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1. Aliksandr (5 months ago)

   Jay-Z @ Glastonbury 2008 (Headline)

   “Jay-Z at Glastonbury? Not on my watch”

   From the off, it seemed Jay-Z’s headlining slot at Glastonbury was doomed, slow ticket sales, negative media attention and of course Noel Gallagher’s famous “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” rant all conspired to form a big black cloud that was to hang over the ‘un-traditional’ Glastonbury headliner.
   Groups of hardcore Glastonbury fans threatened to boo and bottle the Brooklyn born MC off the stage. Not exactly the ‘Peace and love’ message Glastonbury is meant to be all about eh?
   All this despite Jay-Z being in the live form of his life, since coming out of ‘retirement’ in 2004 he has gone from strength to strength on the live stage. There was no reason to believe he would deliver anything less than a show-stopping performance on the night.

   “Today is gonna be the day…”

   Anticipation is a very strange thing, it seems to engulf the senses in a mixture of confusion, pre-judgement and excitement. So when there are in excess of 175,000 people all greatly anticipating what could be the biggest Glasto’ flop of all time, it creates quite an atmosphere.
   The first chords of ‘Wonderwall’ float out into the crowd, there are excited cheers, nervous glances and confused faces. Then, strumming an electric guitar, the self proclaimed ‘Obama of Hip Hop’ strolls out on stage with all the swagger in the world, to deliver a very tongue-in-cheek rendition of the Oasis classic. Nothing like a bit of good old British humour to win over the crowd after all. Job done.
   Next up is ’99 Problems’, beautifully remixed with AC/DC’s ‘Back in black’ to make it abit more ‘Glasto’-friendly’, this boy has clearly done his homework.
   From here on it is plain sailing as ‘H.O.V’ unleashes hit after hit with ‘Dirt off your shoulder’ ‘Show me what you got’ and ‘IZZO’ Gently separated with the odd freestyle and remix, most notably rapping over Prodigy’s ‘Smack my bitch up’ and Amy Winehouse’s ‘Rehab’.

   “They said you don’t like hip hop, they said you didn’t want me here tonight?”

   In a brief pause between songs, Jay took time to address his doubters and critics who had written him off before the show. Claiming to the crowd “They said you don’t like hip hop, they said you don’t want me here tonight?” the crowd screamed, the critics were silent.

   “I came, I saw, I conquered”

   After going right through his back catalogue with songs such as ‘Song cry’ (mashed with U2’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday), ‘Hard knock life’ and a 3 minute freestyle condemning George Bush and supporting US presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Jay then declared that “This was a beautiful moment” and asked the crowd one simple question. “Can I give ya’ll one more?” The crowd replied emphatically.
   The huge mash up hit Numb/Encore exploded and sent the crowd wild, with Jay playing out arguably one of the greatest Glastonbury performances ever.

   He came, he saw, he conquered, he didn’t sell out but he did silence the critics.

   AW

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