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   Jay-Z Locks Back In
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                      “I would have written a shorter letter, but did not have the time.” Back in January, on set for
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       his GQ cover story
                      </a>
                      , Jay-Z told me that quote—often attributed to Mark Twain, but initially credited to French philosopher Blaise Pascal—was not only a favorite, but one that’s affected him in all aspects of his writing. There’s genius in brevity: Compared to successfully communicating an open and closed idea in eight bars like “Frontin,” an extendo verse like
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       “God Did,”
                      </a>
                      while still impressive, might be the easier exercise.
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      I found myself thinking back to that exchange this past Saturday night in Philadelphia, when Jay kicked off his set at Questlove’s annual Roots Picnic festival by going full third-act Michael Corleone and settling a bunch of previously unrebutted scores in a searing three-minute freestyle—which, considering it’s his first true verse in
                      <em>
                       four
                      </em>
                      years and all that’s happened in between, was some pretty concise writing. Before the tens of thousands of fans in Philly’s Belmont Plateau even had time to process Jay’s dramatic new hair reveal—goodbye locs,
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       hello JayFro
                      </a>
                      —here was Jay addressing the emotional toll of the civil suit and sexual assault allegations brought against him (a case that was eventually dismissed with prejudice), the Roc Nation Legion of Doom propaganda, and his falling-outs with (count ‘em) Dame Dash, Tory Lanez, Jaguar Wright,
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       Kanye
                      </a>
                      , former Roc/State Property rapper-turned-troll-vlogger Oschino, Nicki Minaj and Drake. In only three minutes, Jay finally acknowledged years of subs, shots, tweets, interviews, scandals, rumors and allegations, in a verse full of typically dazzling double entendres and not-so-typical palpable aggression, before launching into an elite set. How’s that one line in the original “Dead Presidents” go? “I’m addressing all drama…”
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      But let’s back up. Jay enacting the “2026, all offense” edict that he teased in our interview actually began in Philly the night before. When his Roots Picnic date was first announced, a month ahead of three shows in Yankee Stadium, I figured the latter would end up being the bigger deal.
                      <em>
                       You can’t go to everything
                      </em>
                      , I told myself.
                      <em>
                       It’s ok to sit some things out.
                      </em>
                      Last week I came to my senses, realizing that I would be extraordinarily annoyed if I didn’t witness Jay-Z’s first honest-to-goodness solo show since 2019. Smash cut to Friday night in Philadelphia, the calm before the storm. I pulled up to an open-secret Dave Chappelle show with my boy LeBrandon, only to notice people lining up right next door at The Fillmore for something that seemed even more secretive. After the third Paper Plane hat sighting in the area, I sent a few flares up (when a stealth Jay-Z show is afoot, it won’t always be readily apparent, but there will be signs) and sure enough: ahead of his performance for thousands in the park, he was doing a small-venue warm-up for an insanely small amount of people. When’s the last time Jay performed for a crowd of 200—1997?
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      After an opening set from Black Thought and The Roots and then a grand introduction by Chappelle (skipping over from next door), Jigga took the stage. He was dressed in all black, but not glamorously—more as if he’d just come from the gym, in sweats, a hoodie that stayed glued to his head the entire night (more on that later)—and seemed laser-focused, like a living embodiment of “Lyrical Exercise.” Despite this being a rehearsal and everyone’s phones being in Yondr pouches (don’t ask me how clips leaked, maybe they were from Beyonce watching on the sidelines), Jay performed as if the show was being livestreamed. “I don’t think he’s even wearing a watch,” LB said to me at one point, which is inherently a hilarious
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       meaningful signifier
                      </a>
                      for Jay being locked in. The next day would confirm that he was essentially performing his Roots Picnic setlist minus the special guests, but what made the Fillmore set impressive was its relentlessness—Jay ran through that entire clip, from “Hovi Baby” to “PSA,” twenty-plus songs with no breaks or pauses, like he was in a one-man Verzuz, before walking off with a wry smile. One last practice before his first Conference Finals appearance in years.
