The gamut of rap collaborations since 2011 includes Fat Joe and Remy Ma; Future and Drake; Future and Young Thug; Offset, 21 Savage, and Metro Boomin; Kanye West and Kid Cudi; and Travis Scott and Quavo. Only one (What a Time to Be Alive) had a fraction of the zeitgeist-bending grandness of JAY-Z and Kanye West’s decade-in-the-making Watch the Throne.
With Watch the Throne came a collaboration between two legends who brought out the best in each other: West produced the lion’s share of his big brother’s classic The Blueprint, and JAY-Z propelled West with his co-sign and some of the best verses from his first two albums. Naturally, the team-up became a blockbuster event for a dying business starved for one. And the rap gods came through for the team: all that attention, and the album somehow did not leak in full before its release date.
The black excellence epic was inescapable in the succeeding months, but something this momentous ended up only being a one-time thing. Kanye West was absent from JAY-Z’s 2013 project Magna Carta Holy Grail, even though its big hit “Holy Grail” came from Watch the Throne sessions. Within the next three years, the duo would split further apart, until West officially proclaimed that there wouldn’t be a Watch the Throne 2 because “of some Tidal/Apple bullshit.”
Unfortunately, they’re not even in the same lane these days and have been throwing parting jabs at each other on tracks and in interviews. It may be a long while before North West and Blue Ivy Carter finally get a chance to play with each other. Still, the strife between JAY and ‘Ye can’t take away from the era when they were on top of the world together. For its seventh anniversary, we’re ranking all of the tracks on Watch the Throne.
16. “Lift Off” f/ Beyoncé
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Producers: Don Jazzy, Mike Dean, Q-Tip, Kanye West, & Jeff Bhasker
This is Watch the Thrones’ big disappointment—you’d expect a Beyoncé feature on hip-hop’s biggest collaboration to not miss by this much. But “Lift Off” takes the most excessive parts of Graduation and I Am… Sasha Fierce without producing either album’s culture-shifting excitement. It’s a basic rocketship-as-ambition metaphor that barely has a modicum of the headliners’ wit. The placement of “Lift Off” on WTT makes it look even more wack: The over-sweetened track completely undoes any of the dark mood-setting done by its preceding opener, “No Church in the Wild.”
15. “Made in America” f/ Frank Ocean
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Producers: Sak Pase
Watch the Throne’s penultimate track (on the standard edition) sticks out as just as needlessly sugary and clean as “Lift Off.” “Made in America” admirably plants its story in African-American history with JAY-Z cleverly twisting the American dream to his viewpoint (“I got my liberty chopping grams up/ Street justice, I pray God understand us”). But the preaching done by both JAY and ‘Ye feels undermined by Mike Dean and Sak Pase’s childish, high-octave set of keys. Ocean does what he can on the hook, but the civil rights name-drops sound uninspired, like he’s ticking off the black superhero checklist.
14. "H•A•M"
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Producers: Kanye West & Lex Luger
"H•A•M" was Watch the Throne’s first single, but truth be told, the song is just OK: Kanye West and JAY-Z over a Lex Luger-in-his-prime beat isn’t a hard sell. But it did gesture at the possibility of Watch the Throne simply being two superstars rapping on overproduced radio beats, which would’ve felt like a cheat. Thankfully, the actual album is far more adventurous, making "H•A•M" feel like an innocuous detour.
13. “Welcome to the Jungle”
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Producers: Swizz Beatz
At over a decade deep in the game, Swizz Beatz still had one of hip-hop’s best producer ad-libs. He’s the glue at the center of this b-boy bop, gruffly howling “Welcome to the jungle, well?” with an impish smirk. But the song mostly belongs to JAY-Z, who delivers some biography (“My uncle died, my daddy did, too/ Paralyzed by the pain, I can barely move”) and pays his respects to Pimp C in two emotional verses.
12. “New Day”
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Producers: Kanye West, Mike Dean, & RZA
In which RZA digitizes Nina Simone as two men on opposite sides of 40 ruminate on the idea of having children. Now, the song has a more nostalgic texture since West and JAY-Z are actually dads. Of course, the more surreal of the two verses is Kanye’s; “I might even make him be Republican” clearly isn’t a passing quip anymore, with his recent taste for dangerous right-wing thought.
