Media Watch

Notes From the 'Heart of the City'

nOvaMatic  |  04/03/2008 at 11:00 AM  |  Comments (8)

Although I consider myself a fan of Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z (not so much Jay-Z these days), I'm sitting this tour out. Personally, I don't do big shows; they cost entirely too much to spend the evening resisting the urge to get brolic with a group of sassy chickenheads. Small venues with lesser-known artists are my element. With that, the reports from the Heart of the City tour are rolling in. There are too many reviews to count, but a sampling (along with some footage) follows after the bounce.

South Florida Times: "Some might characterize Mary's set as the ladies hour. However, much like me, every guy in the building not only knew every Mary song, but actively participated in the delivery of each tune... Jay has mastered the roller coaster ride a live rap show is supposed to be. He takes the audience from energetic highs to thoughtful lulls with ease. Just when you think he's going to give you another song abut the ills of life and the hustle, he springs 'Big Pimpin' on you just to remind the audience that this is a Jay-Z show and not a Talib Kweli set...This was definitely one of the best Hip-Hop shows I have attended. People dressed to the nines and the more mature crowd gelled together like one giant organism."

If you thought that said "orgasm", you're not alone. Here's some footage from the Miami show:

New York Times: "The musicality never wavered, and Ms. Blige's performances were cathartic: the deepest soul, private torment at arena scale. Then, having worked through the traumas, Ms. Blige proffered advice -- the self-esteem counsel of 'Work That' and 'Just Fine' -- and she was dancing again... Jay-Z's set was a high achiever's victory celebration... Jay-Z aims for variety, setting different meters for nearly every one of his raps, but in concert his virtuosity was just one more thing he took for granted. When Ms. Blige joined him to sing the hook on the finale -- 'Heart of the City,' of course -- it was her voice that put the longing into the song."

Newsday: "Each played to type: Blige, the talk therapist, and Jay-Z, the clever conversationalist. At times, they seemed like Venus and Mars, with Blige offering affirmations and sympathies while Jay-Z offered humor and bravado. That's not to say the audience split perfectly down gender lines, though. Plenty of low male voices could be heard singing Blige's anthem 'No More Drama,' just as plenty of girls squeaked their way through Jay-Z's rowdy 'H to the Izzo.'"

Philly.com: "And her [Mary's] singing isn't marked by the rococo flourishes of competitors like Mariah Carey and Beyonce. In comparison, it can seem blunt and hard edged. When Mary J. gets down to the business of bonding with her empathetic audience, there's no room for excessive vocal decoration...Jay-Z briefly killed the momentum of his set, however, when he teased the audience with intros to several of his hits, then failed to play them."

NJ.com: "Jay-Z is a brave man. He must be, or he wouldn't have chosen to follow Mary J. Blige onstage, as he did Friday night at the Izod Center in East Rutherford... Jay-Z was in mostly good (and occasionally great) form Friday night. But his performance still seemed anticlimactic. Blige built slow, but by the time she got to a series of explosive songs deep into her set, she was at her best, simultaneously expressing deep pain and a fierce resolution not to be hurt again... While Blige's set had a well-conceived dramatic arc to it, Jay-Z lost steam toward the end of the evening. In an intimate and amusing but ultimately frustrating routine, he took over for his DJ, playing segments of various hits before quickly rejecting them."

Did anyone catch the shows in Miami, NY, NJ and Philly? Did Mary J. really save Jigga's ass? I'd be touched if that turned out to be true.

Tags: jay-z, mary j. blige