If you missed Jay-Z and Kanye West when they were on the Watch The Throne tour in 2011, you might have caught up with Jigga while he was a guest on Beyonce’s On the Run tour. If you missed both of those tours, you weren’t about to let Jay-Z come to Seattle and miss out on another one of his live performances. That was my situation, and seeing Jay-Z perform live at some point in my life was on my bucket list.
Over the last couple of months, seeing article after article about how Jay-Z wasn’t selling tickets for his tour seemed strange. It left me skeptical about how the evening might go. I also questioned the support around the Seattle area for an older hip-hop legend like Jay-Z. I was interested to see how the attendance would turn out.
Anyways, with pretty low expectations, I purchased a ticket that would simply get me in the building, nothing crazy. After getting to my seat and looking around, the KeyArena was nearly full and there wasn’t an opportunity to sneak down to lower seats for a better view. He eventually came out after Vic Mensa opened up for him and began to do his thing.
By the end of the night, Jigga had played his old hits like “Hard Knock Life”, “Big Pimpin”, and “Dirt Off Your Shoulders”. He played his newer stuff too, like “Lost One’s”, “Fuck With Me You Know I Got It.” He wrapped up the evening with “Empire State of Mind,” and songs off his newest, and one of his best albums, 4:44.
It was a special moment when he performed the “Numb/Encore” song, which featured Linkin Park. At the beginning of it he took a moment to dedicate the song to his friend, Chester Bennington. He was the lead singer of Linkin Park, who had lost his life to suicide just a few short months ago. Jay told the crowd how serious mental illness was, and that everyone should be aware and supportive for those around them because, “you never know what someone is going through.”
Overall, throughout the entire night I don’t think anyone had a chance to sit down in their seat because he was doing such a good job with his performance. It was one of the best shows that I’ve ever seen. I felt lucky to share the evening with Jay-Z and engage with the energy he presented while behind the microphone. You could feel his musical passion through the speakers of the KeyArena, and I imagine anyone who went had the time of their lives.
With all that noise about Jay-Z not selling tickets and how the 4:44 tour was a bust, it was ironic to see an article on Billboard that said “Jay-Z’s 4:44 tour will be his highest grossing solo run ever despite cheap tickets.” After a brief look into it, the reason for the cheaper tickets is due to a new pricing strategy implemented by some artists, which will help kick ticket scalpers out of the game and will allow the real fans to get in the building. Crazy time we live in.
