More Like "The 99 Problems Tour"

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 1, 2004 2:30PM

It appears that the “unfinished business” between R. Kelly and Jay-Z is going to stay that way.

The “Best of Both Worlds” tour came to an abrupt, if not unexpected, end on Saturday night in Jay-Z’s hometown of New York. The Trib lets the AP handle the heavy lifting on this story while Jim Dero at the Sun-Times fleshes out the details. While slow jamming the crowd at Madison Square Garden on Friday, Kelly stopped his performance after claiming he spotted audience members with guns. Though a search of the crowd turned up nothing, Kelly never made it back to the stage. In the interim, a member of Jay-Z’s entourage attacked Kelly and two bodyguards with pepper spray after insulting him and “questioning his manhood.”

The spin began the next day as Atlanta Worldwide Touring announced the end of the joint 40-city tour, Jay-Z hit radio station Hot 97 FM to blame Kelly’s ego for this and other problems on the tour, and Kelly’s lawyers stated they would be filing a complaint against the pepper-er and were considering legal action against the promoter. Jay-Z may be filling some of the dates as a solo act with special guests.

Chicagoist doesn’t want to engage in too much schadenfreude but we’re not exactly throwing a pity party for the ol’ Pied Piper—or Jay-Z for that matter. Now’s about the time when all those clichés your grandma used to say get tossed around: lying down with dogs and waking up with fleas, chickens coming home to roost, etc. Though Jay-Z distanced himself from Kelly after the initial indictment was handed down, the lure of big money must have sweetened the deal. After all, $800,000 a night buys lots of pairs of rose-colored glasses. As for R. Kelly, the stagecraft in his tour-opening show here last month probably didn’t sit too well with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. We’ll see how it affects his next performance, which will be in court this Friday for the next in a seemingly endless series of hearings in his two-year old child pornography case.