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	JAY-Z JIGGA POWER

By the time Jay-Z was delivered up through the floor into the FleetCenter on Sunday, November 14 — picking himself up carefully from a wide leather chair and puffing clouds of cigar smoke, then handing his hat and scarf to a valet — R. Kelly’s departure from the "Best of Both Worlds" tour was already a distant memory. By evening’s end there would be another no-show — P. Diddy, who’d offered his star power to help Jay finish out the tour — but if there was any drama backstage, the star never showed a sign of it. The light caught his wrist and spangled; his hands gently but firmly patted the air at his waist — and indeed, gravity seemed to loosen its rules for him. He ran through flawless verses from "H to the Izzo," "Jigga My Nigga," and "99 Problems," then smiled. "I got records, nigga," he said, in case you’d forgotten.

You wish he’d touched more of them, but on his re-christened "Jay-Z and Friends" tour, he was playing the humble host — the semi-retired emperor taking it easy and sharing the glow. "I really tried to be patient, I tried to hold it together," he said of Kelly’s departure, "but some things don’t work out, y’know." No hard feelings. Memphis Bleek came out to hype on "U Don’t Know," while video screens flashed, of all things, a Nirvana video. Ja Rule materialized for "Can I Get a . . . ," and suddenly all cell phones were on him, shorties tugging at his ankles on the catwalk. But when Jigga ceded the stage to Ja for a short solo set, he did so with the magnanimity of a man who knew he’d have no trouble taking it back.

The two-hour set was like an awards-show roster: Freeway, clad in the evening’s best T-shirt ("No Guns in the Building"); T.I., snapping the rubber band on his wrist and leading a sweaty, towel-shaking posse; an uncharacteristically upbeat DMX working up a lather on "Ruff Ryder’s Anthem" and "Where the Hood At?"; Busta Rhymes and his hypeman Spliff Star, hip-hop’s premier vaudeville team, casually stealing the spotlight with "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See" and "Break Ya Neck." At one point, in a gimmick left over from the Kelly production, a pair of tour buses plowed through the stage’s back wall; Mary J. Blige hopped out, sang herself into tears, and then belted her way back out of them. The only sour note came when Jigga dragged out his set-piece homage to hip-hop’s noble dead, and failed to add fellow Roc-A-Fella employee Dirt McGirt to the roster. But Jay closed with "Jigga What? Jigga Who?," "Big Pimpin’," and "Encore" — no break, no fuss — and walked off as relaxed and untouchable as he came.