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      The next day the anticipation mounted in ways even Jay couldn’t have predicted. Flicks of him with the hood up from the previous night generated chatter that he had finally returned to the classic Brooklyn hustler money cut Caesar, and thusly that, in
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       accordance with Jay-Z lore
                      </a>
                      , a new album was officially coming. As I loitered around the D’usse riser waiting for the show to start, the first clue that a swerve was imminent came when Jay’s hairdresser announced, around two hours before his set time, that she was off to go “do his hair.”
                      <em>
                       You know the entire internet thinks he’s bald now, right?
                      </em>
                      I said to her, and she just laughed. (“Couldn’t they see the hood was sitting high up?” Lenny S asked incredulously.)
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      As the temperatures plummeted and a gorgeous full moon came into focus right above the stage, we all picked our vantage points, and I caught up with Jay’s longtime stylist, the legend June Ambrose, who told me that the previous night’s rehearsal helped her click tonight’s look into place. “Wait,” she said. “You haven’t seen him yet today?”
                      <em>
                       Nooo
                      </em>
                      . “Oh, just wait,” she said with a cackle. “We got something for you.”
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      When Jay took the stage, bathed in moonlight and darkness, it can’t be overstated how confused everyone in the audience was—until the lights shone on him and the murmurs gave way to gasps at the dramatic reveal of his new look. June turned to me, laughing gleefully (before exasperatedly sighing, “It’s
                      <em>
                       not
                      </em>
                      a wig” at someone who joked that he was going to take the fro off and reveal a Caesar underneath). The implication: Jay isn’t running past playbooks back. This show, perhaps, marked the beginning of something new… a new era, and a new attitude, underlined by the freestyle he kicked after walking out to “Hovi Baby.”
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      Yes, after telling me in January that—as a result of stan culture and the way it engenders exasperating online discourse that moves the conversation away from music—he wasn’t so sure that rap battles should continue to be a thing anymore, Jay used the occasion of his first verse in nearly half a decade to fire more shots than a revolver could hold. But nowhere in that quote did he preach about taking the high road; it’s a natural human impulse to swat at the flies in your face after the buzzing gets incessant. And a lot can change in six months. Certainly, when we spoke in January, Jay appeared to be trying to unwrap the tinfoil around Drake’s head and defuse the idea that Big Ice is the victim of a vast, multi-layered industry conspiracy (an overture that Drake would later rebuff roundly and loudly with at least four subs across
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       <em>
                        Iceman
                       </em>
                      </a>
                      .)
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      But listening to the freestyle, before I could parse every bar there live (at first I thought he stumbled at one point, imagine my shock and awe at realizing he was saying “her Ken can’t even…”) what I did tap into was the emotion. One of Jay’s defining traits is being cool and collected, the calculated hustler/entrepreneur like Marlo Stanfield, whose indelible quotes and scenes get invoked all over these new bars. (Before Iceman, there was
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       Iceberg Slim
                      </a>
                      .) Even in his many disses and subliminals he’s rarely raised his voice above its normal register. So to hear him basically
                      <em>
                       roar
                      </em>
                      “It’s gon’ cost you a B to say my name” in reference to his countersuit against the lawyer who brought the civil suit against him, and watch as those words reverberated over a stunned crowd, was jarring, in an exciting way. It made me think back to one of the most intriguing moments in our January conversation, when Jay explained that hasn’t put out new music yet because he has to figure out how to deal with the “uncontrollable anger” he was still feeling about the suit. “I gotta get this out [first],” he said, illuminating why he wasn’t in the frame of mind to do something as freewheeling as a feature verse for Clipse. Basically, he had to find a way to process a new emotion that he hadn’t felt in a long time on wax, the same way he’s previously used music to work through
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       grief
                      </a>
                      ,
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       joy
                      </a>
                      ,
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       fear
                      </a>
                      , etc. At the time, he hadn’t quite figured out how to do it—“I have a lot of scratch ideas and they’re all bad,” he told me, laughing—and at any rate he wasn’t sure if contributing more negativity to the discourse would be worth it.
