The Worst Jay-Z Concert Ever
I had this dream the other night and in it, I attended this Jay-Z concert but it was in this crappy church basement, with wood-paneling and yellowed tiles and dark, brown folding chairs in rows and flickering fluorescent lights. I am in the front row with four of my friends, looking at the rather spare “stage” and by stage, I just mean an area where the 10 or so rows of fold-out chairs aren’t lined up, leaving an empty space for a performer. This space is occupied by a table for a DJ and in front of the DJ, a little television, like 20 inches, on a stand on wheels; the kind your Science teacher would wheel-in when you got to watch an episode of ‘Bill Nye’. On the television is a blank power-point template, with a light sky-and-clouds background and a blinking cursor. When the show begins, Jay comes out in a ‘Reasonable Doubt’ style suit and the lyrics he raps pop-up on the television like a power point. Each line appears and then the next line appears below it and every four lines, the lyrics disappear for the next four lines. My friends and most of the other people at the show look at one another like “this is really terrible, right?” but for some reason I’m totally entranced, as if the show is at Madison Square Garden.
The whole show is so low-rent and everybody knows it, including Jay-z. He just raps over instrumentals supplied by a DJ, as his lyrics pop up on a shitty power-point. Late in the performance, Jay stops and speaks to the crowd telling them he is going to reveal a new song and proceeds to perform a ’99 Problems’-esque song, ’99 Problems’-esque in the sense that it was this “heavy rocker” with sampled guitars, but the guitars were not from Billy Squier but from the most obnoxious Marilyn Manson song, so it has this really bad tone and generally embarrassing nu-metal feel. As the song begins, the television screen switches from power-point lyrics to this cartoony image of Morbius from Spiderman, done in this cheap animation style, literally this image. The Morbius cartoon is shown in close-up on the screen and his mouth opens and he’s supposed to be cackling, but the animation style is like, really choppy, like when you’re robotripping or something, so the mouth just sort of hangs open bearing sharp teeth and the entire upper-body and head of the cartoon just kind of move up and down. Then, Jay begins rapping over the nu-metal guitars and the walls open up, as if they were made to break open and this like, fake-looking futuristic machinery moves in and out of the breakaway walls and the lights start flickering…imagine ‘Judge Dredd’ as a broadway musical. So now, Jay is rapping over nu-metal, the walls are opening up and going futuristic and there’s a weird loop of a vampire cartoon on the television and this goes on for a few minutes and then the song goes into this extended breakdown, like classic Iron Maiden and the lights dim and Jay steps back, nodding to the breakdown while the doors to the church basement open and this guy dressed as Nosferatu walks in. The Nosferatu costume is ridiculously well-done, like Hollywood horror movie quality and it has like chains and spikes and shit like some stupid Clive Barker design and Nosferatu walks around the audience to scare them I guess, but no one really knows how to respond and after about two minutes, Nosferatu exits the room and the beat drops again and Jay finishes the song. Then, the lights come back on and the wall closes up and Jay ends the show with ‘Can’t Knock the Hustle’ but for some reason, the bassline from ‘Ain’t No Nigga’ is poorly inserted into the song.
The final part of the dream is my friends and I, driving home with everyone just sort of like “what the fuck was that?” but I’m in denial about it and this leads to legitimately heated arguments with my friends about why it wasn’t a bad show but inside, I know everything I’m saying is just bullshit…so yeah, explain that one. Any internet Freuds can step forward…I think it’s about how I want to bang my mom.
Are You A Serious Comic Book Reader?