11. “Why I Love You” f/ Mr. Hudson
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Producers: Mike Dean & Kanye West
“Why I Love You” was tasked with wrapping up hip-hop’s most momentous collaboration after the preceding track “Made in America” whiffed. Fittingly, Mr. Hudson sounds like he’s shouting his autotune from a mountaintop on that hook. But “Why I Love You” did more than close the door on (standard edition) Watch the Throne opulence; it also ties up JAY-Z and Kanye West’s arc. These are two different men with contrasting worldviews, yet they were still stuck together in the paranoid bubble aiming at former allies (namely Beanie Sigel, Consequence, and Dame). “What do you do when the love turns to hate?” says JAY, before West sneeringly responds, “Gotta separate from these fuckin’ fakes.” It was a compelling us vs. the world moment between the (former?) brothers.
10. “No Church in the Wild” f/ Frank Ocean and The-Dream
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Producers: Om'Mas Keith, Mike Dean, 88-Keys, & Kanye West
Watch the Throne’s opener comes out a bit too strong. JAY-Z is out here referencing Plato, Frank Ocean sings a solipsistic hook for the ages (“What’s a god to a non-believer/ Who don’t believe in/ Anything?”), and the first line we get out of Kanye on this album is that zebra/cocaine image. But the excessiveness works, because it raises the stakes for the rest of the album. Centered on that iconic pulsating guitar riff, “No Church in the Wild” is that perfect mix of grit and sophistication that made it destined to soundtrack a Denzel Washington trailer.
9. "Primetime"
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Producers: No I.D.
“Primetime” is the second-to-last song on Watch the Throne’s deluxe edition, so this one had to be a furious flex. No I.D.’s production, which sprints along a ragtime-y piano, feels like a throwback tailor-made for JAY’s laid-back approach. It ends up building a peculiar aesthetic, like JAY-Z and Kanye stormed into a 1920s speakeasy wearing Dior suits. Mathematician JAY returns to run some quick numbers, only to conclude that he’s rich (“New money, I found the fountain of youth!”). Kanye has a hilarious moment of false humility about sipping “different” champagne before declaring this “the best damn champagne I had in my life.” Though their names are ubiquitous, at the core of JAY-Z and Kanye’s fame is how they rebelled and upended white American expectations. It makes sense that one of their best moments sounds like a caper.
8. “Illest Motherfucker Alive”
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Producers: Southside, Mike Dean, & Kanye West
“Illest Motherfucker Alive” is what you get when you run T.I. “What You Know” through the Mercer Hotel, except Tip’s classic feels more high-stakes. “Illest Motherfucker Alive” is pretty much there for you to revere two impossibly rich black men. There’s also West being petty to probably Amber Rose for the first half of his verse and uttering, “Got staples on my dick, why? Fuckin' centerfolds.” The stakes are high, but ‘Ye is gonna be ‘Ye.
7. “Who Gon Stop Me”
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Producers: Kanye West & Sak Pase
JAY-Z’s genre-blending shtick had already resulted in the weak (but commercially dominant) The Blueprint 3. So Mr. Carter doing rap-dubstep shouldn’t have inspired that much confidence even with a still on-top-of-his-game Kanye West by his side. But “Who Gon Stop Me” works, because the duo’s outsize personalities aren’t diluted: West drunkenly curses in pig Latin, while JAY-Z gives street hustlers an immortal Instagram caption (“I went through hell, I’m expectin’ heaven”). “Who Gon Stop Me” is also Watch the Throne’s clear grab for ubiquity: Was there an easier way to take Bed-Stuy to white college dorms in 2011 than by throwing dubstep in the mix?
6. “Murder to Excellence”
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Producers: S1 & Swizz Beatz
“Murder to Excellence” is the track that most plainly lays out Watch the Throne’s core narrative: It’s JAY-Z and Kanye West celebrating the fact that they’re JAY-Z and Kanye West, as they’re aggrieved by the fact that there aren’t more JAY-Zs and Kanye Wests. Thus, there’s an inherent significance to Watch the Throne’s decadence. JAY-Z pretty much says his wins are ours—“Power to the people, when you see me, see you”—and there was no questioning that Kanye was still the people’s voice as he mourned over Chicago’s murder rate. They were stunting for a higher purpose.
