Hear ye, hear ye, the kings of hip-hop have taken their throne.
After one year of recording, hip-hop moguls Kanye West and Jay-Z dropped their highly anticipated album, “Watch the Throne.”
The duo released their album this past summer on August 12.
This album truly exemplifies what hip-hop used to be like before Waka Flocka and Gucci Mane. Fans of G.O.O.D music’s Big Sean and Roc Nation’s J.Cole, protégés of Kanye and Jay-Z, will greatly enjoy this album.
Every single song on this album is lovable. In hip-hop, an important element of each song is the beat, or how the listener bumps to the music. If the song makes the listener jam to the song with no one else around, you have a winner.
But the beat isn’t the icing on the cake. That would be the lyrics, or the flow of the rapper. With Kanye and Jay-Z, there are definitely no problems in either of those departments.
“No Church in the Wild” is the first song on the album that features a member of Tyler The Creator’s OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All), Frank Ocean. This song takes different points of view on religion, which is something that Jay-Z and especially Kanye are known for in their music.
One of the best lines in the song is when Kanye is saying, “Two tattoos one read no apologies/ The other said love is cursed by monogamy/ That’s something that the pastor don’t preach/ That’s something that a teacher can’t teach. When we die the money we can’t keep/ But we probably spend it all cause the paint ain’t cheap, preach.” Everything in this line not only rhymes, but makes sense. It is so true that when we die we don’t get to take our physical possessions with us.
“Otis” was the first song dropped off of the album, and when the DJ on the radio said he had to play it twice because it was so good, he wasn’t lying. It features original Temptations member Otis Redding for the hook. For anyone who hasn’t seen the video for this on TV, they’re missing out on Kanye and Jay-Z remodeling a Maybach and donating the profit made off of auctioning off the car towards drought relief in Africa.
Other songs definitely worth mentioning are “Lift Off” featuring the beautiful, newly pregnant wife of Jay-Z, Mrs. Beyoncé Knowles, the only female on the album. “Why I Love You” featuring Mr. Hudson is also a very relatable song.
Despite some of the foul language, this album was definitely one of the best to come from Jay-Z and Kanye. And every song is worth a listen.
Imani Love is a Sports Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com