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

I did something with Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne I haven’t done with any rap album in a long, long time.

I sat down and listened, all the way through, start to finish, with scarcely a pause to refill my coffee. I was pulled in close, raptly listening to verses rife with pain, paranoia and pride spill over deftly crafted beats. The tracks, arranged like chapters in a novel or scenes in a film, unfolded before me, delivering exquisitely detailed vignettes at once personal and universal.

That’s remarkable, insofar as rap albums, broadly speaking, are built around a handful of knock-out singles and the rest is populated with forgettable filler. Not so with this masterful effort, a dozen tracks (16 if you download the album on iTunes, which has Watch the Throne exclusively, along with Best Buy, which has the exclusive physical release starting Friday) confirming Jay-Z and Kanye West’s joint status as hip-hop’s visionaries.

Two fearsome talents; a mentor and mentee; a pair of iconic rappers whose egos were (just barely) sublimated into a final product that manages to speak truth to social issues like black-on-black violence and chronicle biographical anguish, even as it’s raucously celebrating a culture of conspicuous consumption and the agony of global fame.

It’s a collaboration that, in another rarity, has all the hallmarks of a major pop cultural event; Watch the Throne, amazingly, did not leak in the days prior to its official release. That meant listeners around the world got to unpack the album at roughly the same time; the day of its release, my Twitter feed was alight with delirious reactions to various songs. It’s a throwback to the days of the monoculture, before everything was atomized and ruined by advance spoilers.

Yet all of this accomplishment would be meaningless if the tracks weren’t any good. It was certainly a concern, in the widely hyped run-up to Watch the Throne, that West or Jay-Z would slip somehow, failing to capitalize on what is sure to be one of the year’s biggest releases. Instead, a kind of effortless brilliance reveals itself; there are showcase moments for both rappers individually and frequently, together. I can think of no other duo that could, over the course of a full-length album, so consistently deliver.

And make no mistake, these guys understand the stakes: “Don’t let me get in my zone/These other n----- as is lyin’/Actin’ like the summer ain’t mine,” declares West on the early highlight N----- in Paris. From its opening moments, both men are gladiators in the coliseum, fending off all comers with wordplay as sharp as a broadsword. Sonically, the duo aligns itself with soul legends like James Brown, Otis Redding, Nina Simone and Curtis Mayfield, furthering the notion that these songs are intended less as hits of the now and more as timeless works, meant to be considered and consumed as a whole.

Recorded in locations around the world, including New York, Paris, London, Australia and Hawaii, with a variety of producers, the rappers insisted on being in the same room to record verses, a smart choice which lends a crackling immediacy to tracks like the flawless Otis, where West ends a line with “manana” and Jay-Z immediately picks up with a riff on Havana. Granted, emailing verses back and forth, as is the modern custom, might’ve achieved the same result, but throughout Watch the Throne, moments like those feel like a spark of creativity captured in the moment. You can feel these two giants pushing each other, like professional athletes, daring each other to top their latest feat.

If that was all Watch the Throne provided, it would be thrilling enough. Too many rap albums, unnecessarily bloated and cluttered with guest stars, fail to capture the urgency inherent in the genre. The best of the best paint a picture with their rhymes, putting you close enough to smell the blood, feel the fear or taste the champagne; rap, not unlike country music, is built on being relatable, having listeners understand the roots of your art.

On that score, Watch the Throne likewise delivers beautifully, as West, no stranger to schadenfreude, reels off endless, pitiable lists of slights (he gets the last laugh, though: “Started a blog just to get some traffic,” raps West on Made in America, “a million hits and the Web crashes.”). His reactionary impulses contrast starkly with Jay-Z’s more cerebral, calculated flow.

Yet, surprisingly, for someone who’s built a career on being inscrutable, Jay-Z opens up frequently throughout Throne, mining his turbulent childhood and his yearning for domestic stability for some wrenching lyrics: “Sorry junior, I already ruined ya/‘Cause you ain’t even alive, paparazzi pursuin’ ya,” he rhymes on the poignant New Day.

Tension and release, denial and acceptance, arrogance and humility – a satisfyingly full range of emotions plays out across Watch the Throne. Without question, it’s a front-to-back masterpiece, one of the year’s finest albums and, shockingly, a record that lives up to its advance hype. As with so much else here, that feat is as rare as anything, but it’s all in a day’s work for Jay-Z and Kanye West.