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The Worst Of Both Worlds
It was the worst of times. KING investigates the implosion of supernovas Jay-Z and R. Kelly’s Best of Both World’s tour.
King, January, 2005
It seemed like a good idea: Take urban music’s two biggest male superstars, add some pyrotechnics, give them a couple of weeks’ worth of practice and throw them together for a 42-city mega-tour to cash in on their long-awaited sophomore album, Unfinished Business. Unfortunately, the so-called Best of Both Worlds idea was predicated on a falsehood from the beginning. Tone of Trackmasterz told a strategic white lie when he informed both R. Kelly and Jay-Z that the other had mentioned doing an album and tour with the other in 2002 (see “Tone” sidebar). And while Jay named Tone “the Referee,” for his ability to mediate, the cultural gulf between the superstars soon proved insurmountable. Jay’s hustler cum rapper cum entrepreneurial style didn’t fit with Kelly, who in the rockstar tradition, liked to dictate his own reality. The early reviews said it all: Kells and Jiggaman weren’t in sync.
Surprisingly, the tour didn’t implode immediately, as a month’s worth of shows went down before the curtain closed. But on October 29th, the nightmare mercifully screeched to a halt inside Madison Square Garden. Guns were envisioned; pepper spray blasted (Jay-Z’s childhood friend Tyran “Ty Ty” Smith was fingered and charged with third-degree assault stemming from the altercation). Jay-Z recovered quickly, buoyed by contemporaries eager to ride his custom-made coattails. Moments later, the ill-advised Best of Both Worlds became Jay-Z and Friends. The next day, promoter Jeff Sharp made it official. There would be no encore from the Pied Piper. Kells created his own conclusion in the form of a $75-million lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court ($15 million in lost income and $60 million in punitive damages).
In a series of interviews conducted with key tour parties, KING tried to make sense of the tour. Because of the lawsuit R. Kelly has filed, his people, with the exception of his lawyer Ed Hayes, would only speak through his spokesman Allan Mayer, who declined to identify the speaker responsible for each individual quote. They are identified only as Friends of R. Kelly.
Dateline: Chicago — September 29, 2004
Act 1: Get Off the Bus
Friend of R. Kelly: “After the first show, it was clear to him that the lighting man—who turned out to be the guy who did Jay-Z’s last tour—was either unable or unwilling to handle the demands of his elaborate stage show.”
Jay-Z’s tour manager Randy Buzzelli: “We know [R. Kelly’s] records, but nobody could come to us and say, ‘These are the 20 songs we’re performing. Let’s write lighting cues and lets make video cues to those.’ We didn’t get any of that. We kept asking and asking and asking.”
Lighting director Gary Westcott: “We did, I think, seven shows before we heard there was ever a problem with lighting. The first show was our first dress rehearsal and it went very well, we thought. We’d never had all the artists. I’d never even seen [R. Kelly’s] dancers before. I wanted to adjust levels and lighting looks for the dance positions.”
A source close to the tour: “[For the second Chicago show] these guys are scheduled to go on somewhere between 8 and 8:45 p.m. Around 7:45, I realize Rob [Kelly] isn’t in the building yet. By 8:15, he still isn’t in the building. We’re told by his production manager, ‘He’s on the bus, and that’s all we know.’ Nine o’clock comes and he’s still on the bus. Now his production manager disappears. By 9:20, the production manager is on the bus with Rob, and he isn’t answering his radio. The crowd is really starting to get antsy. There are a couple of fights in the audience. These little 15-minute intervals feel like hours. Around 9:45 p.m., somebody comes up to me, and says, ‘You didn’t hear this from me, but Rob has changed the music in his show.’ This guy who operates his music was at the studio getting the music together. At 10, the guy comes rushing in with the music. It’s an agonizingly long period of time. It’s surreal, like it’s too crazy for me to believe. He sets up all of his stuff, and we get word that Rob is coming off of the bus. They hit the stage around 10:30. The last song is ‘Fiesta,’ which they do together. Jay goes out onstage and this guy isn’t there. So Jay had to do the last song by himself. Rob just walked off, claiming technical problems. The show goes until 12:30 a.m. The show for the following night in Cincinnati has to be cancelled.
“We stayed in Chicago, and we had nowhere to go. I talked about it with Jay the next day, and initially he was angry. Rob was trying to talk to him that night, and it was just a bad situation. They didn’t speak that night. They ended up having a conversation the following day in Cleveland. So we have the day off, and there is some discussion on whether we should even do the tour, cause this is a pretty bad situation. We’re only three days in and we’ve cancelled. Of course, it’s not Robert Kelly cancelled the show to the people; it’s ‘Jay-Z and Rob cancelled.’ ”
Dateline: Baltimore — October 13, 2003
Act 2: Through the Wire
Gary Westcott: “In Baltimore, we were called to the dressing room to have a production meeting and we’re shown a front of the house video shot of the show with no audio. The video was taken on a home camera, everything was basically blurry and the color contrast [was off]. Robert felt the lights weren’t ‘jumping off,’ to use his words. And that Jay’s lighting was ‘jumping off.’ That was translated that he didn’t think that his lighting was moving enough or frenetic enough. I explained that their music was very different. Jay’s stuff is like rock music and hardcore hip-hop music. Robert’s doing ballads and up-tempo ballads. So he decided the lighting wasn’t dynamic enough for his music, to which I said, ‘We’ll change it, we’ll move things around.’”
A source close to the tour: “Rob kind of goes crazy on [Gary Westcott] and basically storms out of the building and gets on the bus. We now have another situation where he won’t get off the bus. We end up with a one-hour delay. It’s Baltimore, which is probably not a place I’d want to cancel a show. It’s not Des Moines. The show finally happens, and everyone says, ‘Let’s go on to the next place.’