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      In the end, Jay did indeed indulge in a little negativity last Saturday—but sometimes you gotta pop out and show n-ggas. The verse is bookended by references to his grandmother Hattie (who also inspired
                      <em>
                       Lemonade
                      </em>
                      ’s title); it opens referencing her 100th birthday as an upcoming event, and the point at which he would’ve really crashed out if his name wasn’t officially cleared by then. Considering Jay and his family
                      <a style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">
                       actually already celebrated
                      </a>
                      Hattie’s 100th last fall, the false accusation and ensuing fallout has clearly been weighing on him, much more than any sniping by other rappers. You can picture Jay across last year, scowling on the couch in the midst of a
                      <em>
                       Wire
                      </em>
                      rewatch, working through some version of the final bars we heard last week.
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      But the rest of the shots are marked by a certain uncharacteristic venomousness. It’s not uncommon for him to address any and every remark, no matter how small-time—even Faizon Love got a bar not too long ago—but the number of aggressors grouped here and the vitriol he has for them made this feel like a standout moment. Drake actually gets the least scathing, most traditional Jay bars with lines reminiscent of his shots to Mase in “Ride or Die” back in ‘98. Everyone else, though? From the Nicki/Ken flip, to big bro-ing Kanye (“You're no maniac/Watch how sane he act in my presence, n-ggas shrink”) to calling Oschino a “stuttering” yapper to making fun of Dame’s dentures—all while invoking the infamous Lance “Un” Rivera stabbing as
                      <em>
                       his
                      </em>
                      preferred method for getting under people’s skin versus sneak dissing—this was an endless parade of scathing “sheesh” moments. We’ve seen Jay kick a dozen a capella freestyles, but this had the flair of a battle MC; he’s acting out the rhymes as he says them, pantomiming “teeth tumbling.” There were so many pauses for dramatic flair, even bits of straight-up stand-up comedy like the way he dropped the Jaguar line on Questlove’s head. Sure, if you’re ranking Jigga freestyles there’s a pretty bulletproof top 10 that this probably doesn’t penetrate, as rife as it was with impressive double and triple entendres still revealing themselves days later. But it’s notable all the same, less for its shock value and more for its departure in tenor.
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      You could basically say the same for the rest of the show. Again, much like his discography, there are classic Jay-Z concerts that will simply never be knocked off: Fade to Black, I Declare War, Watch the Throne, both B-Sides… and that’s just me naming the ones that I went to. But reunited with The Roots, Jay tore through a seamless, 90-minute set that somehow deftly married his hits and staples with B-Sides and Easter eggs, like rhyming the “Grammy Family” freestyle over “No Church in the Wild,” “Marcy Me” over “Where I’m From,” or “Big Pimpin” on the “N-ggas in Paris” beat breakdown. He skipped through every album meaningfully, even making space for a cult classic single like “I Know” and the first verse from both “Dead Presidents.” And when it came time to do the inevitable and bring out the Roc’s deep bench of Philly natives, he didn’t do so dutifully. It’s always a spiritual experience seeing “What We Do” and “You, Me, Him and Her” performed live alongside Memphis Bleek, Beanie Sigel, and Freeway, but it was a thrill to hear the collective shock in the audience when Peedi Crakk—who’s expressed some discontent with Jay over the years—came out for a deep cut from Sigel’s classic album
                      <em>
                       The B.Coming
                      </em>
                      . It was even more heartwarming to see the Young Gunz get a dramatic build-up to complete the Roc reunion, complete with a Phil Collins intro. (The only ace Jay left up his sleeve was Amil for “4 Da Fam.”)
