About

Watch the Throne is a collaborative studio album by American rappers Jay Z and Kanye West, released on August 8, 2011, by Roc-A-Fella Records, Roc Nation, and Def Jam Recordings. Before the album, Jay Z and West had collaborated on their respective singles and with West as a producer on Jay-Z's work. As longtime friends, they originally sought out to record a five-song EP together, but the project eventually evolved into a full-length album. Recording sessions took place at various locations and began in November 2010. Production on the album was led by West himself, alongside a variety of high-profile record producers including Mike Dean, Swizz Beatz, Sak Pase, Jeff Bhasker, The Neptunes and Q-Tip.

Expanding on the dense production style of West's 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Watch the Throne incorporates orchestral and progressive rock influences, unconventional samples, and dramatic melodies in its sound. Jay-Z and West's braggadocio lyrics exhibit themes of opulence, fame, materialism, power, and the burdens of success, as well as political and socioeconomic context. The album expresses other topics such as Jay-Z's thoughts on fatherhood, West's reflection on being deemed a social villain, and their legacy as performers. Music writers interpreted the subject matter to concern the rappers' plight as African Americans struggling with financial success in America.

The album produced seven singles, including "H•A•M", "Otis", "Lift Off", "No Church in the Wild", and the Billboard Hot 100 top five "Niggas in Paris", which all received music videos. Jay-Z and West promoted the album with the Watch the Throne Tour that spanned October 2011 to June 2012 and became the highest grossing hip-hop concert tour in history. Watch the Throne debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 436,000 copies its first week. While some critics found the album's lyrical content uninspiring, its production and the rappers' performances were highly praised. Many critics and publications placed the album in their year-end best-of lists. It also earned Jay-Z and West seven Grammy Award nominations. The album is certified platinum in the US. – Wiki

“Watch the Throne brings little of Twisted Fantasy's boundary-melting ambition or The Blueprint 3's commercial acumen. It's just two of rap's biggest figures and best friends getting together to make some of the swollen, epic music that comes so naturally to them… On Watch the Throne, they push each other and have fun doing it, and the result is a stadium-sized event-rap spectacle that still sounds like two insanely talented guys' idiosyncratic vision. That's worth celebrating.” – Pitchfork

“Watch the Throne continues My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's mood of restless creativity. The musical scenery of Niggas in Paris and Who Gon Stop Me shifts unpredictably behind West and Jay-Z's voices. There's something particularly thrilling about the way the former suddenly lurches from staccato orchestration into fizzing industrial noise, not to mention the fact that West follows a particularly torturous metaphor with a burst of dialogue from Blades of Glory – "no one knows what it means, but it's provocative", hinting at a hitherto-unnoticed ability to laugh at himself. There are unlikely samples. No Church in the Wild sets Frank Ocean's haunting vocal against Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera playing a tricksy prog riff. But equally impressive is the way the producers breathe fresh life into well-worn sounds. Nina Simone's A New Day is a song robbed of its power by its ubiquity among X Factor contestants: you wouldn't think putting it through the equally ubiquitous Auto-Tune would help matters much, but on New Day, the cumulative effect is impressively weird and disorientating.” – The Guardian

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