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How Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Solange Going to a 2009 Grizzly Bear Concert Ended Up an Iconic Indie-Pop Crossover Moment

This Great Moments in Pop Star History episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast looks at Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Solange seeing Grizzly Bear live in 2009.

Jay-Z and Beyonce attend a press conference for the "Answer The Call" charity concert at Madison Square Garden on August 31, 2009 in New York City. But earlier this century, indie and pop were still isolated enough that in 2009, when Solange took her sister Beyoncé and Bey’s husband Jay-Z to a concert by the band Grizzly Bear at the Wiliamsburg Waterfront in Brooklyn, NY, it ended up making for a media sensation — especially when Jay started raving about his experience and about the entire “indie rock movement” in TV interviews later that year. Then, it’s back to 2009 — when Beyoncé was already one of our greatest pop stars but not necessarily one of the hippest, when Jay-Z was looking to distance himself from an increasingly inhospitable hip-hop mainstream, and when Solange was still finding herself as an artist.

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