Jay Z Fade To Black Full Documentary

Jay-Z may be hip-hop's greatest lyricist, but to see him in the enlightening new concert documentary "Fade to Black", you'd never know he was a star. His face has about two expressions (rapping and not rapping). His long body doesn't dance. In some T-shirts, his torso drags, and nothing ever seems to get to him, not the sight of his girlfriend Beyonce, not the knowledge that Madison Square Garden shows the movie captures are supposed to be his last.

Jay Z Fade To Black Full Documentary

''Dirt off Your Shoulder'' isn't just a song about transcendence for him. It's a state of mind. Never during his extremely complete performance did he even break a sweat.

Jay-Z is the coolest man in pop music and, lately, the classiest guy in rap. One of the lighter songs on ''The Black Album,'' which he swore was his last record (he lied), challenges his fans and peers to consider a makeover. he says. ''Put on a suit and shrink it.'' It's the advice of a man about to walk off the street and into the meeting room.

Jay Z Fade To Black Full Documentary Trailer

"Fade to Black" chronicles the life and times of Shawn Carter (the rapper's birth name) - but only in the months before his likely retirement in a corner office at Def Jam Records, and while he was recording "The Black Album," his smartest and most vivid work. The film is also broad enough to allow for rumination. A classic scene between Jay-Z and his friends ends with a protégé confessing that he feels compelled to rap about guns when he hasn't shot anyone. It's a conversation worthy of its own movie.

Directed by Patrick Paulson and Michael John Warren, the film has the good sense to stay focused on the music. Its editing is shoddy - jumps between the concert and the studio break up the flow - and it contains the usual concert movie hype. The backstage celebrity testimonials are so thick you could chip a tooth; know that no matter how much you love him, Usher, Common and Ghostface Killah love Jay-Z even more.

Jay Z Fade To Black Full Documentary

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The film chooses a way to tell a story that feels eerily similar to the beginning of many hip-hop thrillers. As the camera flies over New York, Jay-Z tells his life story as if he is already dead. But the film wisely spares us much of the drama of the life story, taking us right behind the music and housing us at the Garden show.

It turns out that the concert is only intermittently electrifying. This is not entirely the fault of the film. For one thing, the crowd flooded the arena that night like sad people attending a colleague's very loud, very starry retirement party. (Unidentified smoke rose from the masses like geyser steam.) For all they knew, this was to be their last live encounter with Jay-Z. Of course, "Fade to Black" comes out a week after his post-retirement tour with R. Kelly imploded, incidentally, at the Garden. Now, the show in the film looks like another concert.

It has its moments, though. The one near the end where R. Kelly leaps onto the stage suddenly feels surreal. Every song Jay-Z does while backed by the live band, led by drummer Ahmir Thompson, is open and transformative. "H to the Izzo," for example, becomes something that wouldn't sound out of place on a Jackson Five record. And when Memphis Bleek joins him on stage, Jay-Z becomes a dazzling performer, playing with the speed and pitch of his rhymes.

There are other cameos, including one by Mary J. Blige and another with Beyonce, which is sort of the halftime act, doing her best Ikette impression to date and reminding us that she and her boyfriend are in dire need of public chemistry.

Fade to Black Movie CLIP - Kanye Did His Job 

The revelation in "Fade to Black" is the recording of "The Black Album," none of whose songs appear in the show. The film follows Jay-Z through an Oz-like journey from one major producer to another - the Neptunes, Timbaland, Rick Rubin, Kanye West. We see how many of the best songs on the record were chosen and show that Jay-Z is something of a savant (he commits no words to paper).

In the case of Timbaland, we see that the process is like shopping. His beats are expensive, and Jay-Z walks away with one. The best moment in the film comes when he first hears the mysterious, powerful, synthesized beat that would eventually become "Dirt off Your Shoulder." He does a little dance. (Timbaland, who is also smitten, does a big, jiggly.) Jay-Z even makes a face. He can't believe what he's hearing. For a minute, he's not a mogul or an icon. He's a kid in an ear candy store. Why would he ever give that up?