If nothing else, the contest for Year’s Most Quotable Album has just been decided.
Bartlett might have to publish a separate edition just to deal with the hundreds of memorable rhymes Jay-Z and Kanye West come up with as their legendary egos battle itout on “Watch the Throne,” the rappers’ long-awaited collaborative album.
Beyoncé shows up to sing the chorus of “Lift Off,” the most commercial (and least interesting) track, but that hook is less memorable than some of the lyrical references Jay-Z makes to his superstar wife.
A recurring theme is how Jay-Z deserves all his riches to assuage the pain he experienced in his rough youth -- and in the bonus track “H-A-M,” he includes his spouse among the rewards: “Try to walk around in these shoes / See the s--- I saw growing up / And maybe you can take a peek at Bey’s boobs.”
The missus is also cited – as is protégé Rihanna -- in the preceding number, “Illest Motherf----- Alive,” which has Jay-Z reaching previously unaccessed levels of anti-self-effacement: “Elvis has left the building, now I’m on the Beatles’ ass / [N-word] hear ‘Watch the Throne,’ yeah, it’s like the Beatles back / Bey Bey my Yoko Ono, Rih Rih complete the family / Imagine how that’s gon look front row at the Grammys.”
West’s head isn’t any less large than his partner’s, so the main difference in attitude between the determinedly entitled stars is in how they relate to women.
“I got that hot [B-word] in my home,” raps Jay. “You know how many hot [B-words] I own?” counters Kanye, less monogamously inclined than ever. Later, escorting a woman he describes as “Mary Magdalene from a pole dance” around a club, he adds, “That second girl with us, that’s our wife.” Leave it to West to advance the fight for marriage equality, as long as it involves threesomes.
With heads these big in the room, it almost seems superfluous for an outsider to jump in with anything positive to say. But “Watch the Throne” is actually as accomplished and outrageously entertaining as it is un-progressive in matters of gender roles and humility. These two deserve about half the glory they heap upon themselves, which is saying a lot.
Superstar collaborations almost inevitably disappoint. (Remember Jay-Z’s album-length hookup with R. Kelly? Of course you don’t.) So “Watch the Throne” is likely to be held up for years as a model of how to do it right. Either rapper’s boasts can grow wearisome over the course of an uninterrupted solo project, but the variety provided by their alternating verses works wonders in keeping us almost as fascinated by them as they are by their mirrors.
And it feels like it took a village to raise this “Throne,” not just the two titans. There’s nary a dull moment on an album that features not just West’s ongoing sense of sonic brilliance but production contributions from Swizz Beats, Q-Tip, and RZA, among others; vocal cameos by Kid Cudi, Seal, and an opera singer or two; and cleverly utilized samples by everyone from Nina Simone to Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera.
