Jay-Z Documentary ‘NY-Z’ Displays The Rapper’s Love Of New York, Black-And-White Photography

Jay-Z made a triumphant return to Madison Square Garden this week with the opening dates of his BP3 tour, but he’s taking a look back at his previous concert at the NY arena. Hova teamed up with director Danny Clinch for the documentary NY-Z, which chronicles Jay’s star-studded “Answer The Call” benefit concert at MSG back in 2009. And although Absolut is sponsoring the concert doc, this is a much, much, much subtler mogul-and-alcohol pairing than Diddy and Ciroc (ie. we don’t see a bottle of vodka in every other shot). Trailer below.

Absolut NY-Z Trailer

While showcasing Jay-Z’s performance on-stage, the doc also manages to artistically capture the beautiful imagery of the streets of New York, filmed in a very similar style to the rapper’s elegantly-photographed black-and-white videos  “Empire State of Mind” and “99 Problems.”

We’ve just got one question—was current d-bag king John Mayer the best artist to edit into the trailer? There are tons other musicians (Kanye West, Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, to name a few) who performed at the same show, so we’re scratching our heads why they thought highlighting Mayer’s guest spot would get more people to be excited to watch the film. Unless they think people will assume he’ll be making more disparaging remarks against Jessica Simpson in the doc. Which is very likely, knowing him.

The full documentary will premiere on Absolut’s Facebook page on March 22.