5. “That’s My Bitch”
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Producers: Jeff Bhasker, Kanye West, & Q-Tip
Watch the Throne’s most classically hip-hop moment is also one of the album’s weirdest. Elly Jackson of synth pop’s La Roux and indie rock ambassador Justin Vernon singing “Could I maybe have another dab of your potion?” over the classic “Apache” drum break (co-produced by Q-Tip) is… something. “That’s My Bitch” also finds the two stars in different headspaces. Kanye West is peak Hedonistic ‘Ye (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy/Yeezus) mode, declaring “No disrespect, I'm not tryna belittle/ But my dick worth money.” JAY-Z, the chivalrous half, takes time to reaffirm black beauty while name-dropping Mrs. Carter and Mona Lisa, basically rapping “Apeshit” into existence.
4. “Gotta Have It”
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Producers: The Neptunes & Kanye West
Kanye West and the Neptunes chop up James Brown to speak on the surrealness of being a wealthy black American (Kanye’s “‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, white America, assassinate my character/ Money matrimony, yeah they tryna break the marriage up”) and rep their hometowns (“I remain Chi-town, Brooklyn ‘til I die”). Within 2:20, “Gotta Have It” works as a convincing argument for Watch the Throne’s significance.
3. "The Joy"
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Producers: Kanye West & Pete Rock
Even with all the preceding excess, Watch the Throne ends with the brothers rapping the blues over a Pete Rock joint that West calls “No electro, no metro, a little retro.” Originally a G.O.O.D. Fridays entry, “The Joy” punctuates the album by focusing on the human struggle behind the decadence. West utters that indecent birthday cake bit, but it’s clear he’s acting out: “In the mirror where I see my only enemy/ Your life’s cursed? Well, mine’s an obscenity.” But the song’s emotional weight comes from that melancholic Curtis Mayfield sample and JAY-Z verse: “I seen so much as a kid they surprised I don’t needle pop,” he broods. Someone this big still hasn’t outgrown his demons.
2. “Niggas in Paris”
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Producers: Anthony Kilhoffer, Hit-Boy, Mike Dean, & Kanye West
JAY-Z and Kanye performing “Niggas in Paris” multiple times in a row at concerts (including a dozen in Paris) was undeniable proof that the hype behind Watch the Throne had become a full-blown phenomenon. Of course, the jam’s significance isn’t solely tied to concert footage; Hit-Boy and co.’s toyland keys immediately spur your body, and almost every one one of those lines became war cries (“Ball so hard!”; “Doctors say I’m the realest, because I’m suffering from realness”). Further, how many singles will have you shouting a mid-song skit in the club? JAY-Z also does the older-brother work of explaining why the two being in Paris is a thing of note: “If you escaped what I've escaped/ You'd be in Paris getting fucked up, too.” To be black in America is to live in a state of fragility. At the very least, we deserve to act ignorant.
1. “Otis”
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Producers: Kanye West
“Otis” was the social-media-age radio event that truly felt momentous; witnesses know exactly where they were when Funkmaster Flex unleashed those signature bombs and had that Redding chop on repeat for an hour. The extraness was necessary: With “Otis,” Kanye and JAY-Z took under three minutes to reaffirm faith after the tepid response to lead single “H•A•M.” It was a pure dosage of their personas that showed why their dynamic worked so well: two unabashedly confident black men, with two completely different modes of showing it. After almost two decades in the game, JAY-Z still finds ways to showcase his gift for explaining how much richer he is than you (“Photo shoot fresh, looking like wealth/I’m ’bout to call the paparazzi on myself”). Meanwhile, Kanye is joyously impulsive, making the Spanish word “manana” his, starring in Diff’rent Strokes, and rapping one of his career’s finest strings of Ye-isms—can you name a better oxymoron than “sophisticated ignorance” off the top of your head?
