Jay-Z on Chester Bennington’s Death: ‘Money or Fame, That Doesn’t Mean Anything if You’re Not Happy Inside’
Linkin Park's collaboration album with JAY-Z, Collision Course helped illustrate an era of music, and put Linkin Park at the center stage of pop culture as one of the most influential rock groups. After the death of singer Chester Bennington, JAY-Z has paid tribute to Bennington as much as possible, and did so again at his recent BBC Radio 1 session.
He began his performance of their collaboration track "Numb/Encore" dedicating the song to Chester before launching into the song's performance. It keeps all the original aspects of the song intact, the angelic sound of Chester's Bennington a strong presence in the music. Jay gets lost in the song, falling into a trance while rapping its words. The high quality recording is a reminder of why that collaboration was so special and pertinent at the time and how it still holds up to this day.
He talked at length about Chester and Collision Course during the interview portion of the session saying, "That felt really special to me. That was the first time I performed that song, obviously after Chester passed away. It's super tragic. I really think that hopefully his death serves as a wake up call. Mental health is a real thing, you never know what people are going through. You think because he's a performer and that he sold fourteen thousand million records, that doesn't equate to happiness. Money or fame, that doesn't mean anything if you're not happy inside. A lot of people we go and we don't deal with what's happening to us, you just keep going. Especially for a performer like that, you just numb yourself. You become numb, he's singing it. You get bigger audiences and move further away from yourself. It's tragic, I knew him well. Really nice person, five kids, really tragic. Hopefully his death wakes people up."
The host of the show chimed in, saying it will hopefully reach out to men as well. He agreed, saying, "Men have to have this bravado and armor up and be this kind of way. Nah, you've got to take care of yourself physically and spiritually."
Linkin Park have begun announcing the guest performers that will join them in their Oct. 27 tribute show to Bennington's life, including Avenged Sevenfold‘s M. Shadows and Synyster Gates, Korn‘s Jonathan Davis, System of a Down‘s Daron Malakian, Shavo Odadjian and John Dolmayan, the members of Blink-182, Bring Me the Horizon‘s Oli Sykes, Yellowcard’s Ryan Key, Machine Gun Kelly and recent duet partner Kiiara.
To see JAY-Z speak about Chester, skip to 8:20, and 10:01 for the performance.
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