Review: Kanye West and Jay-Z at the Wells Fargo Center

As if they didn't stand tall enough in the popular consciousness already, Kanye West and Jay-Z appeared on stage at the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday night and immediately ascended skyward.

Initially, the frequently collaborating hip-hop hotshots who released their first full-length album together, Watch The Throne, this summer, each had a bare black stage to themselves. They entered to the Wagnerian string-and-synthesizer intro to "H.A.M.," the fiercely spit statement of purpose that takes great pains to assert that they are each individually as "hard as a" twelve letter word which cannot be printed here.

West appeared first, dressed in a gladiator's shirt and a black leather tunic, like a hip-hop Russell Crowe ready to do battle in the arena of his choice. (Or maybe the rap star as rock star made his sartorial choice as a nod to kilter wearer Axl Rose, who, like West and Jay-Z, has a song called "Welcome To The Jungle.")

As the music swelled, the stage rose up, turning into a 20 foot high cubed video screen displaying snarling dogs mean enough to put a fright into Michael Vick. That commanded the attention, alright, until you noticed that there was another   video cube displaying Great White sharks climbing at the back of the building, and this one had Jay-Z, with his black on black Yankees cap cocked to the side, standing on top of it.

By the third song - "Otis," the Watch The Throne single that liberally samples Otis Redding's "Try A Little Tenderness" – the duo were side by side at stage front, with the 41 year Jay-Z, as always, acting the lyrically nimble, unwaveringly confident big brother to the impetuous, crouched down, hyper actively creative 34 year old West.

There were also three dressed-in-black programmers working keyboards and drum machine and an occasional guitar at the back of the stage who became visible only when the fireballs that spewed forth as musical exclamation points were bright enough to illuminate them.

That was to the good, because all the sold-out crowd needed to see was the star power displayed by West and Jay-Z – or Yeezy and H.O.V.A., if you wish. There they were, two of the dominant figures in pop music over the past decade, a pair of kingpins each enjoying their reign, and each other's company, and letting an arena full of pumped up fans who rhymed along with every couplet bask in their aura.

And admire their hit making skills. The action packed, expertly paced show ran just over three hours, and packed in a whopping 36 songs, almost all of which, except for the deep album cuts from Watch The Throne – whose most intriguing cut, Murder To Excellence," was not performed – were instantly recognizable smashes that have been the soundtrack to the interracial crowd's lives since the dawn of this millennium.

The sound mix was loud, powerful and crisp, and the duo were mostly onstage together, from such declarations of greatness as "Monster," "Run This Town" and "Big Pimpin'."  The each did exit occasionally, so the other could do a mini-solo set – with West handling "Can't Tell Me Nothing," "Flashing Lights" and "Jesus Walks" on his own, and Jay doing the same with the Curtis Mayfield-sampling "Gotta Have It," plus "Where I'm From" and "N- What, N- Who."

Of those interludes, the most compelling was West's late in the show mini-set where he was bathed in red light at the back of the floor and did an extended version of the self-lacerating "Runaway," from last year's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and sang a hauntingly auto-tuned, emotionally bereft "Heartless," from 2008's 808s and Heartbreak. Both of those songs convincingly showed one of the traits that makes West such a compelling artist that Jay-Z isn't the slight bit interested in: vulnerability.

By any measure it was a terrific show, but it petered out somewhat at the end, with a poorly conceived endgame. All night long, the video clip backgrounds were a bit hackneyed – lions hunting on the savannah in "Welcome To The Jungle," eagles flying in "Touch The Sky." We get it: you guys are royalty, and it's your world that we're living in.

Towards the end, though, the presentation got confused and overreaching, as it was attempted to turn the winningly vague "No Church In The Wild" into a seriously (and seriously confused) political statement with clips of Hurricane Katrina sufferers, Ku Klux Klan members, nuclear explosions and people being fitted for gas masks.

That muddle was followed by WTT's middling "Lift Off," and the inconsequential if irresistible catchy "N----s in Paris," which the duo ran through three times, with the last qualifying as a quasi-encore. The excellence of what preceded it deserved a better denouement, but no one was complaining as they walked out.

Previously: Kanye West and Jay-Z Setlist Follow In The Mix on Twitter here