Watch the Throne
Watch the Throne is a collaborative studio album by the American rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West, collectively known as The Throne.[2] 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.
Watch the Throne
August 8, 2011
- July 2010[a]
- November 2010 – July 2011
46:12
- Kanye West
- 88-Keys
- Hit-Boy
- Pete Rock
- Jeff Bhasker
- Mike Dean
- No I.D.
- The Neptunes
- Q-Tip
- RZA
- Sak Pase
- Swizz Beatz
- Avery Chambliss
- S1
- Southside
- Lex Luger
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 (2010), 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.[3] 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 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 (RIAA) in November 2020.
Songs[edit]
The opening track "No Church in the Wild" features a cinematic production style.[48] Singers Frank Ocean and The-Dream lend their voices to the album's grim opener, which sets the mood with a gnarled guitar sample.[52] Over the rock-centric, rolling production, both rappers muse over familiar themes of loyalty, sexuality and maternal solidarity.[53] On the album, the song closes with a segment of Italian avant-prog band Orchestra Njervudarov's 1979 piece "Tristessa", which reappears at the end of several other songs.[54] The pop-oriented "Lift Off" features baroque strings and a chorus sung by Beyoncé Knowles, accompanied with synthesizers.[55] The song contains horns and martial drums as Knowles sings, "We gon' take it to the moon/ Take it to the stars."[56] "Niggas in Paris" incorporates staccato orchestration and fizzing industrial noise, topping it all off with a menacing beat and icy synthesizer notes.[52] The track features an unusual sampling of dialogue from the 2007 film Blades of Glory, notably the "we're gonna skate to one song and one song only" line.[37] West and Jay-Z's lyrics frame their rags to riches story on the song.[48]
"Otis" samples Otis Redding's 1966 song "Try a Little Tenderness", manipulating it into a rhythm track with Otis Redding's vocals and grunts.[37] The sample is used in a way that is reminiscent to past Kanye productions, like the tracks found on his album The College Dropout.[47] Redding's vocals are chopped up so thoroughly that his voice serves as a mere melodic riff on the track, with both rappers promptly rapping over it in a braggadocious fashion.[38][47] "Gotta Have It", produced by The Neptunes, incorporates chopped-up James Brown vocal samples and Eastern flute melodies.[38] The song contains haunting backing vocals and an accompanying tambourine with the two rappers trading verses with the vocal riff playing over them.[38] Much like "Otis", the track features sliced-up vocal snippets and an aggressive bass backing, with the two rappers trading lines and making references to the Yung Chris song "Racks" and other contemporary rap trends.[52][57]
On "New Day", they address future sons about fame.[47] It references the line "me and the RZA connect" from Raekwon's 1995 song "Incarcerated Scarfaces", which was also produced by RZA.[22] The track incorporates a sample of Nina Simone's 1965 song "Feeling Good" through an Auto-Tune voice processor.[38] Both rappers discuss their futures as fathers on the track, flowing smoothly over mellow, lightly psychedelic synthesizer tones.[52] Both Justin Vernon and La Roux appear on "That's My Bitch", spitting off hooks over a quick, melodic beat, with West at his most abrasive lyrically.[52] On "Welcome to the Jungle", Jay-Z laments personal losses and overcoming struggles.[40] Sharing the name with a Guns N' Roses track, Jay describes himself as the "black Axl Rose" over a jittery, treble-heavy Swizz Beatz production.[52]
"Who Gon Stop Me" features bombastic production and samples Flux Pavilion's 2011 song "I Can't Stop", reinforced with heavy synthesizer and tone shifts.[58] The song utilizes an often experimental, bass-driven and dub-step influenced style of composition, with West forcefully rapping lines like "this is something like the Holocaust".[52] "Murder to Excellence" addresses black-on-black crime and limited social mobility for African Americans.[38] Midway through the song the beat switches up, with Kanye musing over the horrors of black-on-black violence in the first half, and Jay-Z delivering equally meditated comments on black excellence on the more choir-heavy second half.[52] A sample from Indiggo's "LA LA LA" can be heard on the song.[59][60][61] At 5 minutes in length, "Murder to Excellence" is the longest track on the album.[13]
"Made in America" has themes of family life and the American Dream, with Jay-Z and West discussing their respective rises to fame, while acknowledging those who helped and inspired them.[40][49] The song has been described as an understated soft-pop track with influence from Michael Jackson and his 1985 charity single "We Are the World".[58] Ocean's hook pays tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz and Jesus on one of the album's more serene tracks.[52] Jay-Z muses on his drug-dealing past with lines like "our apple pie was supplied by Arm & Hammer", with West's verse describing his conflict with fame.[42] "Why I Love You" has Jay-Z lamenting betrayal and how his past protégés failed to maintain without him.[22][38] The track contains a "sledgehammer beat" which is built around French house duo Cassius' 2010 single "I <3 U So".[52] West's production continues in the sonic vein he introduced in My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, lacing the song with rock dynamics, layering the beat with eerie vocal chorales in the style of progressive rock songs.[35]
Commercial performance[edit]
Watch the Throne debuted at No. 1 on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 436,000 copies in its first week.[131] This became Jay-Z's 12th number-one album and West's fifth number-one album in the US.[131] This also became the second highest debut week of 2011, while its first week digital sales of 321,000 downloads served as the second highest one-week sales tally at the time.[131] Watch the Throne broke the US iTunes Store's one-week sales record at the time when it sold nearly 290,000 downloads.[131] The album also reached number one on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and the US Top Rap Albums charts.[132] In its second week, the album remained at number one on the chart, selling an additional 177,000 copies.[133] In its third week, the album dropped to number two on the chart, selling 94,000 more copies.[134] In its fourth week, the album dropped to number four on the chart, selling 80,000 copies.[135] In 2011, Watch the Throne was the ninth best-selling album in the US, and the first collaborative album to make the year-end top ten in Nielsen SoundScan history.[136][137] It was also the fourth top selling album on iTunes in 2011.[138] As of July 2013, the album has sold 1,573,000 copies in the US, according to Nielsen SoundScan.[139] On November 23, 2020, the album was certified quintuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for combined sales and album-equivalent units of over five million units in the United States.[140]
Watch the Throne was also a success outside the US. In Canada, the album debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, selling 25,000 copies in its first week.[141] In its second week, the album remained at number one on the chart, selling 15,900 more copies.[142] In Australia, the album peaked at number two on the Australian Albums Chart and number one on the Australian Urban Albums Chart.[143][144] In the United Kingdom, the album debuted at number three on the UK Albums Chart and number one on the UK R&B Albums Chart.[145][146] The album topped the UK R&B Albums Chart for six non-consecutive weeks between 2011-12. In addition, Watch the Throne peaked at number one on the Norwegian Albums Chart and the Swiss Albums Chart.[147][148] The album peaked at number two on the German Albums Chart the Danish Albums Chart, and at number three on the Scottish Albums Chart.[149][150][151] It also debuted within the top ten on the Belgian Albums Chart, the Dutch Albums Chart, the French Albums Chart, the Irish Albums Chart, the Russian Albums Chart and the New Zealand Albums Chart.[152][153][154][155][156][157]