"That night, I felt like the luckiest man in the world."

So muses Shawn Carter, known the world over as Jay-Z, in the early moments of "Fade to Black." He's referring to a night in November 2003 that has since gone down in music history — the first time a hip-hop concert sold out Madison Square Garden in two hours flat.

The film opens with a soaring overhead shot of the glittering lights of Manhattan. It's a triumphant acknowledgment from an extremely accomplished artist, on the eve of his retirement, that he and his genre at last have been accorded mainstream acceptance. Which makes it all the less fortunate that "Fade to Black," for all its pulsing energy and jaw-dropping displays of musical showmanship, should turn out to be such an exhausting and unenlightening experience.

The November concert showcased performances by the likes of Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, R. Kelly, Foxy Brown, Pharrell and Ghostface Killah, among others, and at first "Fade to Black," shot with an electrifying immediacy, feels like a similar embarrassment of riches. (Mary J. Blige, in particular, manages to upstage the main act in the sweetest possible fashion.)

But as the MTV generation has made abundantly clear, what's electrifying one minute can quickly turn enervating the next, and for all the skill with which they navigate both the stage and the adoring crowds, directors Patrick Paulson and Michael John Warren never quite succeed in making their rapture your own.

So says this admitted non-aficionado, anyway. Devoted hip-hop fans may have a different reaction, as well they should. Yet it's hard to imagine even Jay-Z's strongest supporters staying awake when the film turns away from its concert footage to chronicle the making of his final work, the "Black Album." These long, draggy glimpses inside the recording studio, padded with dull insights about the nature of inspiration — "Every track has to make a statement" — feel warmed over at best.

In the spotlight, however, Jay-Z is a master of self-expression, and the technical virtuosity of his delivery, as well as his unerring sense of rhythm, are indisputable. Bouncing lyrics off his fellow performers at do-or-die speed, paying tribute to pioneers such as Tupac Shakur before him, Jay-Z projects total confidence without ever seeming self-congratulatory. In its own exciting but unfulfilled way, the film makes you wish you were there in person to let him know just how much of his hard-won glory he deserves.