Hip-Hop Kings, Shorn of Excess .

Willie Davis for The New York Times

Jay-Z and Kanye West flitted around one another on Saturday night, sharing the spotlight and knowing when to step back.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Just two guys sitting on a stoop, telling stories, lamenting the mistakes they've made, expressing hope that the next generation might learn something from them.

That was Jay-Z and Kanye West swapping stories, midway through their Saturday night show here at the Izod Center, on “New Day,” a song from “Watch the Throne,” the collaborative album they released in August. It turns out that the last stand of the hegemony looks like the opposite of extravagance.

Wealthy minimalism has been the tenor of this project. The first single, “Otis,” was a basic old-school sample flip. In the video Jay-Z and Mr. West goof around in white T-shirts and jeans and drive around in a filleted Maybach, an inversion of 1990s hip-hop excess. Doing less with more was also the mood of this concert, making for an arena show that managed to be small and without distraction, like a play.

To open the night they emerged at opposite ends of the arena on square platforms that slowly rose about 20 feet in the air, the most overtly audacious moment of a concert that thrilled with plain gestures.

The primary one of those was affection. “Watch the Throne” (Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam/Roc Nation) is less a paean to the inestimable successes these artists have achieved than to their willingness to push each other out of their comfort zones. The collaboration isn’t merely a power-sharing arrangement or a union of equals but an application to be rap’s greatest duo. It seems each man had to wait to ascend to the height of pop music to find a worthy playmate.

And they have genuine rapport. When Beyoncé, Jay-Z’s wife, announced her pregnancyat the MTV Video Music Awards in August, Mr. West had the grandest reaction, grabbing Jay-Z by the shoulders, patting him on the back, and jumping up and down.

There was childlike joy in how each played hype man for the other during the show; on “99 Problems” Mr. West infused the police officer part with the humor it can sometimes lack, and Jay-Z looked mischievous when rapping along with the looser Mr. West. During the “Watch the Throne” song whose title is mostly printable abridged to “Paris,” they brushed each other’s shoulders off, like two brothers preparing for a big night out. A little bit earlier the two traded off songs one for one, turning the repartee into a comic routine: Mr. West painting “Gold Digger” as the dark underbelly of Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’, ” to which Jay-Z replied with the callous “99 Problems.”

Lasting about two hours, the show was an almost seamless blend of songs from “Watch the Throne,” solo material from each rapper and songs they have shared in the past, often used as transitions. If there is any fat on hit-thick solo Jay-Z or Kanye West concerts at this point, it was excised here. They have become gifted at resisting maximalist urges. This show demonstrated how much can be accomplished with a few small decisions: as on the album, Jay-Z and Mr. West worked smart, not big.

The heaviest lifting was done by cameras that seemed to encircle the stage, resulting in astonishing close-ups that captured every sweat cascade on Mr. West’s forehead and every scrunched expression on Jay-Z’s face. The lighting design was also invigorating: flickering white spotlights near the show’s close used the full volume of the place and felt like a tactile art piece, and the flame bursts on “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” were expertly timed and felt almost percussive. Mr. West had the better personal light displays: rapping inside a rotating white square on “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” or amid crawling sine waves on “Flashing Lights.”

Most of the stock video on the overhead screens consisted of nature footage: hungry-looking jungle cats and hungry-looking birds and hungry-looking wolves and more. After “Welcome to the Jungle” both men stood with their backs to the crowd and stared up at the screens, watching footage that appeared to be of a leopard stalking, then devouring, an antelope.

There were no opening acts and no special guests. The very capable backing band was largely shrouded in darkness. The pair of hydraulic towers, which revealed LCD screens when raised, were not overused.