At the time we thought it might be his final outing. You could catch it in the B-roll shots from Fade to Black, that mix of people’s pure, memory-lane elation and their depressing knowledge that this might be the last time they’d see this man make nostalgic magic with their own eyes. This is never clearer than when you’re at one of Jay’s concerts and you see just how truly fucking happy people are. He’s been dropping albums for close to 20 years, and each of us can connect at least one of his songs to a specific formative moment. For this generation, Jay’s music is a time capsule to any number of memories. But to any Jay fan, that doesn’t detract from his everlasting coolness-the kind that only people in cigarette ads display, where you’re being awesome even when no one’s watching-or his legacy. Sure, he’s had some clunkers and poppy throwaways, and in recent years he has clung to fame with the grip of somebody who knows it’s a young(er) man’s game. Who compares? His wordplay, delivery, beat-selection, consistency over the years-on any of these specific points there are dozens of entries in his catalog to back up his claim to greatness. In my mind, even as I found myself, like most Jay fans, defending him at one point or another, it was never a discussion. Throughout his career Jay’s more than proven he’s the pound-for-pound greatest. For classic album after classic album (save Kingdom Come, even though true fans even gave that one a few chances), Jay’s lessons and lyrics billowed into my brain on morning and afternoon bus rides, and even in the hazy moments before I went to sleep. Growing up, I listened to him more than I listened to friends, parents, siblings, and sports coaches. Although it was, in one respect, an explicit bid to restore some of the hype to a service that’s been roundly mocked by the media and that has struggled to gain traction, it was also a widely appreciated gesture from an artist whose concerts in the last few years have been so stacked with hit songs (and less beloved newer singles) as to exclude many of the gems from his catalog that made him so great in the first place.įor any hip-hop kid raised in the 90s and early 00s, Eminem was the unruly hero and Kanye the creative leader, but Jay was our generation’s true superstar. The would-be Unplugged sessions are the first of their kind for Jay, and instead of being powered by a media juggernaut like MTV, the nights were hosted by Hov’s own streaming service/media conglomerate/Illuminati association TIDAL. The context for the shouting was the second of Jay’s two B-Sides concerts in his home city. The first moments of my 25th were spent hanging over the balcony at New York’s Terminal 5, screaming along to Jay Z’s “Feelin’ It,” and I pray I spend the rest of my year doing just the same.
They say how you spend your birthday is how you'll spend your year. Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Live Nation