Jay-Z made his first-ever solo performance at SXSW last night, appearing in Austin, Texas, for a gig at the Moody theatre as part of the Interactive festival. It was ostensibly an intimate affair – apart from the thousands who tuned in online to watch the AmEx-funded YouTube live stream.
If only Jay-Z could have heard the crowds at home. For all the shine and dazzle of Hova's lighting design (not to mention his massive gold watch), the Texas audience seemed tame – enthusiastic but well behaved. Festival passes swung around necks, arms swung in the air, but the concert's first half gave the impression of a man performing for a corporate-sponsored promo event. This was not the rapper's finest 90 minutes. Squinting at my screen, I saw more iPhones dancing than people.
The internet, however, was going wild. Live-streamed concerts are a peculiarly contemporary phenomenon, with ritual and protocols. Before the concert began, thousands dutifully tweeted, using the appropriate hashtag, hoping to influence Jay-Z's set list. At 8pm, the tweets started to question his punctuality. And then when the concert finally began, around 8:30pm, the Twitter storm erupted: complimenting Jay-Z's choice of opening number, insulting his tropical baseball cap, or (as in my case) sputtering at a stream that didn't seem to work where I was watching.
Jay-Z had some technical difficulties too, restarting at the top owing to problems with the backing track. Soon I was there with the rest of the virtual crowd, toggling between camera-views as Jigga rolled through his greatest hits. (One camera-view, controlled by fans' tweeted instructions, was exactly as useless as you would expect.) No cameos, no guitar solos: just Jay-Z rapping.
Inevitably, the highlight was Glory – Jay-Z's latest song, released just days after the birth of his daughter. While neither Beyoncé nor Blue Ivy made an appearance, something changed in Jay-Z as he sang about his child, his family, his wife's past miscarriage. Instead of crowd-baiting histrionics, call and response, he was rapping about something he cared about, here and now – and it showed. For the rest of the set, the 42-year-old seemed engaged with the material, with this strangely sedate concert hall, with bragging and rhyming and sending the audience home happy. And even if it ended on a damp squib – Encore, tossed off before even leaving the stage – there was lots to love in the last minutes' hooks and swagger.
In the end, Jay-Z called it himself. "All the parents in the house, make some noise!" he shouted, possibly for the first time. And then he did.
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