More Jay-Z tidbits.

It seems every other blog post involves Jay-Z, but he’s a difficult subject to avoid when talking about hip-hop and its current state.

Jay-Z was on MTV’s Total Request Live today to discuss and promote his return from retirement, Kingdom Come, which will be released Tuesday. He also discussed the Hangar Tour he was part of Saturday, which involved performing seven concerts in seven major U.S. cities in 26 hours. Video clips of the concerts, plus a career retrospective featuring 10 years of music videos and performance footage, can be found at MTV’s Jay-Z Video Vault.

One of the most newsworthy items Jay-Z discussed on TRL was a Def Jam tour he plans to launch in spring 2007. He said he hoped to get most major Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam artists on the bill, and he named Nas, Ludacris, Young Jeezy, Rick Ross, Ghostface Killah and The Roots as possible performers. Jay-Z would presumably headline the tour.

If this tour occurs, it would be great for hip-hop. There hasn’t been such a large bill on a hip-hop tour since Jay’s own Hard Knock Live tour in the late 1990s, and by having a variety of east coast and southern rappers on the bill, the show would appeal to a broad audience.