On a big stage in the Yankee Stadium outfield, a trap door opened. Down went Justin Timberlake, slowly sinking as he led the full house in the chant that closes "Mirrors," an anodyne pop song about his successful search for a soulmate. Beside him, another trap door opened. As Timberlake dropped from sight, rapper Jay Z emerged from beneath the stage and launched into "Run This Town," a song about how he runs this town. They both looked a bit like mannequins on industrial lifts, and did not make eye contact.
The town Jay Z means is, of course, New York; he has made claims to its rulership for more than a decade. He has been a perennial frontrunner in the King of New York sweepstakes, and periodically he likes to take over the city's largest venues, surround himself with symbols of power and collaborators who attest to his supremacy, and invite everybody to see. The Legends of the Summer Tour, which pairs him with re-emergent pop star Timberlake, presided over Yankee Stadium for two hot nights this weekend.
The stars fronted an 18-piece band, which included three (!) drummers, three synthesizer players, a pair of guitarists, a four-piece horn section and four backing vocalists. The bandstand, beneath rectangular frames that doubled as a video projection system, was massive and imposing. Performances of major hits were crisp and professional, if never exactly revelatory, and the pair performed for a generous 2 ½ hours. Everything was calibrated to impress, to establish the stars as pop music royalty - and to disguise the fact that both are now removed from their creative peaks.
Since the 2006 end of his unconvincing retirement, Jay Z has often presented himself as the dominant member of a duo. He first took over Yankee Stadium in 2010 at a show that paired him with Eminem. The following year, he toured arenas as half of The Throne, a project with "little brother" Kanye West. Timberlake, who once made the leap from boy band singer to innovative pop star by incorporating hip-hop into his sound, is his latest partner, and he is in all respects the rapper's junior.
But because of the way the Legends of the Summer Tour is constructed, Timberlake held the stage more frequently than Jay Z did. Unlike the rapper, Timberlake never officially retired from popular music, but he did lay off serious performance for many years after the seminal "FutureSex/LoveSounds" album - an indication that the lack of urgency that has always been apparent in his music had overcome his motivation. In the Bronx, he did not exactly seem desperate to communicate, but he did appear to be having fun again.
He played piano (both upright and electric), electric guitar (including the heavy riff on "99 Problems," which he playfully bent into Aerosmith's "Walk This Way) and executed dance routines with the support vocalists, including a brief return to the blithe, Broadway-inspired steps of the "My Love" video. A lengthy mid-show stretch featured Timberlake's music alone, and during this segment, Legends of the Summer took on some of the throwback, "Solid Gold" quality of Bruno Mars' recent performances. "Pusher Love Girl," the lead track from Timberlake's glittering, if lyrically superficial, "20/20 Experience" album, was a long spin under the disco ball; "What Goes Around ... Comes Around," a "FutureSex" number, came alive as exuberant pop-rock.
Jay Z, by contrast, rapped and only rapped, and although he did so with his customary command and precision, his aggressive hip-hop did not fit as comfortably with the band as his partner's traditionalist dance pop did. His hit productions are never exactly timidly arranged; re-imagined for a big group, they pushed toward a version of maximalism that felt more accumulative than powerful. Some of his more abrasive material - "On to the Next One," for instance, or "Public Service Announcement" - took on the authority of heavy rock, but often at the expense of intensity.
It hurts that Jay Z prefers to perform his weaker post-retirement material and does not like to return to his vivid early verses: "Magna Carta ... Holy Grail," his latest album, is professional to a fault, and the three new songs he shared with the Bronx were long on overkill and short on narrative imagination. It was hard not to long for the impish, disruptive presence of West, who played chaotic Caliban to Jay Z's mature Prospero on the Throne tour.
The emcee did bring over his video reel from the Throne's circuit. As he rapped, he was accompanied by images of power: Greek and Roman statues, great cats roaring, big snakes, nuclear detonations, classified documents.
He saved his best authenticating gesture for late in the show. "Empire State of Mind," a typically grandiose recent Jay Z hit, makes the case that he's the natural heir to Frank Sinatra in the role of New York's establishment balladeer - a human embodiment of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on the rise and the bulls on the charge. With not-so-surprising surprise guest Alicia Keys singing the hook, and Timberlake framing the performance with a hammy rendition of "New York, New York," it felt appropriate to the setting in more ways than one.
Comedian Joe E. Lewis once said that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel. To update the metaphor, rooting for Jay Z is like rooting for Samsung, the multinational communications firm with which the rapper has recently partnered. In the House that Ruth Built this weekend, customer satisfaction and quality control were high. But that's beside the point.
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