Jay Z and Kanye West combined for a hit-filled two-hour show Wednesday night and Thursday morning during South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, allowing Samsung to steal some of iTunes’ luster at the annual music conference and festival.Samsung announced the Austin Music Hall show early this week and scheduled the pair at the same time as the iTunes Festival’s hip-hop night that featured Kendrick Lamar and ScHoolboy Q at the nearby ACL Moody Theater. The show by West and Jay Z was one of the most anticipated surrounding the annual buzz-building gathering, and fans with Samsung devices with the company’s new streaming music service, Milk Music, were granted free entry. The rappers played selections from their Watch the Throne collaboration throughout, including “No Church in the Wild,” “Who Gon Stop Me” and “Otis” as images of Doberman pinschers, lions and tigers, great white sharks and gazelle-killing cheetahs flashed across a screen. The pair, who recently announced a partnership between West’s Donda Music and Jay Z’s Roc Nation, each also played hits from his own lengthy catalog. West performed “Black Skinhead” and “New Slaves” from his latest album, Yeezus, along with older hits like “Jesus Walks” and “Runaway.” Jay Z offered recent hit “Tom Ford” from Magna Carta … Holy Grail and standards “99 Problems,” “Empire State of Mind,” “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” and “Big Pimpin’.”

The ratings-challenged NBC comedy The Michael J. Fox Show has been shelved for weeks, with every expectation that a cancellation order is inevitable. Michael J. Fox’s reaction: Not quite. “We’re not hearing a death sentence,” he said in a telephone interview. “We’re hoping NBC can still find a good place for the last episodes.” That would be the seven episodes that remain unseen after the series wrapped production. The seven represent the best work the show has done, Fox said, suggesting that if they had a reasonable chance to be seen, the dim prospects might lift. The sitcom’s co-creator Will Gluck also argued that, as is often the case with television comedies, it took this one a while to find its voice.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 03/14/2014