As it turned out, Jay-Z had been quietly setting the stage over the past few months for what we could expect during his headlining show at the Roots Picnic in Philadelphia. On streaming, he’d changed his name from Jay-Z to its original spelling, JAŸ-Z, perhaps a wink and a nod that it would be a tried-and-true career retrospective. Then, he started digitizing his singles catalog, releasing studio versions of classic tracks along with their radio edits — a subtle reminder that, amid all the headlines that have dogged him over the past few years, those songs have shelf lives that stretch back to the deep recesses of the 1990s, and formed the backbone of a career that’s been built piece by piece across the bookends of two millennia.
On Saturday night, the rapper’s first headlining solo show since at least 2019 was certainly a reinforcement that Jay-Z is still one of the best rappers alive, if not the preeminent emcee of his generation. His hour-and-a-half set was in fact a career retrospective, but not as a play for nostalgia — yes, these songs have been woven deep into the fabric of pop culture, but they sounded just as fresh and powerful as they did when they were rolled out, delivered by a long-seasoned veteran whose performance powers have somehow continued to strengthen outside of the encouraging glow of the spotlight.
