Over the past few months every Hip-hop fan has been waiting for Watch The Throne, the hyped collaboration album with Jay-Z and Kanye West. As it progressed from a five song duo, inspiration hit them and it turned out to be about a 12 song album with 4 bonus tracks. Any normal Kanye West and Jay-Z fan has doubted that the two would make a collaborative effort, but they shocked the hip-hop community and proved us wrong.
Kanye West and Jay-Z’s relationship started when Kanye was trying to get signed on Jay-Z’s Rocafella Records, but Jay-Z put him down. Kanye, already an established producer, helped Jay-Z by producing many of his infamous albums including The Blueprint and The Black Album. Eventually as time passed, Jay-Z signed to Rocafella Records and their Big Brother relationship was established.
Back to the present though. Watch The Throne is released and quite frankly, it is one of the most artistic and creative rap albums out today. The album uses diverse samples including their song, “Otis”, where they sample the legendary Otis Redding. Although it doesn’t have a catchy hook that you would expect, it features the two artists going back and forth, verse by verse which is what you want on a collaboration album like this.
The album is with it’s controversies though… Def Jam released the album a few hours shy of the physical CD release which dropped the sale of physical copies. Angered, recorded stores have demonstrated protests for these kind of methods. The reality is, everything is going digital and the early release prevented the album from leaking, something which most artists have to deal with.
Although the album is a great album, it’s not without its flaws. The album doens’t flow as a single album. I guess that is apart of their thought process, but an instance of this is with the tracklisting. The song “New Day”, a song about being good father is proceeded by a song entitled “That my Bxtch”. That may be the only flaw to the album though. The big positive of the album are the collaborations of the collaboration project. The best being Frank Ocean’s appearances as he was masterful on the album.
The question everyone is asking is; “Who was better on the album?” The answer: Jay-Z. I do think that that is age is playing a major factor to his music. PEople are questioning whether he is as good as he was in the past. Watch The Throne proved two things; Jay-Z is as good as he ever was and Kanye West is Jay’s little brother. Not to say that Kanye wasn’t great on this album, but this proved to the world that Jay-Z still has it.
4.5/5
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