Confidence breeds arrogance. And in some cases, it’s totally called for — half the fun of following Kanye West is listening to all the megalomaniacal things he says on a day-to-day basis, and Jay-Z’s Brooklyn swag only seems to refine with age.
So it’s no surprise the duo’s debut collaborative effort goes by the name Watch the Throne and features more king-of-funk James Brown samples than most hip-hop artists would ever have the cajones to put on their own records.
Watch the Throne, however, is not quite the fantastic LP it could have been. The simple idea of having two of hip-hop’s greatest artists perform on a full record together had a great deal of promise, but the sounds on the album offer potential instead of an outright masterpiece.
It’s a musically successful record that falters on the very basis of its concept. If West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy proved anything, it’s that Yeezy is a conceptually brilliant music producer.
Watch the Throne‘s problem is that the concept for the record — and it is very clearly West’s concept — is purely logistical, relying heavily on the expectation that Jay-Z perform to the same standard as his partner.
In the end, Watch the Throne is a West album through and through, with Jay-Z feeling more like an insistent guest, riding sidecar.
The beats run the gamut of being either solely West’s creations, collaborations with big-name producers such as The Neptunes or other producers’ compositions such as Hit-Boy’s banger “Ni**as in Paris,” which was certainly still tweaked by West in some way.
Almost every beat is incredibly well-crafted, and the tracks cover a wide range of styles. After reportedly building up and breaking down the project three times, it’s no surprise West and Jay-Z ended up with such a plethora of sounds.
The excited “Who Gon Stop Me,” for instance, samples “I Can’t Stop” by Flux Pavilion and takes the album into dubstep territory with destructive bass wobbles, while album opener “No Church in the Wild,” featuring Odd Future’s own Frank Ocean, could easily have been a cut left off of West’s brooding My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
“Lift Off,” featuring Beyoncé, is the album’s catchiest track — a spacious, orchestral pop number led by some gorgeous melodies and near-Elton John levels of flair.
The breadth of the beats gives the major-label album a bit of a mixtape feel, but in the end it lifts the experience to another level. The album never sticks to one sound for too long, yet isn’t unfocused over its 46 minutes and begs repeat listening.
The beats are truly at the heart of this album while the lyrics really don’t do much either way. When they do connect, it isn’t Jay-Z who snags the spotlight, but West again.
Less-than-virtuosic flow aside, West’s lyrics on this record shine through with far more relevance than just about anything Jay-Z has to say. Jay-Z’s verses certainly are not bad — not by any stretch of the imagination — but they do not live up to the expectations that are leveled against anything he releases.
Take “New Day,” for instance, a solemn beat produced by The RZA, on which the two rappers talk about how they want to raise their sons to be better than themselves. The rappers’ verses are similar, but West’s lines seem to ring with a bit more significance than Jay-Z’s words.
Still, the contrast between West’s slower flow and Jay-Z’s somewhat more rapid jibber-jabber feels nice — especially when they are trading bars of four — even if they aren’t saying anything interesting. If the insistent James Brown sampling is an indicator, this album isn’t meant as an intellectual journey, but a collection of sounds to groove to.
A groove album is a righteous cause all its own, and honestly, it’s probably the only way West could follow his multifaceted and heavily lauded My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which came out less than a year ago. Instead of trying to best it, he went in the opposite direction to soften the blow of an album not equal in greatness — give the fans fun, extraordinary music without the complex pretense and try to put half the focus on another artist.
What listeners have on Watch the Throne is one rapper-producer riding high at the peak of his game and another who has evolved beyond “the game” itself and come out a businessman on the other end. Jay-Z still has the spitfire that made him who he is, but he seems quite reserved on the record, playing it more than safe while West seems to be doing whatever he wants, as usual.
Watch the Throne is easily one of the best hip-hop albums this year and in many years. A deep-rooted message is far from the most important aspect of music, and when talking about hip-hop, arrogance and braggadocio reign supreme.
So enjoy Watch the Throne for what it is — it is not My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and it’s not a Reasonable Doubt-rebirth, but the album is top-shelf quality for sure. If you think about it, that’s really what we all deserve.
RATING: 4 stars out of 5
berman@umdbk.com
