Jay-Z tops the ticket at hip-hop showcase
He hit the themes - money, ego, women - while adding powerful political messages.
Virtually on the eve of what's being called America's most important election, Jay-Z - hip-hop's unofficial CEO - put civic duty in most succinct terms to the throng that sold out Power 99 FM's Powerhouse showcase at the Wachovia Center on Friday night.
"You voting?" he asked from the stage, then directly told the crowd not to screw up - albeit not exactly in those words.
Howard Dean couldn't have made a sharper case.
With that, Powerhouse and Jay-Z proved how much they have grown. And not just in terms of production values, large live bands and multi-screen presentations.
Powerhouse has become rap's pulpit.
For promoting new songs? That's a given.
T-Pain leaked bits of November's Thr33 Ringz. Ne-Yo was a coy seducer who sounded smoothest when paired with a plucky acoustic guitar and a withering soprano sax. Ludacris made a surprise visit, carrying a bottle of Jack Daniels and laying down some new verses.
Yet 2008's Powerhouse was best when it pushed the rhetoric of social and political change as only the best lobbyist could. That was left to T.I. and Jay-Z.
Jay - Live Nation's new $150 million man and a genuine showman after 12 years - showed dancing girls on the screens, rapped alongside Philly's Memphis Bleek, and DJ AM, and pursued the agenda of boasts, roasts, money, drugs and thugs on propulsive tracks such as "Show Me What You Got." Jay and company proved their reggae chops by turning "Can I Live" into a brassy skank and "Roc Boys" into a slinky ska number.
But Jay's finest was an a cappella "Minority Report," in which he skewered himself and outgoing President Bush for doing little for Hurricane Katrina's victims. Jay sounded so vulnerable you could feel the levees breaking before you.
Moments later, in a rapid transition between them, Jay-Z split (he came back later) and T.I. hit the stage. The Atlanta rapper was vociferously dedicated in his between-tune patter to getting the peeps to vote. But his raps were apolitical; steely and spare with sinister, glum melodies and pointedly self-serializing lyrics. Nothing un-dramatic about that; his reedy raps on "Live Your Life" and "What Up, What's Hapnin' " were all about accentuating the positive.
However, Jay-Z made his message clearer during one powerful song than all of T.I.'s speeches combined.