{"id":7496,"date":"2014-05-15T12:13:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T16:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/?p=7496"},"modified":"2022-01-18T13:22:29","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T21:22:29","slug":"jay-z-and-the-second-life-of-hip-hops-golden-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/?p=7496","title":{"rendered":"Jay-Z, and the Second Life of Hip Hop\u2019s Golden Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"On
\nJay-Z once bragged about how he\u00a0held us down for six summers – and that was back in 2001. To put that into perspective, there was no Twitter, no hashtags, no smartphones. You could argue that the most consistent cultural presence in the last 15 years has been Jay-Z (or Pharrell<\/a>).
\nIs three tours in one year too many for Jay-Z?<\/a>
\nThere\u2019s no coincidence between Jay-Z\u2019s stature in hip hop and his ability to tour, with live shows the heart of an artist\u2019s longevity. Albums matter, of course – but tours are the event (in addition to where artists make most of their money). Jay-Z has nine annotated tours<\/a> on Wikipedia. That list doesn\u2019t include the Hard Knock Life<\/em> tour, which, looking at the cast list, is probably the seminal tour of that generation (and it gave us the classic documentary Backstage<\/em><\/a>, which introduced us to Dame Dash yelling at people<\/a>).
\nBut those days of oversized football jerseys are literally and figuratively last century. Jay-Z\u2019s last three tours, Magna Carter World Tour <\/em>(which ran in the Fall of 2013), Legends of Summer <\/em>(with Justin Timberlake, taking place in the summer of 2013), and Watch the Throne<\/em> Tour <\/em>(with Kanye West, spanning Fall 2011 to Summer 2012) hit a cultural and music zeitgeist in their own way. The album Watch the Throne<\/em> introduced the decadence of high art and high fashion in the most opulent ways. The tour was the concrete realization of that ideal, grossing $75 million in 57 tour dates, placing it as the highest grossing<\/a> hip hop tour ever.
\nWhile Watch the Throne Tour<\/em> featured the two biggest names in High Art Rap, the Legends of Summer<\/em> featured Jay-Z and the biggest name in pop music. That tour grossed $69.8 million<\/a>. Less than two months later, Jay-Z embarked on his Magna Carter<\/em> victory laptour (he grossed $18 million<\/a> in 10 of the largest cities).
\nAnd those numbers don\u2019t include Beyonc\u00e9, who grossed over $100 million<\/a> from touring in 2013. At this rate, if my math is correct, On the Run<\/em> is set to make around $100 billion. And for Jay-Z? It\u2019ll just be memories in the family scrapbook.
\nThey\u2019re Back, Although They Never Left<\/strong>
\nI divide Jay-Z\u2019s career into three eras. The first spans from Reasonable Doubt<\/em> to The Blueprint<\/em> – these are the rap years. The second era spans from The Blueprint 2<\/em>, to retirement, to The Blueprint 3 – <\/em>these are Jay-Z\u2019s wandering years. Now, we\u2019re in Jay-Z 3.0: The High Art Years.
\nFor a genre that\u2019s supposed to be a young person\u2019s game, hip hop\u2019s elder statesmen are having a moment. From Outkast\u2019s reunion at Coachella<\/a>, to the 20th anniversary of Nas\u2019 <\/a>Illmatic<\/em><\/a>, to Pharrell\u2019s year<\/a>, to Wu-Tang\u2019s one million dollar album, the Golden Age performers are using all the tricks of their old man, YMCA game to be as effective as ever. Hip hop today is like the mid 2000s NBA – you had your Garnett\u2019s, Duncan\u2019s, and the \u201896 draft class<\/a> battling against the Lebron\u2019s and Melo\u2019s of the new age \u201803 class<\/a>. Except music isn\u2019t athletics, and artists\u2019 careers last as long as they can stand on stage.
\nIn a way, social media has widened the gap between hip hop haves and hip hop have nots. As Bomani noted on The Evening Jones<\/a> last week, people on the internet think the entire world is on the internet. We tend to think that that artist all over our Twitter timeline is making a dent in larger culture, and Twitter music culture is something – but have they sold out tours?
\nThe early 90\u2019s generation grew up, and grew older, right in front of our eyes. Reunion tours, albums, retirements, breakups, music festivals – that\u2019s just part of the natural growth cycle of a music longevity – and hip hop has that. My friends and I used to joke about how one day, hip hop albums like 36 Chambers<\/em> are going to be played on the oldies station. But that\u2019s not necessarily a joke – that\u2019s a symbol of a genre\u2019s maturity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay-Z once bragged about how he\u00a0held us down for six summers – and that was back in 2001. To put that into perspective, there was no Twitter, no hashtags, no smartphones. You could argue that the most consistent cultural…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[96],"class_list":["post-7496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-boblogs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bomanijones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}