Watch the Throne
Watch the Throne is a collaborative studio album by American rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West. It was released on August 8, 2011, by Roc-A-Fella Records, Roc Nation, and Def Jam Recordings. Prior to its release, Jay-Z and West had collaborated on various singles, and with the latter as a producer on the former's work. They originally sought to record a five-song collaborative extended play, which evolved into a full-length album. The album features guest appearances from Frank Ocean, The-Dream, Beyoncé and Mr Hudson. It also features vocal contributions from Kid Cudi, Seal, Justin Vernon, Elly Jackson, Connie Mitchell, Charlie Wilson, and Pete Rock, among others. Samples of vocals by soul musicians Otis Redding and Curtis Mayfield are both credited as guest features on the album.
Recording sessions took place at various locations and began in November 2010, with production led by West and a variety of high-profile producers, including Mike Dean, Swizz Beatz, Pete Rock, RZA, Jeff Bhasker, The Neptunes, and Q-Tip. Expanding on the dense production style of West's fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Watch the Throne incorporates orchestral and progressive rock influences, unconventional samples, and dramatic melodies in its sound. The braggadocious lyrics exhibit themes of excellence, opulence, decadence, fame, materialism, power, and the burdens of success, as well as political and socioeconomic critique. The album also expresses other topics, such as Jay-Z's thoughts on fatherhood, West's reflection on being deemed a social villain, and their success as performers. Many writers interpreted the subject matter to concern the plight of African Americans struggling with financial success in America.
Seven singles were released for Watch the Throne, including "H•A•M", "Otis", "Lift Off", "No Church in the Wild", and the Billboard Hot 100 top five hit "Niggas in Paris", with 3 of the singles receiving music videos. Jay-Z and West embarked on the Watch the Throne Tour for promotion that spanned from October 2011 to June 2012 and became the highest-grossing hip-hop concert tour in history. The album received highly positive reviews from music critics, who mostly praised the rappers' performances and the production. However, some reviewers found the lyrical content uninspiring.
Many critics and publications named Watch the Throne to their year-end best-of lists, including Rolling Stone and The Washington Post. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling 436,000 copies in the first week, and broke the iTunes Store first week sales record at the time. It reached the top ten in 11 other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom. It was also certified quintuple platinum in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America in November 2020.
Background
Jay-Z and Kanye West first worked together on the song "This Can't Be Life", from Jay-Z's 2000 album The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, produced by West, then on Jay-Z's 2001 album The Blueprint, which showcased West's distinctive style of hip-hop production at the time. West's early production work on Jay-Z's music helped raise his profile in the music industry. While originally only viewed as a producer, West eventually was seen as both a viable rapper and producer thanks to the success of his debut album The College Dropout and its singles. West continued to be one of Jay-Z's main producers on subsequent albums such as The Black Album and Kingdom Come. Jay-Z also appeared on Kanye's first two albums, and the two frequently collaborated. Further collaborative work by the two included singles such as "Swagga Like Us" from rapper T.I.'s Paper Trail,"Run This Town" from Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3, and both "Monster" and "So Appalled" from West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
During the promotional stages of West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a remix of the song "Power" surfaced featuring Jay-Z. Following this, Kanye West announced on Twitter his intention to drop a five-track EP with Jay-Z, titled Watch the Throne. Also according to the rapper, the track "Monster" was intended for the EP, though that failed to surface. It was later revealed by West that the project had been expanded into a full-length album in an October 2010 interview for MTV. He said in the interview that they planned to record in the south of France.
In an August 2011 radio interview with WEDR, Jay-Z shared the meaning behind the album's title;
"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. 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."
