Tag Archives: jay-z

Jay and Kanye at The Garden

Watch The Throne Tour @ Madison Square Garden

For the Nov. 7th Watch The Throne show at Madison Square Garden, Jay-Z & Kanye performed for a solid two and a half hours. No cameos, no breaks.

With two rising light cube platforms, the two took turns throwing out bits from WTT and their own albums.

This list of songs performed is not 100% accurate (since I knew all of Kanye’s but not every last one of Jay-Z’s):

H.A.M.
Who Gon Stop Me
Otis
Welcome To The Jungle
Gotta Have It
Big Pimpin'
Can't Tell Me Nothing
Flashing Lights
Through The Wire
Jesus Walks
Diamonds from Sierra Leone
Public Service Announcement
U Don't Know
Run This Town
Monster
Power
Made In America
New Day
Hard Knock Life
Izzo (H.O.V.A.)
Empire State Of Mind
Runaway
Heartless
Stronger
On To The Next One
Dirt Off Your Shoulder
I'm A Hustler Baby
Good Life
Touch The Sky
All Of The Lights
Gold Digger
99 Problems
No Church In The Wild
Lift Off
Niggas in Paris
Niggas in Paris
Niggas in Paris
Encore
Lucifer
Money Ain't A Thang
Can I Get A...
Get Em High
All Falls Down
Why I Love You

The performances were strong and relentless. Most of the full songs performed were from WTT, while their own tracks were cherry picked.

Liked:

  • Jay-Z & Kanye West took down The Garden for a full 2.5 hours, no breaks
  • Kanye’s set included Jesus Walks, Flashing Lights, Through The Wire
  • Great, affordable seats – thank you Citi pre-sale
  • Allowed to bring in phones/cameras/food – security didn’t care

Sucked:

  • 2 hour delay of absolutely nothing between the 7:30p start and the 9:30p actual start
  • The Garden robs you blind – $5 for a bottle of water, sans bottle
  • Illicit drugs in the air, hard to breathe throughout the show
  • No guest appearances – not a game breaker, but the audience expected it

It’s great to be able to cross off watching Jay perform at home from my bucket list.

Money on the Wall

Armand de Brignac (via bking / Flickr)

A quick juxtaposition involving Armand de Brignac and arithmetic.

In 2008, a LES bar announced its’ opening with the following brazen quote:

The entire left wall displays the Armand de Brignac. We have $650,000 worth of Champagne on the wall. We have more Rosé Armand de Brignac on the wall than the entire state of New York.

Less than three years later, the bar closed.

This month, The Atlantic posted and subsequently retracted a great piece exposing the history of Armand de Brignac. (A mirror is available here.)

Armand de Brignac tends to score in the low nineties on the industry-standard 100-point wine rating scale, which places it on par with wines that sell for $50 or less

This is because Armand de Brignac is repackaged Antique Gold.

He points across the bar to a bottle of another Cattier champagne, Antique Gold, strik­ingly similar to the empty Armand de Brignac sitting in front of us. “That bottle there, a friend of mine brought it back from Monaco,” he says. “It’s like 60 dollars, 70 dollars, 80 dollars in the store.”

I nod, realizing the magnitude of what Branson has just said. Antique Gold has been around for decades. Armand de Brignac looks nearly identical and costs four or five times as much. Both are made by Cattier. The only real difference seems to be the Ace of Spades label slapped on the more expensive bottle.

The LES bar claims $650,000 worth of champagne on the wall. Assuming all the champagne is Armand de Brignac (retails for $300), the $650,000 of product is only worth $108,333 (650K * 50/300).

For full disclosure, I’m a big fan of Jay-Z’s music. This Atlantic article shows just how great of a business man Shawn Carter is.

One more choice quote from The Atlantic:

Jay-Z may tout Armand de Brignac in his songs and videos, but to some champagne industry veterans, it’s at best a medi­ocre product masquerading as a high-end delicacy. “It tastes like shit,” says Lyle Fass, an independent wine buyer in New York. “At least Cristal tastes good.”

And one from Jay-Z in Off That:

the Cris’ we off that,
Timbs we off that, Rims we off that,
Yeah, we off that, is you still on that?
And we still makin’ money ‘cause we still on that