THE FIRST HIP-HOP PRESIDENT

Jay-Z “If you voted for Barack Obama, make some noise!” Given the volume of the crowd’s response to Jay-Z’s request, there were few John McCain supporters at Monday night’s star-studded concert. Sean Carter, the hip-hop headliner who performs as Jay-Z, helped pull tog ether the talent for the Warner Theatre show in downtown Washington, DC. But it was the memory of Martin Luther King mixed with the impending inauguration that gave the evening its energy.

Our VIP tickets said the show began at 8pm, but the lights were still up and the background music playing at 9:15pm. This was when Adrian Fenty, DC's popular mayor, made his way to the front of the balcony on a wave of applause, wearing a sharp tux and with three dapper men. The floor and upper level were packed, while many of the VIP seats were conspicuously empty when the curtain rose a half hour later. A couple of songs into Jay-Z's set, the crowd roared when Samuel L. Jackson and Usher filed in. It was then that I understood why politicians running for re-election are the only celebrities to show up to concerts before the lights go down.

Images of crowds assembled in front of the Lincoln Memorial were displayed on the seven flat-panel monitors backing the stage. They were not from Sunday’s “We Are One: Opening Inaugural Celebration”, but rather from the “March on Washington” in 1963, when Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech. When Jay-Z, who wore a rhinestone-studded Abraham Lincoln T-shirt, launched into “Dead Presidents II”, the screens flickered through a grab-bag of historic imagery, including pictures of John F. Kennedy, Malcom X and the Tiananmen Square protests.

Like any good Jay-Z album, the concert featured a coterie of top-notch guest appearances. Young Jeezy came on stage to perform his Obama tribute “My President”, with Jay-Z providing the new verse/chorus he had premiered a couple nights earlier at Jeezy’s concert. The crowd went wild when Mary J. Blige’s soulful voice could be heard over the opening notes of “Can’t Knock The Hustle”, the first track on Jay-Z’s classic debut "Reasonable Doubt". After another collaboration, this time on the Blige track “Real Love”, Jay-Z left the stage to let her perform a couple of songs on her own. Giving voice to the enthusiasm pulsing through the theatre, Blige said, “We are all in this together and everybody knows it now.” She then launched into “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”, a Martin Luther King tribute that U2 performed the day before at the Lincoln Memorial.

The set up for the final guest was more elaborate. In his introduction to “99 Problems”, a song about racial profiling (which features the off-colour chorus “If you’re havin’ girl problems I feel bad for you son/I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one”), Jay-Z said that the Obama team had “handcuffs on me during the campaign; now that it’s over I can tell y’all how I really feel.” As the raucous song concluded, a white sheet rose from the centre of the stage and the shapely silhouette of Jay-Z’s seemingly problem-free bride, Beyoncé, the current queen of the charts, was projected onto it. The sheet dropped, the cheering reached a crescendo and she took to the stage to perform her number-one hit, “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)”. The chorus was piped in so she could perform the elaborate dance routine featured in the song's remarkable music video.

“I just want to celebrate tonight,” Jay-Z said before his last song, the pre-emptively titled “Encore.” On cue, his backup vocalist Memphis Bleek and a roadie came on stage with a magnum of Cristal champagne and a rack of glasses, which they passed out to the audience members in the front rows. The bottle erupted in an explosion of expensive alcohol, and was then passed into the appreciative crowd. The celebrities filed out under the cover of darkness midway through the song, but no one noticed; all eyes were on the stage. Even after the curtain dropped and the lights rose, the crowd continued to stare in grateful disbelief at this tribute to the Reverend King’s dream, on the eve of the inauguration of the first hip-hop president.

~ CORBIN HIAR

Picture credit: i am guilty (via Flickr)