To celebrate the 15th anniversary of Jay-Z and Ye’s landmark collaborative album, Watch the Throne, producer Hit-Boy offered a peek into the original session for “N***as in Paris.”
In a post shared on X, formerly Twitter, Hit-Boy highlighted the latest anniversary of the 2011 album, which was a major breakthrough moment for him as a producer. “15th anniversary of Watch the Throne, that shit is crazy,” he said in the clip, as seen below. “I was like 24 when this shit dropped. Just coming off of being a n***a that just studied Hov and Ye, playing their music, and being able to work with them years later. It’s still unbelievable.”
He then turned the camera and offered a look at the project files for the track, one of the major highlights of Watch the Throne. The original session files feature a number of production variations from the version that made the album. “This shit still go crazy in every stadium right now,” he continued. “This the original session. The end of Ye’s verse got whole different bars going into the hook. … Salute Hov, salute Ye, and salute Ricky Anderson; he just put me on this shit. Levelled a n***a whole shit up, man.”
When Complex ranked Hit-Boy’s songs earlier this year, “N***as in Paris” landed at the top spot of the list. The producer recalled working on the beat for roughly 15 minutes, and when he emailed it to Ye, he eventually replied, “When this song drops, your life is going to change.” He wasn’t wrong; the song led to several major collaborations, including the Cruel Summer highlight “Clique,” and Kendrick Lamar’s unbeatable “Backseat Freestyle.”
Other songs he’s worked on include Travis Scott and Drake’s “Sicko Mode,” Beyoncé’s “Sorry,” Drake’s “Trophies,” and ASAP Rocky’s posse cut, “1Train.”
