"Watch The Throne" shook up the rap music industry to the core. Six years ago on Tuesday, the world heard two rappers at the top of their game play off each other on a full-length album. Jay-Z and Kanye West originally set out to make a small EP for the fans. Instead, they made an album that will live in the annals of rap history for all-time, a trendsetter that has yet to be imitated or duplicated in any reasonable manner.
"Watch the Throne" drops
On August 8, 2011, Roc-A-Fella Records, Roc Nation, and Def Jam Recordings released "Watch the Throne." The recording process for the longtime rap friends began back in November 2010, utilizing operatic melodies and strange samples to create an album that was part music, part art.
A massive seven singles were spun out of the album, including "Otis" and the NFSW-titled song that made "ball so hard" part of the lexicon. "Watch the Throne" quickly went platinum, reaching the top of the Billboard 200 chart and earning the rappers multiple Grammy nominations.
Reviews for "Watch the Throne" were generally positive when it was released. The Daily Telegraph gave it a perfect five out of five stars. USA Today did the same, but out of four stars. Pitchfork, meanwhile, gave the album a score of 8.5 out of 10. The artists supported the album by embarking on the "Watch the Throne Tour," one of the highest-grossing hip-hop concert tours of all-time.
The legacy of "Watch the Throne"
The top legacy for "Watch the Throne" was the amount of imitators who attempted to collaborate on an album of the same caliber, falling short almost every time.
Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg did "Mac & Devin Go To High School," Chris Brown and Tyga teamed up on "Fan of a Fan," and Drake and Future gave it a decent shot with "What a Time to Be Alive." None came close to fulfilling the promise of the 2011 record, though.
It also served as the high-water mark for the friends, who are no longer so.
Inklings of a feud emerged when Kanye West went on a rant at one of his concerts, with jabs aimed at Jay-Z. The Brooklyn rapper recently responded on his acclaimed album, "4:44." The two are also reportedly fighting over contracts related to exclusivity on Jay-Z's streaming service, TIDAL. Working that closely together may have forever hindered a relationship of virtual brothers. But for a brief moment in time, they gave the world "Watch the Throne," an album that deserves a shrine in any hip-hop Hall of Fame.