Recording
Recording sessions for the album took place at Avex Recording Studio in Honolulu, Hawaii; Barford Estate in Sydney, Australia; Electric Lady Studios; The Mercer Hotel; MSR Studios; and Tribeca Grand Hotel in New York City; Le Meurice in Paris, France; and Real World Studios in Wiltshire, England. The songs "That's My Bitch" and "The Joy" were previously recorded for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as early as July 2010. Production began in November 2010 in England and continued during available times in Jay-Z's and West's schedules at locations in Australia, Paris, Abu Dhabi, New York City, and Los Angeles. In an interview for Billboard, Jay-Z said that they often recorded in hotel rooms and that the album went through three iterations, as he and West had scaled back from their original musical direction. He noted difficulties in the recording process, including arguments with West regarding their direction. Following the release of lead single, "H•A•M" in January 2011, Jay-Z stated that the less-than-stellar reception caused a change in the production of the album. Jay-Z announced that it was unlikely that the track would ultimately make the album. The issues at the beginning of production had caused a delay in the release. In an interview for Rolling Stone, Jay-Z discussed their insistence on recording in person and attributed it to the delay in releasing the album, stating "If we were gonna do it, we were gonna do it together. No mailing it in".The album's earlier sessions produced a little material that has made the final cut. West had brought a majority of his usual production crew onto the project, the same crew that had assisted in the creation of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. One of the main exceptions was producer No I.D., who felt that the two artists weren't pushing forward enough with the music. In an interview with Complex, No I.D. commented about the project that "you're going to sell, because you're already big. But you guys are important to push this forward. Push intelligence and decadence and all of the above forward in a creative manner." While his advice was acknowledged to a degree, he ultimately had very little part in the finished project. In January 2011, they regrouped and rented a block of rooms at the Mercer Hotel in New York City and invited a select group of producers and recording artists. Chauncey "Hit-Boy" Hollis, who produced the track "Niggas in Paris", said of recording at the hotel, "There was music going on in every room. I had a room where I was cranking out beats, and then I'd go into the main room with Jay and and play beats for them. Kanye is really hands-on. I would come in with a beat and he'd be like, 'Take this out, slow it down.' It would make it sound 100 times better. Jay would then mumble different flows to the beat".
Parts of the album were recorded in New York City's Tribeca Grand Hotel. Recording artist and producer Ryan Leslie also confirmed his involvement in the recording of Watch the Throne. Producer 88-Keys reportedly played 20 of his beats to West and Jay, who only eventually used one on the finished album. The Wu-Tang Clan's RZA, who had worked on West's previous album, is credited as a producer on the track "New Day". Watch the Throne was mastered by producer and engineer Mike Dean at the Mercer Hotel.
Jay-Z and West worked with several guest recording artists, including Beyoncé, Frank Ocean, and Mr Hudson. "No Church in the Wild", the last song recorded for the album, was conceived by Jay-Z, West, and the song's producer 88-Keys throughout most of June. Producer and recording artist The-Dream sings a verse on the track using AutoTune. The song features R&B singer Frank Ocean, who released his debut mixtape nostalgia,ULTRA in early 2011 to critical acclaim. The release of the mixtape interested Jay-Z and West. Jay-Z's wife Beyoncé recommended the involvement of the singer in particular, who appears on both "No Church in the Wild" and "Made in America". Ocean admitted that Jay-Z has intentionally intimidated him during recording sessions but declared his enjoyment of working with the two. Ocean mused about the project:
"I rarely do collabs, so that's just one of the ones you absolutely do. It's like a no-brainer. I didn't really think about any of it. The last thing on my mind was working with artists who I've held in high esteem for years. I worked with Jay on his solo album before I did the Watch the Throne sessions. The second time I went it was Barry Weiss, Jay, Beyoncé, Kanye, couple other people, it was a pretty heavy room."
"Lift Off" was recorded in Sydney, Australia. In early May 2011, rumors arose that "Lift Off" was to feature Bruno Mars who had recorded vocals. It was reported that the song would be released as the lead single from the album. However, Mars never appeared on the song and Beyoncé sang several lines during the chorus instead. Additional vocalists Elly Jackson, Connie Mitchell, and Justin Vernon provide the hook on "That's My Bitch". Vernon had previously appeared on West's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, when West sampled Vernon's band Bon Iver's song "Woods". Vernon also provided additional vocals on songs such as "Dark Fantasy" and "Monster". Swizz Beatz, who produced "Welcome to the Jungle", also provided background vocals to the track, and Kid Cudi contributed additional vocals to "The Joy" and "Illest Motherfucker Alive", bonus tracks on the album's deluxe edition. One of the tracks that was recorded but didn't make the cut for the album was "Living So Italian". It apparently sampled Andrea Bocelli's "Con te partirò" and was described as catchy but for unknown reasons, the song never made it onto the album.
In 2013, Jay-Z released his twelfth studio album Magna Carta... Holy Grail. In an interview, he revealed that two songs on the album were initially recorded for Watch the Throne - the song "Oceans", which features Frank Ocean, and the song "Holy Grail", which went on to feature Justin Timberlake. West and Jay-Z argued for four days about having them included on the Watch the Throne, however West eventually relented and the duo recorded "No Church in the Wild" and "Made in America". In an interview with Zane Lowe, Jay-Z said: " no lyrics on 'Holy Grail' and I recorded 'Oceans' and I played those records for Kanye," Jay explained. "And he was like, 'No those have to go on Watch the Throne,' so we spent four days arguing about those records and I was explaining to him why it wasn't right for this project and I had a whole idea for making this album called Magna Carta... Holy Grail, the "Holy Grail" part of the name came after."