Jay-Z threw a black-tie party at the Met Opera House and the whole rap world showed up
Hov premiered 'Jay-Z In 8,' his eight-part HBO docuseries with Rick Rubin, at Lincoln Center on Sunday. Beyoncé slipped in quietly. Daniel Kaluuya talked. And the first two episodes hit HBO this Friday.
In brief
Jay-Z threw a black-tie party at the Met Opera House and the whole rap world showed up
Sunday night, Shawn Carter put on a tuxedo, walked into the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, and let the room do most of the talking. The occasion was the world premiere of Jay-Z In 8, his eight-part HBO docuseries made with producer and first-time documentary director Rick Rubin. It hits HBO and HBO Max this Friday, September 18 at 8 p.m. ET. The crowd assembled to watch the first two episodes suggested this is one of the bigger music-world events of the fall.
Among those who joined Jay-Z at the premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center were Beyoncé, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jerrod Carmichael, and SZA. Fat Joe, DJ Khaled, Yo Gotti, Charlamagne tha God, Winnie Harlow, Gunna, Rubin, and Neil deGrasse Tyson were also spotted at the red carpet, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Jay walked the red carpet and spoke to press, while other celebrities including Nas, Alicia Keys, and Swizz Beatz pulled up to the event, and according to The Breakfast Club, Angie Martinez introduced Hov before he addressed the crowd.
As reported by USA Today, Beyoncé and her mother, Tina Knowles, attended the screening, though neither walked the red carpet. That detail alone became a minor internet moment. Beyoncé in a building she didn't want photographed in, the silence said enough.
Jay addressed the audience directly. "It's been an extraordinary year. It's 'JAY-Z 30,'" he said. "I want to thank all you guys for coming to the concert and traveling all around the world. We didn't create this piece to come out at this time." He added, per iHeart Radio, that the whole thing started from curiosity: "We were just curious to have this conversation around music."
What the show actually is
Two new episodes will follow each Friday, with the final installments arriving October 9. Directed by Rubin in his documentary directorial debut, the series centers on the pair revisiting songs from throughout Jay-Z's career while discussing his writing process, childhood, personal experiences, and evolution as an artist.
No talking heads. No narrator. Rather than build a standard career retrospective with talking heads and archival narration, Rubin built it as a conversation, according to Baller Alert. Each episode sees Jay-Z and Rubin sitting down to talk about various tracks from his discography, from early songs like "Brooklyn's Finest" and "Can't Knock the Hustle" to deeper cuts like "This Can't Be Life" with Beanie Sigel and Scarface, Variety reports. The series will see Jay speaking at length about songs from Reasonable Doubt, Watch the Throne, The Black Album, and more, according to Complex.
On Wednesday, HBO Max revealed the trailer, which features the Brooklyn MC sitting alongside Rubin for two days in Paris, canvassing his life, career, and music, weaving in conversations about the "underdog spirit," his love for writing, and the power of hip-hop, TheGrio reports. In the trailer, Jay says: "The reason why rap is so loved, that feeling of that underdog... That's why people were listening, that's why it hit them somewhere."
The timing is intentional on multiple levels. The series arrives as Jay-Z marks 30 years since the release of his 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt. In July, the rapper commemorated the 25th and 30th anniversaries of The Blueprint and Reasonable Doubt with concerts at Yankee Stadium. Those shows shattered attendance records at the stadium and featured guests including Rihanna, Beyoncé, Pharrell Williams, Alicia Keys, Eminem, and Nas. The docuseries is the capstone of what the rapper has branded "Jay-Z 30."
The Kaluuya factor
One name on the credits that caught attention: Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya, who serves as an executive producer alongside Jay-Z and Rubin on the docuseries. He showed up Sunday night and explained why. "He tells the truth. He's honest. He wears it out. His tone is very much of that generation of New York, and that's fascinating, his story represents a lot of things that have happened with American society," Kaluuya told The Hollywood Reporter. That is not standard executive-producer-says-nice-things boilerplate. Kaluuya has been publicly invested in this project since early development.
