It’s as if he were building a home in a new neighborhood and doesn’t want his credentials doubted. West, as usual, gets to the point more quickly: “What’s that jacket - Margiela?”)įor Jay-Z breaking these old barriers is a means to acceptance and stability. “Usually you have this much taste, you European/That’s the end of that way of thinking.” (Mr. “Basquiats, Warhols serving as my muses/My house like a museum,” Jay-Z raps on a bonus track. West talks about his “1985 white Lamborghini Countach/Two of ’em” - but high fashion and high art. The signifiers aren’t jewelry and cars - though Jay-Z raps about his Hublot watch and Mr. West more so, thanks to the trail Jay-Z left for him. They’re quick absorbers and have been quickly assimilated, Mr. West and Jay-Z have transcended all that, necessitating a hip-hop category beyond street money, beyond new money. West as well, who responds tartly: “We like the promised land of the O.G.’s/In the past if you picture events like a black tie/What’s the last thing you expect to see? Black guys.”īut Mr. “Why all the pretty icons always all white?” he asks on “That’s My Bitch.” “Put some colored girls in the MoMA.” On “Murder to Excellence” he’s more blunt: “Only spot a few blacks the higher I go/What’s up to Will, shout-out to O.” And to Mr. If he frets about anything on this album, it’s the increasingly rarefied air he breathes, and the particular stresses that come with occupying those spaces as a black man. Jay-Z has always been a good leader if not a great manager. West has ever made as for Jay-Z it rivals some of his recent artistic disappointments, failures of shortsightedness, not ambition. This is the least obviously commercial album Mr. Both sound hungry and probing and, most important, not complacent, making “Watch the Throne” perhaps the most ambitious and effortful late-career album hip-hop has ever seen. In this union the unflappable Jay-Z has given in ever so slightly to the restless Mr. But “Watch the Throne” is an album with several phenomenal moments, even if it doesn’t quite add up to a phenomenal album. West (billed as the Throne for this project) were auditioning several new styles but forgot to choose one. As a whole it’s not totally legible there are too many ideas, as if Jay-Z and Mr. The songs were developed in three bursts across several months and continents, creating a range of moods and tones. From a distance it’s a final burst of hip-hop hubris, the last gasp of the late-1990s to mid-’00s insistence on hugeness, a Howitzer at the door.Ĭuriosity and risk are often byproducts of privilege, of course, and many of the aesthetic choices on “Watch the Throne” derive directly from the circumstances of its creation. This is an album that announces its importance well before it appears, a team-up of titans not given to sharing the spotlight. West to release their first collaborative album, “Watch the Throne” (Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam/Roc Nation). Still, by all measurements, 2011 is perhaps the worst time for Jay-Z and Mr. There are younger stars who have their sort of dominance on their mind - Lil Wayne and Drake primarily - but the landscape they have to navigate doesn’t favor the lengthy reigns of old, especially when the entrenched powers refuse to cede any ground. Jay-Z and Kanye West are from-the-top-down guys, though: old-fashioned oligarchs, the last of a dying breed. But in recent years the center has been weakening, and the genre is readjusting to life built from the bottom up. Hip-hop, so long the most vibrant force in pop music, could always be counted on for big spending, a boon to producers, directors, fashion stylists, car dealers and so on, to say nothing of the marketing specialists, brand synergists and secondary industries it fueled. This is the age of the regional hit, the no-budget viral video, the Twitter star. EVENTS in hip-hop feel smaller than they used to.