Check out the slideshows for more photos: Jay-Z; Wale.
The Spin had a crazy week—starting with a broken mirror, involving a body in a dumpster and ending with a clutch cable that was, er, not so clutch—which derailed our plan of listening to every Jay-Z album in chronological order before his show at Vanderbilt's Memorial Gym. We made it as far as his 1996 debut Reasonable Doubt, but as the man himself said, "In order to survive, you gotta learn to live with regrets." Our biggest regret, as of Friday night, was that we didn't factor in the number of chicken-head undergrads who would be pulling some bullshit like, "It's under my mom's boyfriend's little brother's neighbor's name" in the will-call line. So we missed the opening set by D.C. rap phenom Wale while stuck in line behind Johnny Ballcap and His Magic Disappearing Credit Card Number, but based on all the text messages we got while waiting ("Dudes, are you seeing this?!"), we can safely assume that Wale was off the chain.
