Yesterday afternoon, Revolt TV, a recently-launched music site by Sean Comb aka Diddy, posted a now-retracted tweet about Jay Z playing a secret show at 421 Troutman St, by the Bushwick Collective murals. The news quickly spread on blogs and social media, and, as it’s not an uncommon practice for Jay Z to play secret shows, a crowd of about 200 people made it to Bushwick and waited for the rapper to show up. Some people waited for over three hours in the sun, unfortunately without success — Jay Z was a no-show in Bushwick today. Watch the Ustream coverage we filmed and livestreamed right on the spot, featuring interviews with fans and local business owners, and read on to find out more about what didn’t go down today.
The rumors on Twitter quickly blew up while fans awaited the alleged secret show, and the “line up” soon included Beyonce, P Diddy, Justin Timberlake–and, as one funny guy commented, maybe even Tupac. We rushed down to Troutman and St. Nicholas, the area of Bushwick sometimes called the Bushwick Collective thanks to the amazing street art curated by Bushwick die-hard Joe Ficalora. To be quite honest, we were suspecting another hoax after we were pranked by Kanye West in late June but then again, you never know! Soon after we arrived on the spot it became clear that no secret show was going on: there was no production team, no speakers, nothing except a continually less hopeful crowd of fans. Some people said they heard that the show would be on the roof of AP Cafe but the owners of the popular coffee spot refuted this: They told us that they were actually painting their roof at the moment, and that they’d received a forwarded email about Jay Z’s alleged show, but that it looked more like a hoax than a real thing.
People from The Rookery, a bar about to open across the street from AP Cafe, hadn’t received any info about the show, and Patrick Breen, the owner of LOT 45, another bar about to open on Troutman St also hadn’t heard anything.
A duo of girls who came from Bed Stuy told Bushwick Daily that they had been able to meet Jay Z once at a show in SoHo after he’d tweeted about a secret show there. They came to Troutman St today, but they were skeptical. “He usually tweets about a secret show an hour before it goes down,” one of them said. Jay Z’s Twitter was mum about anything related to a Bushwick show.
around 3pm, Revolt TV tweeted an apology to the crowd:
Please disregard our previous statement about the Jay Z show. We will keep you updated with further details. Apologies to all waiting in BK.
— #FYFFEST X #APFEST13 (@RevoltTV) August 24, 2013
With the MTV VMAs happening tomorrow at the Barclay’s Center in Downtown Brooklyn, the idea of Jay Z secretly performing in Bushwick isn’t totally crazy. The majority of the people who came had rolled out of bed right before coming down and they seemed to have had a great time hanging out at Troutman, even without Jay Z. Several people jokingly speculated that AP Cafe tricked us into coming to sell hundreds of iced coffees. While that’s unlikely, we have to say that their Vietnamese Iced Coffee was definitely one of the best things about all the Saturday morning action!