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      All in all I got the best of both worlds that weekend, watching Jay perform for 200 people and then 20,000. Two completely different contexts—one efficient and intimate, the other grand and cinematic—same mastery. But if there was one throughline, it was the emotion Jay expressed as he neared the end on Saturday night: “I missed this shit—I really missed this shit.”
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      We’ll see what this summer holds beyond the Yankee Stadium album shows, whether this string of concerts and the Cecred blowout truly portends new music and a new era. But the underlying theme was that Jay-Z is, in whatever regard,
                      <em>
                       back
                      </em>
                      . “The gods are the real gods,” he said aloud, to everyone and himself, at one point during the show, seemingly impromptu. As he warned in the freestyle, “Don’t forget who I am.” After a couple of years in the wilderness, Jay-Z is here to make them remember. He wrapped the show with “PSA,” the Hov flagship track that ends with “either love me, or leave me alone.” Considering that freestyle though, the closing bars to “No Hook” feel more appropriate: “Leave that boy alone, why don’t ya?/You don’t have to if you don’t want to/But don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”
                     </p>
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                      <strong>
                       Between the Taps
                      </strong>
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                     <p style="margin:0">
                      (
                      <em>
                       A weekly roundup of everything else I consumed since the last Tap In)
                      </em>
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                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      <strong>
                       <em>
                        Scary Movie,
                       </em>
                      </strong>
                      <strong>
                       red carpet premiere at the Paramount Lot
                      </strong>
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      Is this a particularly good movie or a worthwhile revival? Not really, but if you're of a certain age and grew up on these movies, it's just OK enough to not feel like a waste of your time. I never need to see it again, but I also wasn't upset when the credits rolled. And the Kai Cenat cameo is genuinely great.
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      <strong>
                       Rome Streetz, "Cocaine Coltraine"
                      </strong>
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      One of rap's most consistent vanguards of New York street rap is back doing what he does best: kicking bars about flipping birds that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Hot 97 in like 1995. And true to the title, this time he's doing it over a jazz infusion that might sound forced on paper but in execution, only makes the record feel even more unstuck in time. Excited to see what he does on the rest of his album, due next month.
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      <strong>
                       <em>
                        Euphoria
                       </em>
                      </strong>
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      We're free.
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      <strong>
                       Veronica Mars, "Like a Virgin"
                      </strong>
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0;margin-bottom:16px">
                      Can we talk about genuinely great teen television for a quick second? Channel surfing last week I discovered that
                      <em>
                       Veronica Mars
                      </em>
                      —the aughts UPN/CW series that launched Kristen Bell's career—is in syndication and man, does it hold up. For the uninitiated, Bell plays the eponymous high school junior detective, a lower-middle class outcast in an otherwise 90210-ish SoCal suburb who takes petty cases for her fellow students for cash, while trying to solve her best friend's murder in the long term. Pound for pound, the world of Veronica's fictional town and especially the high school may be the most thoroughly realized universes in the genre and beyond. It feels distinct, has dozens of A-B-and even C-tier recurring and background characters who cycle in and out of importance, and really nails a gritty neo-noir vibe without feeling like you're watching
                      <em>
                       Harriet the Spy
                      </em>
                      .
                     </p>
                     <p style="margin:0">
                      As far as fully utilizing her deep range of talents, it's probably Bell's best role—Veronica is a perfect noir hero, the type who pulls off the cynical badass affect but knows it's just a defense mechanism that could give out any day. Veronica's investigation into who killed her friend Lily (Amanda Seyfried, appearing in flashbacks) is the spine of the season and one of the most satisfyingly paced and resolved whodunits on TV, but the cases of the week are just as delicious. For example, the episode I popped in on as the one with the Purity Test: where a viral quiz to show how much of a prude you are goes around school—the lower the score, the better—only, the option to buy another person's test sows chaos in the halls, until the resident Good Girl enlists Veronica to prove someone faked her test. I know I need to start
                      <em>
                       Widows Bay
                      </em>
                      but man... a rewatch is calling.
                     </p>
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