No. 19 of 2011: Kanye West & Jay-Z - Watch The Throne

After the critical and commercial success of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, fans of Kanye West were generally willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it came to the quality of any future releases.  However, after the critical hurdle of The Blueprint 3, fans were less inclined to afford Jay-Z the same leeway.   MBDTF was brazen in its integration of numerous musical styles while The Blueprint 3 was rife with the same bland mainstream rap excesses common to some of Jay’s late-career releases.   So the idea that these two rap giants would be releasing an album together put some Kanye fans ill at ease.  Would Kanye draw out the creative impulses which Jay-Z had shown in the past or would his genre-juggling templates be cast aside for the radio friendly tripe on The Blueprint 3?

Thankfully, the answer falls firmly in the former category.  Over the course of Watch The Throne, which is led by the strong musical shepherding of West, the album carefully dissects and successfully expands upon those same musical templates in an effort to contain the immense personalities of both Jay-Z and West.  And far from falling short in this endeavor, the album holds together more cohesively than it has any right.  This is in no small part to the strong direction from West.  Many of these tracks, while falling short of the greatness of the highlights from MBDTF, have the same basic ingredients and can be seen as thematic twins to those songs.  “Otis” takes the sampled vocals of Otis Redding and proceeds to use them as building blocks in West’s and Jay’s own funhouse of music.  The track takes what is undeniably an influence on both of artists and uses it to solidify Redding’s already immense stature in the history of popular music.  They create call and response verses that act as if they’re actively engaging Redding on an emotional level.  The entire track just feels fun as hell.  Others, like “Why I Love You” and “New Day” go beyond simple ego stroking and engage the listener on a primal level.  These tracks sound exactly what you would imagine a meeting of the minds between these two artists would sound like but it’s the not-so-obvious personal reflections and emotional acknowledgements that ground this album.  Without these emotional anchors, Watch The Throne would careen off course and prove true what all those skeptics initially thought it would be, an unmitigated mess.  Thankfully, the more introspective moments never feel forced or manipulative and the albums vision never reaches past its grasp.  West and Jay-Z have crafted a monument to the ability of two artists, working completely in sync, to defy convention while also giving the fans everything they’ve come to expect.  And that’s a damn sight more than can be said for most artists.

Tracklisting:

1. No Church in the Wild
2. Lift Off
3. Niggas in Paris
4. Otis (listen to the mp3 below)
5. Gotta Have It
6. New Day
7. That’s My Bitch
8. Welcome to the Jungle
9. Who Gon Stop Me
10. Murder to Excellence
11. Made in America
12. Why I Love You