//Album Review: Watch The Throne
A week ago yesterday marks the digital release of the hotly anticipated Jay Z and Kanye West collaboration album Watch The Throne. The album, the conception and creation of which has been the two rappers’ focus since at least last November, comes after several years of Jay Z and Kanye West team up tracks including ‘Never Let Me Down,’ ‘Power’ (Remix), and ‘Monster’ among a slew of other credited and uncredited production and writing projects.
To say that a full length Jay and Ye album has been a long time coming would be like saying rain is wet, bananas are healthy or, more appropriately, that chopping up a Maybach is expensive. Yet it’s hard to talk about this album without stating the obvious and reiterating what every music fan already knows. When these two, we’ll call them men though I’m not totally convinced they’re human, get in the same room together, things happen. Not only is the music that comes out of their ‘spare no expense’ recording sessions of the highest quality in the industry, but their individual musicianship and their combined and very much genuine love of all things sonic interlock to build elaborate mansions of wordplay, subdued elegance and social wit. In other words, Jay Z and Kanye aren’t just on some next level shit, they live there.
The album runs a little over 46 minutes and includes 12 songs with 6 bonus tracks giving Watch the Throne a grand total of 16 songs to which to dance, bump, ride slow, mean mug and otherwise go H*A*M. In an interesting twist, the album doesn’t sport the usual cast of features and cameos that you might expect from a G.O.O.D Music/Rock-a-fella fueled fire like Watch The Throne. When you give it some thought, it makes sense. Given that a feature is supposed to compliment a single artist, it doesn’t seem necessary when each track is a mutual celebration of Jay and Kanye’s style. Why ruin a good thing by throwing, say, Wale on a track for no reason (ahem Mr. Ross). The track does feature OFWGKTA affiliate Frank Ocean, G.O.O.D Music producer Mr. Hudson, Jay Z wife/ full fledged diva Beyoncé Knowles as well as eternally awesome soul singers Otis Redding and Curtis Mayfield.
The album starts with a song that’s got a more organic sound than we’re totally used to. ‘No Church In The Wild’ is earthy and cool; kind of like walking barefoot down a muddy dirt road. The two rappers bounce off of each other really well, letting listeners know right from jump street that this endeavour will be equally collaborative from a lyrical position. Frank Ocean did what Frank Ocean do on this record and kept it pretty real, adding to the track some of his sedge hat weirdness.
‘Lift Off’ is the second song on WTT and is probably the song that is the most representative of Jay and West’s (but mostly West’s) attitudes towards their careers and the way in which they view the industry. It is safely one of my favourite songs on the record and, even more so than the first song, gets me hyped for the rest of the record. ‘Lift Off’ is the first of several songs on which Jay and Kanye let loose, tripping on a brew cooked up by studio pharmacists Pharrel, Don Jazzy and Q-Tip. This is all not to mention that Beyoncé, as always, killed it. Like, really killed it.
‘Niggas In Paris,’ ‘Otis’, ‘That’s My Bitch,’ and ‘Who Gon Stop Me’ all share the same ‘that shit crae’ sentiments as one another. With over the top rhymes, complicated (and very expensive) samples, Jay and Kanye play a pick-up game of two vs. everyone else ever on these tracks. For a lot of people, the similarity of their intendment was a bit too much and turned some people off, much as ‘H*A*M’ bummed people out in the beginning. Though I don’t share the same opinion, I think that the closeness of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s chronological proximity to Watch The Throne was cause for, at least some, plate pushing fullness. I suppose you could liken the situation to visiting MoMA and then going to the Whitney right afterwards; the work in both museums is fine and well curated, but it’s understandable if you get a little ‘art sick’ after 5 hours of gallery hopping.
‘Gotta Have It’ is my favourite song on the the record. I wish I could articulate why I love this song in better terms than ‘I just really like it, ok?’ but that’s really all I’ve got. Jay and Ye volley off each other really well and you can feel it as your head bobs to the very un-Neptunes Neptunes beat. Jay, as he’s done so well in the past, will set up a line or bar for Kanye to jump four feet over the net and spike it in the public’s face. The way they rap on this track is veritably like the volley ball scene in Top Gun, except way less gay.
Other notable songs on Watch The Throne are ‘Murder to Excellence’ and ‘Why I Love You,’ with some sort of runner up position going to ‘Illest Motherfucker Alive.’ ‘Murder and Excellence’ is one of a couple other serious songs on the record but is certainly the most poignant as Kanye and Jay openly discuss issue of Black on Black crime in their respective neighborhoods. Kanye, more so than Jay Z since his part ends with S1’s ‘Excellence,’ does work on this record, bringing the epidemic right to your front door. And though some will say that, since neither dude has probably been back to their old neighborhoods in quite some time they haven’t the right to rap about their homes’ associated problems anymore, I think the song is still important as a means of unification and warning.
As a whole I really like the record. Jay Z and Kanye West, in not very much time at all and perhaps without even trying that hard, gave the world an indisputably rock solid record. My only complaint, if I can even call it that, is that Watch The Throne comes off as unmistakably Kanye heavy at times. When you look at the guts of the record, it’s easy to see why this record seems like it’s another segment of the Kanye West Show. Save for three tracks, Kanye produced or had a hand in producing all the songs on the album while Jay is given no producer credit. This coupled with the several times Jay Z can be heard trying to catch up with Kanye can be cause for concern for Jay Z fans looking to hear him crush beats. If this were a normal CD we’d be calling a spade a spade and say that Watch The Throne is a Kanye West record that features Jay on every track.
Lucky for us, them and everyone else involved in the project, Watch The Throne is most certainly not your average run o’ the mill hip-hop album and there’s nothing anyone could do to make Jay Z look like a chump. It is a cool, calculated guilty pleasure of a record that not only shows what creativity and cash can afford an artist, but also shows what a small time producer from Chicago and a kid named Shawn from Marcy have become all these years later.
So go out, and buy the CD. I know that it may seem like a guy who spent 250k at the bar last Sunday and a guy who has several lines of shoes bearing his (and his friend’s) name may not be worthy of your $14.99, but rest assured that the music is. Follow, follow and like us.
NRTIII
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I WROTE THIS YA BASTIDS!
