Tuesday at the Garden

After attending Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige's concert, I have to do the mature thing and apologize for most of the negative remarks I've made toward Mary recently. Sure, she is still no Jill Scott or Tamia, but she is definitely better than the Mary of old.

Dream led off the concert with a surprisingly good performance. Vocally he was lacking, but lets give him credit, he is a writer by trade. What he lacked in vocal ability he gave the crowd in performance. He worked the stage like a true professional, I almost forgot he is a new artist. The older couple in front of us were unfamiliar with Dream even though he did all three of his songs that are currently getting spins on the radio and listed a few of the current hits that he wrote that are also being played regularly on the radio, but by the end of his performance the older gentleman turned asked us who he was, the correct spelling of his name and told his wife, "I liked him." Dream was not fooled and did not try to hide the fact that the crowd was here to see Mary and Jay, he actually made several jokes about it before introducing the dynamic duo.

The energy in Madison Square Garden was unbelievable. The Garden was packed, and everyone went crazy when Mary and Jay appeared on screen for a pre-recorded interview and the noise and energy only grew once they appeared on stage together. The love that was sent down toward those two artist was crazy, I don't know if I was them if I could have held it together and fought back tears. Mary was amazing. Her voice is not perfect, nor is it very polished, but in my opinion, she sounded better tonight live than she has in some of her CDs. Everyone sung along with her, at one point she just watched in total disbelief as the crowd sung an entire song without her. At that moment I thought she was going to loose it and start crying. For about a hour and a half she gave us her all and performed her ass off.

Jay-Z came out to cheers of Hova, Hova, Hova...unwilling to let the energy die down for a second he just kept banging out hits from his catalog. New, old, older and back again, he flowed with the live band, with the crowd and all alone with just a spotlight on. The man didn't have to do much for anyone to realize that he is the King of NYC! Everyone stood to there feet and rapped along with him and just gave him so much love. But when I thought the energy level could not get any higher, thought the crowd had finally hit its highest note, Jay shocked the world. "What do you want to hear next," he began giving us snippets of his hits that he hadn't performed yet, teasing the crowd with hooks of songs they desperately wanted to hear. He played a snippet of "Bonnie and Clyde," the crowd went nuts believing Beyonce would come out, she didn't. Seeing the crowds reaction he played a quick snippet of "Bday," stopped it and said, "no disrespect B, but I don't want to hear that shit." Then the diva herself walked out with her fiercest catwalk to date, the crowd went bananas. She danced a little, then left stage without a word. It was hot! Jay could do nothing but laugh and wait a moment so he could compose himself.

The entire concert was hot! Mary and Jay are definitely the King and Queen of NYC if not the hip hop world. They both had one special guest come out and perform with them (not giving away any details, go see it for yourself) that ripped it as well. I'm glad I went and experienced this first hand, because those of you who know me well know how I feel about Mary so I started not to go.