The full credits, per BroadwayWorld, also list Bradford Young as director of photography, with producers Leila Mattimore and David Rohde. Young shot Selma and Arrival. His presence on a music docuseries is its own signal about the ambitions of the project.
Two Fridays at once
It is worth keeping the wider weekend in mind. The premiere happened the same night the Emmys were still playing out across town, and it followed a Friday that saw a Los Angeles federal jury find Grammy-winning rapper Lil Durk not guilty on all charges in a murder-for-hire trial, per NBC Los Angeles. Attorney Drew Findling told reporters outside the courthouse: "Twenty-two months ago, Durk and I made an agreement that we would make history with the greatest verdict in this country, and it happened today." That verdict dominated hip-hop social media through the weekend, meaning Jay's premiere landed in a rap conversation that was already running hot.
Durk is not free yet. He remains in federal custody while awaiting a separate trial involving racketeering and weapons-related charges, scheduled to begin on October 5, according to Reuters via The Root. The next chapter is already on the calendar.
Back at Lincoln Center, after the screening ended, fans were quick to praise the 25-time Grammy winner's choice of red carpet attire, per Complex, which ran a full breakdown of the tuxedo. That might be the most Jay-Z detail of the whole night: everyone analyzed the suit.
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CAN I KICK IT? screens New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument, on Aug. 22. (Courtesy SHAOLIN JAZZ)
The live-cinema series CAN I KICK IT? returns to the National Mall this month with what its producers are calling the "Gangsters on the Mall" chapter of their free outdoor summer run. On Saturday, August 22, the SHAOLIN JAZZ production brings the 1991 crime classic New Jack City to the Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument for a night of film, music, and community under the DC summer sky.
What sets the event apart is the sound. As the film plays, DJ 2-Tone Jones builds an original score in real time, reimagining one of the most iconic crime movies of the ’90s through hip-hop, soul, funk, and more. It is less a movie screening than a live performance built around the film.
The details:
Film: New Jack City (1991), with a live soundtrack by DJ 2-Tone Jones
When: Saturday, August 22 — seating opens at 7:30 p.m. (bring lawn chairs and blankets); film begins at 8:30 p.m.
Where: Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument, Independence Ave SW & 15th St NW
A parking note from the organizers: expect road closures and restricted parking east of 14th Street NW due to a separate race event in the District. Roads west of 14th Street NW will be accessible and available for parking.
New Jack City is the second of three screenings in this year’s free CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series, which opened with Black Panther at Skyland Town Center and concludes with Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial on September 5. Produced by the Washington, DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, the series has presented more than 150 live cinematic experiences at venues across the country, from Lincoln Center to SXSW.
"I wanted to be able to tell good stories with substance and remove the ‘ego’ out of the art," said Andrew Huang during a recent interview. Now, he’s building his career at the intersection of discipline, creativity and innovation.
Andrew Huang, founder of New Place Studios. (Courtesy photo)
As a Chinese American, Huang was reared with a deep respect for hard work, consistency and excellence. He describes his childhood as "not so affluent" and later attended college to hone his passion for videography. "In college I tried to do something I loved, which was video, but along the way I knew that I had to find a job. And so I thought, ‘what was the low hanging fruit to get to that stable 9 to 5 job?,’" he stated.
Later in life, Huang found himself working for corporations where his creativity was often limited, eventually leading to burnout. "I worked in a corporation for a long time and there were a lot of missing pieces. I wanted to fill in gaps missing in corporate video production," said Huang.
He later described how his upbringing and a mindset of "survival" led him toward a corporate career. However, his desire for balance and authentic storytelling ultimately pushed him to take the entrepreneurial leap.
"I founded a new place where you can create video and film with ‘substance and style,’" said Huang. His desire for work-life balance and passion for storytelling naturally evolved into a small business based in Virginia. With the launch of New Place Studios, the entrepreneur quickly found himself reconnecting with the values that would become the foundation of everything he creates behind the camera.
Huang said being a business owner has allowed him to first embrace himself. While others may see video as simply capturing moments, he sees it as a way to preserve stories that inspire, connect and leave a lasting imprint.
