My cousin, George, and I took off for Chicago around 3:00 PM last Saturday for Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z’s Heart of the City Tour at the United Center. This was going to be our 4th Chicago hip-hop concert within the past year. Up until this show, we have seen Nas, the Rock the Bells Tour (with Talib Kweli, Slum Village, and Wu-Tang Clan), and Common. Common put on the best performance by far, but little did we know that Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige would soon top it.

We had an uneventful trip to East Chicago, IN where we planned on taking a 30-minute train ride into the city. The only potential disaster we encountered was when we stopped at Burger King on the way to the train station and my MapQuest directions flew out of my car upon opening my door. We were unsuccessful in trying to chase the directions across the parking lot. Luckily, my mom was near a computer when I called her for help and she was able to read me the rest of the directions to the train station.

After getting off of the train onto Michigan Avenue, we easily hailed a cab and before we knew it we were on our way to the United Center, or so we thought. Unfortunately, the cab driver spoke very little English and we had no idea whether he knew what the United Center was or where it was located. After 20 minutes of driving around, we started to worry. After 30 minutes and a few alarming comments from the cab driver (“So, this is where the Cubs play right?), we started to panic. Somehow we made it to the United Center, but not without losing $25 and growing a few gray hairs in the process.

The United Center is huge and it’s where the Chicago Bulls play, not the Cubs as our cab driver would have us believe. It actually holds over 21,000 people. Believe it or not, this show was sold out and you could easily feel the excitement in the air as you entered the arena. Before Mary J. Blige came on stage, we got a picture of us throwing the Dynasty sign with Jay-Z in the background.

Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z came on stage about 8:30 and did the song, “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” together. Jay-Z then left the stage, and Mary stayed and put on an unbelievable performance. Although I’ve always respected her and her music, I was never a huge fan of her; that is, until I saw her perform. The amount of energy and emotion she put into her performance was incredible. One minute she would be dancing on stage while rapping to an upbeat, hip-hop song, and the next minute she would be on her knees with tears in her eyes while she beautifully sang about lost love to the tune of an R&B track. She effortlessly displayed her range of talent on stage that night and her music crossed many genres from hip-hop to R&B to soul to jazz.

Jay-Z came out from a platform that rose to the top of the stage after Mary’s last song, and he started off with, “Say Hello” from his American Gangster album. The entire audience went wild. This is one of my favorite songs of his from that album, and one that my friend Scott and I bumped in our cars all summer while driving to the clubs. Jay-Z kept the same momentum throughout the concert and played many of his best songs off Reasonable Doubt, the Blueprint, and the Black Album. He also performed most of his commercial hits such as “Hard Knock Life” and “Big Pimpin.” Jay-Z has so many hits that at one point he started rapping 15 seconds of a song and then he’d have his DJ switch to a different track and he'd rap for another 15 seconds, and this went on for at least 10 tracks. He was an amazing performer and he had all 21,000 people rapping along with him and throwing their Dynasty signs in the air. It was definitely the most exciting hip-hop concert I’ve been to up to this point. Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z ended the night with a duo of the song, “Heart of the City.” It was a flawless ending to a flawless concert.

Two other notable parts of the concert were our seats (only 7 rows from the stage) and the live band (4 trumpet players, 2 trombone players, 2 saxophonists, 4 violinists, 2 drummers, a piano player, and 3 backup singers). The live band gave Mary and Jay’s songs a whole new level of depth. There were also 2 large screens on each side of the stage and a massive screen behind the stage that played footage of New York City and other locations while blending the footage with Mary and Jay performing on stage. The screens alone were pretty awesome, but what really topped it off were the fireworks and other pyrotechnics used on stage throughout the show.

After leaving the concert, my cousin and I tried unsuccessfully to hail a cab for at least an hour. Either there were too many other people trying to catch a cab or the cabs were already filled with people. We started to get down to the wire time-wise because the last train out of Chicago heading to where our car was parked was going to leave in 30 minutes and it takes about 20 minutes to get back to the train station.

Fortunately, my friend David happened to be awake and lived only 10 minutes from where we were. He picked us up and dropped us off at the train station with only 30 seconds to spare! We sprinted down 2 different flights of stairs and then up 2 flights of stairs only to come up on the wrong side of the tracks! The conductor of the train started yelling at us to hurry to the other side because the train was leaving. We sprinted back down 2 flights of stairs and across the station, back up 2 more flights of stairs, and onto the train just as it began pulling away. It was one of the most intense two minutes of my life. Just writing about that experience wore me out. That’s all for this post.