In mentioning Jay Z, numbers that account his net worth may come to mind. Conversations may spark of the "Illuminati" conspiracy, or the relationship idealization and fascination of many for him and the well-adored Beyoncé. Shawn Carter, a man of many names, is much more than the trending topical tweets. Although his most recent album release, Magna Carta Holy Grail, had mixed reviews, it remains a consensus that he continues as a talented, motivated and legendary icon in the game. Jay Z, above all things, is a true artist, an innovator.

Tonight, he will make a stop at the First Niagara Center for his Magna Carter World Tour. Along with him will be Timbaland, who had a significant part in the production of the album.

To capture the feel of MCHG, as a product of his album's release, he held a 6-hour performance piece at Pace Gallery in New York City. Surrounded by artists, actors, students, poets, art dealers, filmmakers, youngsters and designers, he performed "Picasso Baby" on a platform while interacting with the crowd. Some would sit individually on the bench as he would perform to them; in some cases, they would switch and Jay Z would watch them display their own form of artistry.

"Rap is pretty much thinking out loud. You're talking, and you're putting your fears and your vulnerabilities, and you're putting bravado, your insecurities, all on music. And it's there for the world to see. You're really giving a glimpse into who you are," he said.

The album is sprinkled with plenty of art references, which Complex Magazine cleverly broke down, to the lyric.

In the "Picasso Baby" video, Hov said, "Concerts are pretty much performance art, but the venues change. And just by nature, the venues, the performance change ... So you get to feel the energy of the people. In a concert, especially a large concert, all that energy comes to you ... what do you do with that energy? So today, it's kind of an exchange..." Tonight, that exchange will occur, right here in the Queen City.

I've become increasingly convinced that the Grammys' sole purpose for existence is to give people something to complain about. I mean, no one's opinion of any musician has ever been altered by finding out that that artist won a Grammy, but if the old fogies who run the joint give an award to the wrong person, we can moan about it till the cows come home. This year, we didn't even need to wait for the show to start.

Note: sorry for being ridiculously late to the game when it comes to writing about Beyonce. If it helps, this article mostly uses Beyonce a starting point to talk about a broader subject. Still, it has been 18 days and I'm pretty fucking late. My bad.

On December 12th, 2013, the internet exploded. I had been away from my computer all night, watching LaMarcus Aldridge put up 31 points and 25 rebounds as his Blazers defeated the Houston Rockets. I assumed that was what everyone I follow on Twitter would want to discuss. Instead, Beyonce surprised everyone by releasing a new album exclusively to the internet at midnight. And when that happens, pretty much every other thing in existence is irrelevant.

But as the flood of B worshiping tweets came in, one stood out to me in particular. It came from Rookie founder Tavi Gevinson, who commented that Beyonce had "fucked up all of our listicles." It was hard to deny the truth here. Rolling Stone had already published its Albums of the Year list, as had Spin. Pitchfork's had yet to come out, but the chances are, the votes among their writers had already been placed. This was a bit of a problem, based on the early returns, Beyonce had almost certainly released one of the best albums of 2013. And yet, it would go unrecognized. This raises a question that rarely gets mentioned: why the fuck does every prominent music publication make their AOTY list in early December?

There's three whole weeks left in the year; you're just assuming that no one else is going to blow anyone's mind until after the ball drops in Times Square? Well, usually that is the case. December is a notoriously weak month for album releases. Really, until Beyonce's midnight shocker, I can't think of any major act who released an album of much consequence in December in the past decade. Now, some of you in the comments might gently remind me of one, but as a general rule, it doesn't happen.

Based on this, it seems like there's some unspoken agreement between the record industry and the music journalism industry - we won't release any key albums in December, and that way, you can comfortably rush out your AOTY lists a few days after Thanksgiving. If this code does exist, Beyonce clearly did not give one single fuck, cheerfully making every Best Albums of 2013 list obsolete. If you doubt that last claim, consider this: even if your Best Albums list wouldn't have included Beyonce, the lists were made before the voters had a chance to consider it. That along causes a conflict.

We might feel bad for Beyonce, not getting included on the major Best Albums lists, but really, it worked out well for her. Her album exists on a plain of its own. We can't stack it up against the efforts of Kanye, Vampire Weekend, or Drake because the lists were rushed out before anyone had a chance to. If Beyonce releases her album even three weeks sooner, we'd have to compare it to every other record that came out in one of the best year's for music in recent memory. But since Beyonce's albums exists by itself, we can put her at #1 without actually determining if she was #1.

Based on what happened, there's a damn good case to be made for writing until January, when every album actually has been released to publish Albums of the Year list. It's unlikely that this will happen, though, partly because situations like this are so rare, and partly because magazines and web sites might not be able to wait that extra month to sell copies and earn page views. Still, Beyonce taught every music writer a serious lesson: if you count the score before the game's over, you wind up with dozens of lists that all look pretty foolish.

The Super Bowl Halftime Show is one of those things I care way too much about. I could tell you who performed at each of the last ten without looking it up, and each year I wait with eager anticipation to see who gets the honor of performing. Last night that question was answered far earlier than usual when I learned on Twitter that the sacred duty would be given to Bruno Mars.

Now, I'm not sure what the pulse of the rest of the nation is on this choice, but I think it's a great pick. Admittedly, after the glorious spectacle that was last year's Beyonce performance, just about anything is going to seem underwhelming, but I feel like Mars is more than up to the challenge. He's one of the greatest showmen in music, and every time I watch him live, I get the sense that he's giving it everything he has.

