Jay-Z burnishes his legend at SoFi Stadium

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred As the intro of his song “Girls, Girls, Girls” poured over the crowd at SoFi Stadium late Friday night, Jay-Z locked eyes (from behind his ever-present shades) with a guy near the stage whose excitement had bubbled over at last.“Oh, this yo s—,” the rapper observed with a knowing little laugh.“You was waiting for this s— all night long.”Dude was lucky not to wait even longer: The first of two SoFi gigs, Friday’s show was an almost comically overstuffed display of hits by an aging cultural giant in the middle of a legend-reclamation project; Jay-Z performed parts of three dozen songs over two hours, which was still only a fraction of the 152 entries he’s notched on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart since 1996.“We got a million of these,” he said after doling out a few verses of “On to the Next One” — not bragging so much as explaining.Having earlier visited stadiums in London, Paris and his hometown of New York, the 56-year-old is in Inglewood this weekend as part of what he’s calling JAŸ-Z30: a yearlong celebration of himself timed to the 30th anniversary of his debut album, “Reasonable Doubt,” and the 25th anniversary of his commercial high point, “The Blueprint.” Last month, HBO premiered an 8-part docuseries in which Jay-Z combs through the minutiae of his songwriting with the producer Rick Rubin; any day now, the rapper is expected to announce that he’ll return to SoFi in February to headline the halftime show at Super Bowl LXI.

Music As she continues her residency in Las Vegas, the veteran R&B star looks back on her long career and considers a string of recent accolades.That’s a lot of action for an artist who’s spent much of the last decade in éminence-grise mode — Jay-Z’s most recent solo album, “4:44,” came out in 2017 — but h...