“We get to Greensboro, North Carolina, the next day, and we’re informed by Rob’s people that he needs two or three days to work on his show or he is going home. In retrospect, it would have been great for us to say, ‘Go home.’ Of course, everyone is trying to make this thing work, despite the fact that it is lunacy. We convince him to play Nashville and work on his show there. He’s going to bring in some consultants to ‘fix his show.’”
Dateline: St. Louis — October 23, 2003
Act 3: Happy Meals For Happy People
Gary Westcott: “St Louis was a very strange situation. We spent two, three, four hours [per day] working on cues and adding stuff [for Kelly’s show]. They had a gag where Robert came out and pretended to flash the audience. There was an explosion and a blackout. We rehearsed it and everything was fine. And [Kelly’s lighting director Steven Beckenroot] was to give me the cue for when the lights and video would black out. We did it exactly as I was told by Beckenroot.”
[Several songs later], during ‘Happy People,’ Robert dropped his microphone, even though his vocals kept carrying on and pushed his way through the audience, pushing people out the way. He came out to the front of the house riser and tore down the barricade, while there was security just looking the other way. He kind of spat in my face [as he] screamed and yelled and pushed stuff over. We didn’t understand what was going on because the show was running and everything was fine. It was very strange. He turned around, ran back through the audience, took a bow and walked offstage. Ironically, he was singing ‘Happy People.’”
Friend of R. Kelly: “Later, when [R Kelly] was back in his tour bus with his production crew, they all decided to get something to eat, so the driver pulled into a nearby McDonald’s. The restaurant had just closed for the night, but Kelly persuaded the manager to reopen so his people could get fed. As he has done on previous occasions— mainly for the fun of it—Kelly then volunteered to work the take-out window. Word quickly got around the neighborhood that R. Kelly was serving burgers at McDonald’s, and before long a good-sized crowd of fans showed up. A good time was had by all, and for Kelly it was a relaxing way to cool out after a highly stressful evening.”
Dateline: Midtown New York City — October 29, 2004
Act 4: Madness in Madison Square
R. Kelly’s lawyer Ed Hayes: “Kelly says, ‘I see guys in the audience with guns,’ or he thinks there might be guns. Whether that’s paranoia or not, he thinks that. Frankly, nobody goes to see R. Kelly in concert thinking that R. Kelly is Barry Manilow. He’s an emotional, volatile man and that’s what you’re going to get. So Kelly leaves the stage.”
Angie Martinez: “I was in the skybox so I felt a little secure there. It was just bananas. Everybody kind of looking at each other and looking around, like, ‘What is this? What did he say? What just happened?” There was a couple of minutes of just that kind of happening, and then people were just staring at the stage waiting for something to happen.”
Ed Hayes: “The people round R. Kelly, say ‘Listen, you got to go back on.’ He decides to go back on.”
T.I.: “I remember hearing, ‘They not getting back on this stage. It’s our city and they left our fans out in the cold. We don’t need ‘em, fuck ‘em.’ Not to say I’m quoting verbatim, but this was the vibe backstage.”
Ed Hayes: “Before he goes back on, two people connected with Jay-Z and went to the person who runs his music machine and say, ‘Forget it, we’re not letting him back on the stage. Don’t even try to set up.’ When Kelly starts to go onstage they pepper spray him.”
Music coordinator Lenny S: “We didn’t know what to do after that. We just had to wing it. We went backstage, and artists started coming to us saying they wanted to help. I’m burning [instrumentals for other artists] off of a computer. It was crazy.”
T.I.: “After R. Kelly pulled his little move, his little stunt, it was like, ‘OK, it’s crunch time. Like, we’ve got to give these people a show, you do this, you do this, you do this. I’ma come do this. Alright, break.’ It was like a huddle at football game. So it just felt like a team effort.”
Dateline: Downtown New York City — October 30, 2004
Act 5: The Aftermath
New York City DJ Angie Martinez: “I was leaving the show, and Def Jam Promotions Chief Michael Kyser called me up and was like, ‘Jay wants to talk to you. He wants to meet you at Hot 97.’ I’m like, ‘I’m on my way.’ I ran in the parking lot, paid the guy $20 to get my car before the 100 other people in front of me in line. I ran over here…. Then, when I got the call that R. Kelly was coming too, I was jumping up and down.”
When Jay came in, it was like this whole rah-rah energy, and when Kelly came in, it was a somber energy. More than anything Kelly said, his energy is what I remember the most. Where Jay looked pissed about it, Kelly just looked so sad. Jay left the Garden destroying it; pissed off, but still held it down and everybody is talking about how great of a show it was. The whole city was with him by himself, so his whole vibe was different. R. Kelly left the Garden with pepper spray in his eye.”
Ed Hayes: “What impresses me about this is considering the upside for Jay-Z, it’s a very shrewd move to make. He didn’t have to shoot anybody. He exposed himself to litigation. [Alleged pepper-sprayer Tyran] Ty-Ty [Smith] exposed himself to a misdemeanor arrest and the upside for [Jay-Z] are millions of dollars [by continuing to tour] and getting a lot of good coverage for all his acts.”
A source close to the tour: “The next day there is a meeting, and I don’t really want to get into details of that meeting, cause that’s clearly where there is going be legal consequences. The outcome of that meeting is the promoter tells Rob that he is no longer on the tour: ‘It’s too unpredictable,’ he says. ‘I’m going to have Jay finish the remainder to at least mitigate my losses. We’re not going to continue.’ That’s the short version.”
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