Watch The Throne Album

[Amatista Sheeley]

Watchthe Throne is a collaborative studio album by the American rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West, collectively known as The Throne.[2] It was released on August 8, 2011, by Roc-A-Fella Records, Roc Nation, and Def Jam Recordings. Prior to its release, Jay-Z and West had collaborated on various singles, and with the latter as a producer on the former's work. They originally sought to record a five-song collaborative extended play, which evolved into a full-length album. The album features guest appearances from Frank Ocean, The-Dream, Beyonc and Mr Hudson. It also features vocal contributions from Kid Cudi, Seal, Justin Vernon, Elly Jackson, Connie Mitchell, Charlie Wilson, and Pete Rock, among others; samples of vocals by soul musicians Otis Redding and Curtis Mayfield are both credited as guest features on the album.

Recording sessions took place at various locations and began in November 2010, with production led by West and a variety of high-profile producers, including Mike Dean, Swizz Beatz, Pete Rock, RZA, Jeff Bhasker, The Neptunes, and Q-Tip. Expanding on the dense production style of West's fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010), Watch the Throne incorporates orchestral and progressive rock influences, unconventional samples, and dramatic melodies in its sound. The braggadocious lyrics exhibit themes of excellence, opulence, decadence, fame, materialism, power, and the burdens of success, as well as political and socioeconomic critique.[3] The album also expresses other topics, such as Jay-Z's thoughts on fatherhood, West's reflection on being deemed a social villain, and their success as performers. Many writers interpreted the subject matter to concern the plight of African Americans struggling with financial success in America.

Many critics and publications named Watch the Throne to their year-end best-of lists, including Rolling Stone and The Washington Post. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 436,000 copies in the first week, and broke the iTunes first week sales record at the time. It reached the top ten in 11 other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. It was also certified quintuple platinum in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in November 2020.

During the promotional stages of West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a remix of the song "Power" surfaced featuring Jay-Z.[10] Following this, Kanye West announced on Twitter his intention to drop a five-track EP with Jay-Z, titled Watch the Throne.[10] Also according to the rapper, the track "Monster" was intended for the EP, though that failed to surface.[10] It was later revealed by West that the project had been expanded into a full-length album in an October 2010 interview for MTV.[11] He said in the interview that they planned to record in the south of France.[11]

"It's just protecting the music and the culture. It's people that's in the forefront of the music. Watch the Throne, like protect it. You just watch how popular music shift, and how hip-hop basically replaced rock & roll as the youth music. The same thing can happen to hip-hop. It can be replaced by other forms of music. So it's making sure that we put the effort into making the best product so we can contend with all this other music, with dance music that's dominating the charts right now and indie music that's dominating the festivals."[12]

The album's earlier sessions produced a little material that has made the final cut.[14] West had brought a majority of his usual production crew onto the project, the same crew that had assisted in the creation of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. One of the main exceptions was producer No I.D., who felt that the two artists weren't pushing forward enough with the music.[17] In an interview with Complex, No I.D. commented about the project that "you're going to sell, because you're already big. But you guys are important to push this forward. Push intelligence and decadence and all of the above forward in a creative manner."[17] While his advice was acknowledged to a degree, he ultimately had very little part in the finished project.[17] In January 2011, they regrouped and rented a block of rooms at the Mercer Hotel in New York City and invited a select group of producers and recording artists.[14] Chauncey "Hit-Boy" Hollis, who produced the track "Niggas in Paris", said of recording at the hotel, "There was music going on in every room. I had a room where I was cranking out beats, and then I'd go into the main room with Jay and [Kanye] and play beats for them. Kanye is really hands-on. I would come in with a beat and he'd be like, 'Take this out, slow it down.' It would make it sound 100 times better. Jay would then mumble different flows to the beat".[14]

Parts of the album were recorded in New York City's Tribeca Grand Hotel.[18] Recording artist and producer Ryan Leslie also confirmed his involvement in the recording of Watch the Throne.[19] Producer 88-Keys reportedly played 20 of his beats to West and Jay, who only eventually used one on the finished album.[20] The Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, who had worked on West's previous album,[21] is credited as a producer on the track "New Day".[22] Watch the Throne was mastered by producer and engineer Mike Dean at the Mercer Hotel.[13]

