Jay Z recently performed at a popular traditional outdoor rock festival held in Glastonbury, UK. Oasis's Noel Gallagher took offense to J's appearance and prior to the festival lobbed a diss saying, "Glastonbury has a history of guitar music...I'm not having Jay-Z at Glastonbury. It's wrong." This was Jay Z's response with audience participation:
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=mrDIOVXx-y8]
And Slate intellectualizes Jay Z's retort (along with the related phenomenon of "cross genre covers"):
The song was "Wonderwall," the old Oasis hit, and it opened Jay-Z's performance. He strolled out pretending to strum an electric guitar as the original played over the speakers. Wearing a delighted grin, he missed big chunks of the lyrics, flubbed many of the rest, and delivered everything in a tone-deaf sneer. It was a mess, but that was the point: Jay-Z wanted the guitar to look like a big, goofy prop (in Gallagher's formulation, after all, guitars aren't instruments so much as membership cards); he wanted to mistreat the melody, not coddle it; and he couldn't be bothered to remember lyrics that, when you think about it, sound sort of flubbed to begin with. By butchering the cover, Jay-Z weaponized it.
Read more here.
[Via]