily pay the money to see him again no matter what age, as long as he’s still performing with the same effort and energy the crowds will be there.

I have thrown up some video’s (from Youtube not filmed by myself)

Jay-Z ‘Big Pimpin’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsXEcLoT2rs

Drake ‘Best I Ever Had’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQH4SOX5JAI

CANT WAIT FOR N.E.R.D. IN 2 WEEKS!

Make sure you drop in for that… Peace!

-THOMAS PHAM