By combining cinematic visuals with cutting-edge production techniques and a keen understanding of branding, Huang helps organizations and individuals communicate their vision with purpose. He said understanding a client’s "why" serves as the compass for delivering the services they need.
One benefit of working with a small business, he said, is that clients get to see the production process unfold through a micro lens while working with the same faces throughout the entire project. "The work feels personal," said Huang.
Huang does not regret leaving behind the flash-over-substance mentality and corporate hustle culture. That does not mean the Asian American entrepreneur has been without challenges in the industry. "It’s relatively hard to find other Asian American creatives or people who would want to work with me in the DMV," said Huang.
He identifies the industry culture in which everyone is trying to blend in, creatives may fear displaying their Asian identity and some feel pressure to adopt an American corporate persona. He also points to what he describes as a level of gatekeeping within the industry. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2024 statistics, Asian American and Pacific Islander entrepreneurs own more than 3 million businesses and employ 5.2 million people in the United States.
After tapping into organizations such as SCORE, which offers free small business mentorship, New Place Studios has become a trusted creative partner throughout the DMV (Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia). The company produces a range of creative services, including commercials, corporate branding, documentaries, film, 2D animation, motion graphics and photography.
For Huang, entrepreneurship has become more than a departure from corporate life. It has given him the freedom to create with intention, build meaningful connections and tell stories that go beyond the surface.
The 2026 CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
For three Saturdays this summer, some of Washington’s most familiar public spaces will do something they rarely do after dark: fill up with blankets, lawn chairs, and the sound of a movie being scored live, in real time. CAN I KICK IT?, the traveling “live cinema” series produced by the DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, is bringing a free outdoor run to the city — pairing three era-defining films with an original soundtrack performed on the spot by DJ 2-Tone Jones.
The premise is what sets it apart from a normal screening in the park. Rather than simply pressing play, 2-Tone Jones builds a score as the film unfolds, pulling from hip-hop, soul, funk, jazz, rock, electronic music, and sounds from around the world. The result, the organizers say, is less a movie night than a one-time performance — the same film you know, wired to a soundtrack you have never heard and will not hear again. Guest DJs warm up the crowd starting at 7:30 PM before each 8:30 PM screening.
The 2026 outdoor schedule
All three events are free and open to the public.
Saturday, August 8 — Black Panther at Skyland Town Center. A pop-up marketplace and community activities kick off the evening; guest DJs at 7:30 PM, film at 8:30 PM. Marvel’s superhero epic gets a one-night-only live score in Southeast DC.
Saturday, August 22 — New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument. Seating begins at 7:30 PM; the film starts at 8:30 PM. The 1991 crime drama plays out at the foot of one of the country’s most recognizable landmarks.
Saturday, September 5 — Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial. Seating at 7:30 PM; film at 8:30 PM. The series closes with Brian De Palma’s crime saga against the backdrop of the Memorial, scored live from start to finish.
First up: Black Panther at Skyland Town Center on August 8. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
A DC company with a national footprint
SHAOLIN JAZZ describes itself as a Washington-based arts company working at the intersection of music, film, art, and culture, and CAN I KICK IT? is its signature production. According to the organizers, the series has staged more than 150 live cinematic experiences around the country — at performing arts centers, museums, festivals, and cultural institutions including Lincoln Center in New York, SXSW, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Republic Square in Austin, the Tacoma Armory, and The Cary Theater.
“CAN I KICK IT? has always been about creating a shared experience,” said Gerald Watson, co-founder of SHAOLIN JAZZ. “When you combine iconic films with live music in public spaces, something special happens. People aren’t just watching a movie — they’re experiencing it together. That’s what makes these nights so memorable.”
Cinema as a community event
The DC run lands as cities across the country look for new ways to activate public space through arts and culture — and this series is a straightforward pitch for how to do it: take a landmark everyone already knows, add a film everyone has an opinion about, and let a live soundtrack turn the evening into something neighbors experience shoulder to shoulder. Families, film buffs, and music fans are all invited, and admission won’t cost a thing.
The CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series runs August 8, August 22, and September 5. All events are free; check SHAOLIN JAZZ (shaolinjazz.com) for the latest details and any weather updates before heading out.