Jay-Z and West worked with several guest recording artists, including Beyonc, Frank Ocean, and Mr Hudson.[23] "No Church in the Wild", the last song recorded for the album, was conceived by Jay-Z, West, and the song's producer 88-Keys throughout most of June.[20] Producer and recording artist The-Dream sings a verse on the track using AutoTune.[13] The song features R&B singer Frank Ocean, who released his debut mixtape nostalgia,ULTRA in early 2011 to critical acclaim.[24][25] The release of the mixtape interested Jay-Z and West. Jay-Z's wife Beyonc recommended the involvement of the singer in particular, who appears on both "No Church in the Wild" and "Made in America."[23][26] Ocean admitted that Jay-Z has intentionally intimidated him during recording sessions but declared his enjoyment of working with the two.[27] Ocean mused about the project:

"I rarely do collabs, so that's just one of the ones you absolutely do. It's like a no-brainer. I didn't really think about any of it. The last thing on my mind was working with artists who I've held in high esteem for years. [...] I worked with Jay on his solo album before I did the Watch the Throne sessions. The second time I went it was Barry Weiss, Jay, Beyonc, Kanye, couple other people, it was a pretty heavy room."[27]

"Lift Off" was recorded in Sydney, Australia.[28] In early May 2011, rumors arose that "Lift Off" was to feature Bruno Mars who had recorded vocals.[29] It was reported that the song would be released as the lead single from the album.[29] However, Mars never appeared on the song and Beyonc sang several lines during the chorus instead.[30] Additional vocalists Elly Jackson, Connie Mitchell, and Justin Vernon provide the hook on "That's My Bitch". Vernon had previously appeared on West's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, when West sampled Vernon's band Bon Iver's song "Woods". Vernon also provided additional vocals on songs such as "Dark Fantasy" and "Monster".[13][31] Swizz Beatz, who produced "Welcome to the Jungle", also provided background vocals to the track, and Kid Cudi contributed additional vocals to "The Joy" and "Illest Motherfucker Alive," bonus tracks on the album's deluxe edition.[13] One of the tracks that was recorded but didn't make the cut for the album was "Living So Italian."[15] It apparently sampled Andrea Bocelli's "Con te partir" and was described as catchy but for unknown reasons, the song never made it onto the album.[15]

Julian Benbow of The Boston Globe writes that the album's music is as "massive, dour, and relentlessly unconventional" as that of West's previous 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.[33] Music writer Robert Christgau describes West's production as "a funkier and less ornate variant of the prog-rap of 2010's acclaimed My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy".[34] Music journalist Jody Rosen characterizes the music as "vast, dark and booming," commenting that West "continues in the sonic vein he introduced in My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, lacing the songs with rock dynamics, layering his beats with eerie vocal chorales, piling on proggy flourishes."[35] Conversely, Matthew Cole of Slant Magazine finds West's "knack for dramatic, melodically sophisticated tracks [...] channeled away from the Olympian scale" of his previous album "and toward the more commercial vein of Jay-Z's recent work," which he attributes to West splitting production work with several other producers.[36] On the songs' structure, Cole states, "every track eschews the standard verse-hook-repeat format in favor of more dynamic material."[36]

The album features themes of opulence, fame,[39] materialism,[40] power, and the burdens of success.[41] Jay-Z's and West's lyrics include boasts of obscene wealth, grandiosity,[42] and social commentary.[36][38] Sputnikmusic's Tyler Fisher describes Watch the Throne as "an album centered around larger-than-life egos."[43] Robert Christgau notes "regal grandiosity" and "glory" as primary themes on the album.[44] Andy Kellman of Allmusic characterizes much of the album's lyrical content as "ruthless flaunting of material wealth and carte blanche industry resources."[45] Rob Harvilla of Spin views that their lyrics express elitism, narcissism, "relentless capitalism," and "smug yet undeniable greatness."[39]

Music critic Greg Kot views that the album is about "mutual admiration" and writes of the rappers' respective personas, "Jay-Z is about imperious flow, bridging his gritty past life on the streets with his current status as a cultural tastemaker and business mogul. [...] West is more desperate, transparent, awkward, vulnerable."[46] Music critic Nathan Rabin states that Jay-Z and West "are a study in contrasts: the businessman and the bohemian, the faithful husband and the drugged-up playboy, the walking press release and the loose cannon. Jay-Z is tidy. Kanye is nothing but rough edges."[47] Jon Caramanica writes similarly, "breaking [...] old barriers is a means to acceptance and stability" for Jay-Z, while "West sounds lonely" with his fame, adding that "For Mr. West every flash of Dionysian extreme is tempered by the realization of its hollowness."[22] In his article "Brag Like That" for Barnes & Noble, Robert Christgau comments that "Jay-Z is a grown man and Kanye is not" on the album and elaborates on their lyrics, stating:

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