Watch The Throne is the collaborative studio album from Jay-Z and Kanye West. The pair first worked together on a track titled "This Can't Be Life" from Jay-Z's 2000 album The Dynasty: Roc La Familia. West would feature as a producer on several of Jays albums including The Blueprint, The Black Album, and Kingdom Come. Jay-Z would also have a feature on each of Kanye's first two albums The College Dropout and Late Registration.
The two still work together occasionally as Jay has a verse on a track for Kanye's latest project Donda. During this era the only other pair fans were truly clamoring to hear a joint album from was T-Pain and Lil Wayne ( a project that has never arrived despite rumours and probably one that nobody cares about anymore).
Watch The Throne was originally conceived to be a 5-song EP but would eventually evolve into a full length album. The album featured seven singles, each with varying degrees of success, and as a whole the album peaked at #4 here in New Zealand. It is generally considered one of the best and most successful joint hip hop projects of all time.
"H.A.M." served as the first single. The song didn't generate much buzz outside of the fact that it was a Jay-Z and Kanye collab. It was really their 2nd single "Otis" which garnered some attention. The song is listed as featuring Otis Redding as his song "Try a Little Tenderness" is sampled. Critics praised the rappers for their style in trading off verse between each other and riding the sampled beat. "Otis" would be nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Song and won the Grammy for Best Rap Performance.
The 3rd single was "Lift Off" featuring Beyonce. Similar to "H.A.M." it didn't garner much attention. The 4th single is probably the one most are familiar with off the album, "N**gas In Paris." Kanye revealed that the song was inspired by his travels in Paris. It was recorded at Le Merice, a hotel in the city. In New Zealand it is the only single from the album that charted here peaking at #38 on the Top 40. The song won Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards.
Following the hot/cold trend of the album the next two singles "Why I Love You" and "Gotta Have It" were certainly more cold than hot in terms of reception. The 7th and final single "No Church In the Wild" would close things out on a high note. Featuring Frank Ocean it was reviewed positively by critics who praised OCeans vocals, the depth of the verse and the cinematic production of the song/video. "No Church In The Wild" serves as the opening track on the album.
Watch The Throne was ranked one of the top albums of the year and decade in general. Sometimes these joint projects just end up failures but it was great to see two of the best in the game then and arguably still today come together and put out a solid project. Some lists in the past couple years have proclaimed it as the #1 collaborative album of all time.
Happy 10th anniversary to Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch The Throne.
