Review: Jay-Z and Kanye West, "Watch the Throne"

Watch the Throne
Jay-Z and Kanye West
Roc-A-Fella, Roc Nation, Def Jam
08.08.11

Hip-hop is dead. You know it as well as I do. Dead like jazz. Dead like the blues. Like those things, it will continue, because there will be a small sect of people who will always enjoy and appreciate it, but it will never advance. The tide has gone out, creatively and almost financially, revealing two giants still standing: Kanye West, the world's first post-rap star, and his old boss Jay-Z. Who, taking into account flow, versatility, lyricism, insight, and street cred, could arguably be considered the greatest rapper of all time.

So what does that leave us? This summit meeting, an improbably great pop album with hip-hop influences, one in which two monsters of the genre, rather than destroying downtown, get in a car and go clubbing. Usually when two musical heavyweights meet, the only way to make things mesh is to severely lower all expectations: the informal jam. But these two have never gotten anywhere being loose or low-key. Which makes the effect they have on each other on Watch the Throne all the more stunning -- Yeezy gets Jay to expand his consciousness and look at the game behind the game, while Hov, like a good friend arriving from out of town, convinces Kanye to get over himself and man up. Consider the way they dovetail verses in the bizarro sampling opus "Otis." Jay: "I got five passports, I'm never goin' to jail." Kanye: "I made 'Jesus Walks,' I'm never goin' to hell."

Stylistically, what we're dealing with here is a continuation of West's beautiful dark twisted fantasies as a blueprint for Jay's new blueprint. Which makes sense, given their history together. (That '09 beef looks more and more like PR.) When it works best, like on the opener, "No Church in the Wild," it's a world-beating combination -- the smooth mogul in constant control of his surroundings tortured by the doubt of a visionary playa who can't help but wonder what it all means.

It functions perfectly well as something to annoy people with at stoplights: hooks, beats, floss. What makes this collaboration something that'll hold up in the future when hip-hop is dad-rock, however, is the larger context. This may be the first such album to stop and turn around in the middle of the party and ponder who and what gets left behind when you shoot into the stratosphere. Not the bourgeois shit where you pretend to be hard even as you leave the street, but the ruminations of kings literally without a country -- these two are all alone in a field that will never challenge them again, and that frustration permeates every song here. 

By the time you dig in to the meat of the album's middle, Jay is realizing he's "all dressed up with nowhere to go" and "God damn I’m so high, Where the fuck did I go?" Kanye: "It’s time for us to stop and re-define black power / 41 souls murdered in 50 hours." And Jay again: "Niggas watchin’ the throne, very happy to be / Power to the people / When you see me, see you." In the end, their response to that distance is to retreat: get drunk on haterade, treat women like pets, and reminisce about slinging rock. But that's the only knee-jerk thing about this album, and that may be only because there's no one left to take the throne away when they misbehave. Watch the Throne is all about accelerating into a dead end. 

Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 90. Jay's bravado and Kanye's paranoia fit like a velvet fist in an iron glove. I said that right.
Invention: 85. Not quite as sonically impressive as Kanye's Fantasy, but Jay's lyrical heft makes up for it.
Integrity: 82. You have to come full-strength to record your album in plush hotel rooms from Paris to New York, and still catch the mood of the street. Still a little unfocused from the rush job, though.