What I wonder, though, is how this performance will affect Mars' career. See, I've had this theory for about a year now that pop music fans take him for granted. They've sent his singles to the top of the charts over and over again, but there doesn't seem to be that much appreciation for Mars himself. People don't connect him with the way they connect with Tayor Swift or Adele, and he has yet to become an icon on the level of Justin Timberlake, as evidenced by the video begging JT to return to music that included the line "I don't know how to jerk off to Bruno Mars!"

It seems like lately, Mars' songs are bigger than he is. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel that ,as far as sad songs of the past three years go, "It Will Rain" and "When I Was Your Man" can totally hold their own against the Adele instant classic 1-2 punch of "Rolling In The Deep" and "Someone Like You." But the connection with listeners isn't there. Listeners feel like they know Adele, and that her problems are their problems. Bruno almost comes off as too professional for his own good. Like somehow his sad songs come from a Sad Song Processing Plant, even though he wrote them about real concerns in his own life just like Adele did.

So, how could the Halftime Show change that? Well, it'll be hard for Mars to share any deep, dark personal secrets in a 15-minute halftime show, so perhaps he can go the other route by giving us a grand spectacle that launches him from Pop-Star-Of-The-Moment to one of the best of all-time (OF ALL TIME!). Until recently, Beyonce had the same problem Mars has now, the disconnect between her and her songs. People could relate to the message of "Irreplaceable" or "Single Ladies," but Beyonce always seemed disconnected from them. The way she remedied that was by embracing the larger-than-life aspects of her personality, and becoming beloved because she was a more-famous-and-rich-God-Jesus-and-Wonder Woman-combined force of nature that none of us could touch.

So, how does this relate to Bruno Mars? Well, he too is the larger-than-life force of nature that Beyonce is, but he could still take a page out from her book. Mars will have everyone in America watching him on the Super Bowl, so this is his biggest chance to make a lasting impression. I would recommend going all out, going for the biggest spectacle he can possibly put together. Have seizure-inducing lights flash across the stage while an army of gorillas terrorize the audience! Bring Sting out to sing that fake Police song you wrote like you did at the Grammys! Do whatever you can to prove to the world that Bruno Mars is more than Justin Timberlake's non-Union Hawaiian equivalent! As someone who's been a fan since day one, I cannot wait to see what you come up with.

I gave that woman props publicly! I said Beyonce's performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at President Obama's 2nd Inaugural was "pretty good," and considering I'm not particularly fond of Beyonce and think she's nuts, I thought that was pretty magnanimous of me. I also decided that it was kind of cool that Jay-Z and Beyonce were up there; it was certainly very American and definitely 21st Century that they were part of history. The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson, Beyonce. It all made sense, a shining new vision of America was on display, and everything was perfect... until we found out that Beyonce lip synched her bit, and now it's all ruined. OK, that's a bit of an overstatement. The rest of the Inauguration gleams brightly in my memory, but in retrospect, there's now an asterisk next to it.

Now of course there's another school of thought that suggests that it doesn't matter, and of course in the grand scheme of things, compared to global warming and the myriad issues confronting the United States and the rest of the world, it really doesn't, but I still think it's wrong to just shrug our shoulders and let Beyonce off the hook willy nilly. Now there's word that she didn't even rehearse with the band and that she didn't tell the organizers that she wasn't singing live until that morning, and something just ain't right about that. I'm also troubled by the fact that this whole hullabaloo follows so closely after the Manti T'eo "catfish" fiasco and the Lance Armstrong confessions to Oprah because Beyonce's lip-synching seems to just be more of that American phony baloney we love to consume until we find out what goes into the baloney. Then we get "outraged" before moving on so we can consume more phony baloney. Hey, maybe this whole thing is as American as apple pie and exactly what we deserve... but that doesn't mean we have to like it. I sure as hell don't.

There's also a school of thought that holds that maybe Beyonce lip synching was for the best because after all, if she'd butchered the National Anthem the knives would've been out, and indeed, that's certainly true. Like phony baloney, Americans also seem to love crucifying public figures (guilty as charged), and such a sin would've certainly produced a mighty hue and cry that would've gotten ugly (far uglier than this hullabaloo), but that's still no excuse. Nobody made Beyonce perform at the Inaugural (unless somebody did, which means her future autobiography is going to be muy caliente), and if she couldn't do it, she probably shouldn't have said yes. And then there's the popular theory that "everybody lip synchs," which is hilarious because the other performers at the Inauguration didn't (including an American Idol winner). Aretha Franklin didn't four years ago, and Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman pantomimed their bit four years ago because their string instruments weren't doing so hot in the frigid cold. Plus, we were were told at the time that this was the case; there was no attempt at subterfuge or shenanigans, whereas this Beyonce situation now wreaks. 

No, there's definitely an asterisk next to this one. Sure it's not the end of the world or the most important thing we've got going right now in this county, but it does speak to an existential quandary this country is facing regarding our collective relationship to reality and fantasy that's potentially a tad too fluid for our own good. Sasha Fierce played us, pure and simple, and when you watch that upcoming HBO documentary by Beyonce about Beyonce and how tough it is to be Beyonce, remember that when it got tough she phoned it in, stunning the world with a performance of a performance before getting found out. They just don't make pop stars like they used to.

And dammit, I gave Beyonce props! 



Special thanks to my brother who shamefully articulated those Beyonce forgiving schools of thought. And before you come at me with "but you liked M83 live even though they were playing to a backing track" please remember, they were playing live music on that stage... with some help. Not the same.