Jay-Z and Kanye West did opulence like no other rappers in the world. Their music together was caked in decadent luxury; two artists who were in their prime, knew it, and flaunted it accordingly. On this day 15 years ago, the two superpowers in hip-hop joined for the best collab album of all time.
Initially, Watch The Throne was meant to be just five songs, a brief EP that teased what they could do together at full strength. It also had My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy posse cut “Monster” on the first track list. However, with time, Jay-Z and Kanye West decided on making a full-length record together.
According to Hov, calling it Watch The Throne was their mission statement to keep hip-hop as the dominant genre and culture. “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,” Jay-Z told WEDR in 2011.
“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.”
Jay-Z and Kanye West Connected for the Extravagant ‘Watch The Throne’ on This Day 15 Years Ago
The final result was a sprawling, indulgent album by two giddy egomaniacs who were bathing in their riches. Hov declared everything for sale on “Otis”, while Ye said he could never go to hell after “Jesus Walks”. They could rap on 80s break beats like on “That’s My B***h” and off-kilter dubstep records like “Who Gon Stop Me”.
In any other hands, this would be a catastrophic mess. Even today, it plays a little jarring musically. But only Jay-Z and Kanye West have the cult of personality to pull it off. Most critics felt the same; Pitchfork crowned it Best New Music with a 8.5/10. Writer Tom Breihan called it a “monument to their own grandiosity”, marveling at how they made such a spectacle in just 45 minutes.
“On Watch The Throne, they push each other and have fun doing it,” he wrote. “The result is a stadium-sized event-rap spectacle that still sounds like two insanely talented guys’ idiosyncratic vision. That’s worth celebrating.”
(Photo by Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for VEVO)
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