Before their show, vcialis 40mg I thought of Jay-Z and Timberlake together as musically contrived.  Sure, no rx both of these artists are among the most talented pop musicians alive – Jay-Z is arguably the greatest rapper ever, ampoule and Justin Timberlake is responsible for some of this millennium’s best and most iconic hits.  But they’re different, and nothing about their previous collaborations did anything to correct that impression. On Timberlake’s “Suit and Tie,” Jay is lethargic and passive, handing in a few generic rhymes with a couple back catalog references to get the fans going.  “Holy Grail” is a great radio play, but it’s caught in an identity crisis between serious and playful, R&B and hip-hop.

Now, both are decent songs.  But nothing about the pair of Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z screams “natural” in the way some elite musical collaborations do.  This is hardly Jay-Z plus Linkin Park, let alone Jay-Z plus Kanye West.  No, this collaboration practically reeks of dollar signs.  Can’t really blame them – there aren’t too many more living artists as iconic than these two, and their wide appeal across demographics is a rare thing in pop music.  Jay-Z is a master businessman, but it doesn’t really take a genius to figure out how phenomenally commercially viable Jay-Z x JT is.  It’s a recipe for success, and the idea of a duo tour was the next logical step – sellouts galore.

So the real surprise of the Legends of the Summer Tour isn’t so much that each of the artists are individually great; that’s a given.  No, the real shock is to see the interchange between the former drug dealer-turned-rapper and the former child actor-turned-pop star work so well.  Multiple times, one of them would let their song fade out, only to have the band segue smoothly into one from the other – and it worked, “Rock Your Body” to “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It to Me)” being the best of them (the fact that both have collaborated heavily with The Neptunes and Timbaland certainly helps).  The show also served as a fantastic reminder of just how deep and varied each of these artist’s catalogs are, going from the rawness of Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River” and “What Goes Around…Comes Around” to Jay-Z’s brazen “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” and “Ni**as in Paris” – then right back around to the anthemic “Empire State of Mind” and “Mirrors”.

In terms of visuals, does it really even have to be said?  For two of the most revered musicians alive, there was no way it wasn’t going to be spectacular.  While the outdoors prevented them from putting on massive pyrotechnic displays, the gigantic screens flanking the stage did just as good a job.  Switching between visual filters to match the songs being performed (i.e. black and white for the suave Roaring ’20s vibe of “Suit and Tie” and aggressively flashing red lights on the screens for “Big Pimpin’”) and with cameras filming from above, below, behind, and into the crowd – brilliant as expected.  Only the most extravagant for an extravaganza as this one.

Both of the two are seasoned on the biggest stages – between them, they’ve got Super Bowl , Grammy, and VMA performances, not to mention massive national and international tours.  And even though Timberlake has been absent from the music scene for a few years, his performing chops are still impressive, constantly pacing and engaging his crowd, all the while going into mini dance routines and gliding across the stage.  And in his first tour since putting his acting on hiatus, the man is having fun.  Belting out the classics with vigor (and even having fun with the arrangements, mixing in Juicy J’s “Bandz a Make Her Dance” and Kanye West’s “New Slaves” with “Cry Me a River”).

While Timberlake more than held his own, the show belonged to Jay-Z.  That’s not exactly out of left field; the man’s been making music and touring since Justin Timberlake was a teenager, including a part in the legendary Watch the Throne tour alongside Kanye.  But it’s still impressive to see the veteran perform with an entire stadium under his thumb.  Timberlake had the crowd swaying for “Mirrors,” and conducted the crowd in a massive singalong session for “Summer Love”.  But for all of Timberlake’s merits on stage, Jay-Z was the master, deftly rattling off every single one of his verses and controlling the entire atmosphere.

He’s recently been rightly ridiculed for his assertion that his very presence is charity, but that sounds like a slightly less absurd claim after watching him play the crowd like an instrument.  Not a single one of his songs was a miss – “99 Problems”, “Ni**as in Paris”, “PSA”, and several others had the crowd going wild in a way that even Timberlake’s biggest hits couldn’t manage.  To see tens of thousands screaming out hook after hook word for word is an incredible sight, one that Timberlake just couldn’t compete with.  Jay-Z knows how to stretch songs out until the audience is singing along, he knows when to cut off a run of crowd-shakers to kick down the tempo, and he knows how to run a show.  There’s an atmosphere that Jay-Z’s got – his very appearance was enough to send Fenway into a frenzy.

With Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake, a show isn’t just a show, it’s a veritable event.  That much was evident from the first ringing chords of show opener “Holy Grail”, as the two took their stances on each side of the stage.  But what else would you expect from two of the biggest presences in American pop culture? It’s in their nature to take things to the next level, almost to the point of absurdity, with Timberlake declaring, “We are the legends of the summer” in complete seriousness.

As the massive show and encore drew to a close, the two performers dimmed all the lights, instructing the crowd to put up their phone lights in a rendition of “Forever Young” dedicated to the Boston Marathon – sure, it was kinda cliché, but chills were climbing up spines across the park.  When all was said and done though, the defining moment of the show came during the extended outro to “99 Problems,” where the guitar and cap-toting Timberlake jammed out on a few riffs before letting the camera zoom in on his “617 Boston Strong” strap and Red Sox cap to the most deafening screams of the night.  For a New Yorker and a Memphis boy, JZ and JT sure know how to play Boston.