One of the biggest thrills at SoFi Stadium on Friday night didn’t come from Jay-Z at all.
It came when fans spotted his 14 year old daughter Blue Ivy Carter at the keyboards in his band, playing piano on “The Story of O.J.” and “Dead Presidents/Dead Presidents II” while her dad grinned beside her.
Her arrival was set up by a video clip of Blue Ivy playing piano at different stages of her life, most of it with Jay-Z sitting next to her and smiling.
That same proud dad smile carried onto the stage in Inglewood, where 70,000 fans packed in on Oct. 23 for the first of two nights.
I’ve been away too long,” Jay-Z told the crowd after opening with “Hovi Baby,” and nobody argued.
His last headlining show in Southern California was the On The Run II Tour with Beyoncé at the Rose Bowl in September 2018, and his last solo stop was the 4:44 Tour at the Forum on Dec. 21, 2017.
Over two hours he ran through 35 songs and medleys spanning three decades. “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” came second, “Run This Town” drew a huge roar, and “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” slid into the late Nipsey Hussle’s “Hustle & Motivate” as a portrait of the Los Angeles rapper filled the screen.
That screen stretched the width of the football field and did a lot of the storytelling. Black and white surveillance style footage of housing projects and police helicopters ran behind “Can I Live,” while “Song Cry” got visuals tracing a relationship carelessly lost.
Here’s the wrinkle longtime fans will chew on. The tour is meant to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his debut “Reasonable Doubt,” yet “Can I Live” was the only track from that album in the set, while “The Blueprint,” marking its 25th anniversary, got five songs.
The crowd didn’t seem to mind. “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)” may have pulled the loudest singalong of the night, and “99 Problems,” “Empire State of Mind” and “Public Service Announcement” kept the final stretch stacked with hits.
Guests kept the energy moving too. Scarface, formerly of the Geto Boys, helped finish “This Can’t Be Life” and then stuck around to take the lead on the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me.”
The closer was “God Did,” the 2022 DJ Khaled track, with Khaled rapping alongside Jay and John Legend singing from behind the piano.
On record it runs eight minutes, half of it a Jay-Z verse tracing his path from the street to the boardroom, including the line “Nah, we just corner boys with the corner office.”
Then there’s the question hanging over the whole weekend. Rumors circulated all week that Jay-Z will headline the halftime show when Super Bowl LXI comes to this same stadium on Feb. 14, 2027, though nothing has been confirmed.
For now he has one more night at SoFi on Saturday. If the whispers pan out, his next return to Inglewood could come a lot sooner than the last one did.
