JAY-Z--SCORCHED?

New York City

Regarding Jeff Chang's "Moving On Up" [Jan. 22]: I was an orchestra member in Jay-Z's ten-year retrospective at Radio City last summer. In all my years of performing at events like this, I have never seen anything close to the naked frolic of orgiastic corporate reciprocal penetration. With the shiny Maybach parked outside the Sony studios, the side deals, endorsements, jigging eBay for signed tickets, sneakers, product placement and underwriting, it was a festival of getting over, flogging a soggy product of retreaded samples, riffs, sentiments and drug lore in the name of the people's hip-hop. Apparently as stunned by the razzle-dazzle as the hapless audience members, Local 802 of the musicians' union rolled over on a contract that was pathetically permissive, paying too late and too little, especially in the context of the tsunami of cash exchanges going on. At the end of the day, I saw a small, charismatic, hideously overcompensated, moderately talented man casting a very large shadow--because he was dancing too close to a scorching light.

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