Growing up I was a huge Jay Z fan as a kid hearing his songs on the radio like “Empire State of Mind”, his collab songs with Justin Timberlake and Kanye were listened to a lot. So, when I went to this field trip to see “The Book of HOV” exhibit in the Brooklyn Museum I got instant nostalgia seeing all the Jay Z memorabilia and his history. Some exhibits that stood out to me were his 2X certified platinum album plaque of “Jay-Z Linkin Park Collision Course”, the Fender guitar he used at the Glastonbury music festival in 2009, and “THE BLUEPRINT III” album recreation exhibit.
Linkin Park was always one of my favorite bands growing up as a kid and when Jay Z collaborated with them it was huge for music history. Linkin Park at the time were in their peak with their first 2 albums and Jay Z was already a huge rapper. I was really young when that album came out but it broaden my music taste of loving rap and rock music and that album brought rap and rock fans together to show that music has no boundaries. Unfortunately, the singer of Linkin Park Chester Bennington passed away in 2017 and Jay Z was on tour and he honored Chester by singing “Numb/Encore” from that album every night. So when I saw the ”Collision Course” album plaque it gave me so much memories of listening to that album and it made me go back and listen to that album on repeat that next day. The artwork of the album is very early 2000s (it came out in 2004) so it uses brown and white artwork graphics to give it that early Y2K look.
The next exhibit that stood out to me was the Fender guitar that Jay Z used in the Glastonbury festival. At the time Glastonbury was a primarily just a rock festival in England. In 2008 it was announced that Jay Z would headline that year’s show making him the first rapper to headline that festival and not a lot of people were happy. A British rock artist Noel Gallagher called out Jay Z as to why a rapper is headlining that festival when he doesn’t even play guitar. So when it was the day of the show Jay Z opened up the set with a guitar in his hand and played “Wonderwall” trolling Noel Gallagher. This changed the way music festivals would be ran today mixing variety of genres all in one board. So when I saw the guitar in person I was seeing a piece of history that Jay Z made by just going out on stage with the guitar to prove a point, “To me, music is music. People were saying hip hop couldn’t play Glastonbury” (Jay Z). It is also a very nice guitar a nice cream color.
The last exhibit that stood out to me was seeing “The Blueprint” III album sculpture in person. When I think of Jay Z that album is the first thing I picture because I listened to that album a lot when I was kid. It is a very iconic album artwork with all the instruments all white and the three red stripes that go across the album. The three red stripes symbolize that it is the 3rd Blueprint album, and the overall album artwork means “these things are like the forgotten pieces in hip-hop. It’s still about music” (Jay Z). He is talking about all the instruments that are all stacked up in the album. The album artwork was created by Nicola Yeoman and Dan Tobin Smith in 2009, it was recreated by them again in 2023.
