The pair bow out with their evergreen 2003 hit Crazy In Love, a rendition of Jay Z’s Young Forever, and a film that sees them reconvene at the altar. Jay-Z takes the mantle when it comes to race, airing the video for 4:44’s The Story of OJ after a female dancer twists and turns to Nina Simone’s Four Women. Excerpts from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists speech gets pride of place on the massive screen Sorry is punctuated by Beyoncé asking women in the audience whether they’ve “had enough”, in highly charged fashion. But the slivers of material in that department are worth waiting for. While Beyoncé’s recent shows have been characterised by identity and politics – her Coachella performance celebrated black college culture her Superbowl show paid tribute to the Black Panthers – that’s not the MO here.
During Sorry, she pauses midway through to turn the lyric “suck on my balls” into a faintly chilling haka-style refrain (hilariously, the song is followed by Jay-Z’s deeply-ironic-in-the-circumstances 99 Problems). She’s chameleonic, segueing from an imperious rendition of Lemonade’s Led Zeppelin-sampling Jack White collaboration Don’t Hurt Yourself to operatic singing, flanked by her dancers in a renaissance tableaux. Where Jay-Z does his hits justice, Beyoncé provides both the little treats – mouthing along to Jay’s raps showcasing a peerless range of screwfaces mercilessly barking “sing it” to her apparently lax fanbase – and a couple of heartstopping one-offs. Glorious classics … Jay-Z in one of his many costume changes. By the end though, he’s not been outshone – mainly because of his arsenal of glorious modern classics (99 Problems, Niggas In Paris, Big Pimpin’) and perhaps partly because of his excessive costume changes, which put Beyoncé’s meagre half-dozen sequined leotards in the shade. Her swagger is such that it can feel like the power dynamic between the two performers has been upended – once the sidekick, nowadays she’s the one taking her rapper husband for a ride as he hitches his wagon to her staggering cultural capital.Īt first, this shift is writ large: Jay-Z initially seems as though he’s keeping the stage warm for Beyoncé while she gets her breath back. The Beyoncé-mania that has gripped pop culture in recent years isn’t just poptimism gone mad: this is a woman who matches increasingly sophisticated and trailblazing material with once-in-a-generation onstage charisma. Which is not to say the show that services this message isn’t staggeringly impressive. As the pair detailed on their respective recent albums – Lemonade and 4:44 – Jay-Z was unfaithful, almost letting, as the guilty party put it, “the baddest girl in the world get away”.Ĭrazed lust to romantic betrayal. Far from living in codependent bliss, theirs is a relationship now defined in the public eye by betrayal and rage.
Yet the intervening decade and a half – and an infamous few seconds of CCTV footage from an elevator – has complicated what was once a straightforward way to bolster each other’s brands. It’s a story they’ve stuck to over the years – this is their second On the Run tour, and the theme remains intact: the film that punctuates this first night show introduces “the gangster and the queen” and keeps returning to an image of a hotel room carpeted with cash. The pair’s first collaboration, ’03 Bonnie and Clyde, was a tale of devotional love accompanied by a video featuring Beyoncé as the ride-or-die moll to her rumoured boyfriend’s gangster. A s self-mythologising couples go, not many come close to Beyoncé and Jay-Z.