Watch the Throne Featured On Many “Top Albums of the Year” Lists
Kanye West and Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne is featured by many publications’ in their Top Albums of 2011 lists. We’ve rounded up several of them here…
Rolling Stone: #2 of 50
The most anticipated event-album of 2011 was a sound-the-trumpets supergroup record of a magnitude scarcely seen. What could have been a crash-and-burn anticlimax turned out to be as fun as any record in a dog’s age. From the cinematic “No Church in the Wild” to the Stax-soul update “Otis,” Throne testifies to Kanye West’s genius for beats both iconoclastic and pop-savvy. Amid all the litanies of private jets and gold watches, politics creep in: The pair frame their rise as an African-American Horatio Alger story on the impossibly fierce “Ni**as in Paris.”
Time: #3 of 10
Watch the Throne isn’t just an exercise in “luxury rap,” as West puts it in “Otis.” The rappers explore some pretty dark topics. The history of urban violence in “Murder to Excellence” and their own socioeconomic achievement in “Made in America” help turn Watch the Throne into a beautifully decadent album by two of hip-hop’s finest artists — men grappling with what it means to be successful and black in America.
Billboard: #3 of 10
The pairing of the biggest rapper alive with the most creative rapper alive could have been a train wreck, but this full-length collaboration between Jay-Z and Kanye West — in which the pair showcased their insurmountable wealth while at times lamenting the trappings of superstardom — soared above expectations. “N***as in Paris” was 2011′s unstoppable banger, “Otis” returned Mr. Redding to the Hot 100, and “New Day” let our heroes wax poetic about their unborn sons (we and the RZA connect, too).
MTV: #8 of 20
The year’s highest-profile collaboration didn’t exactly play against type — except for the fact that, unlike most other meetings-of-the-egos, it actually ended up being really good. And that’s because, despite all the flash surrounding it (the globe-trotting recording sessions, the Riccardo Tisci-designed cover, the video where they sawed the top off a Maybach) and all the boasts contained within it, WTT is very much an album that grapples equally with big themes — success, race, responsibilities, public perception — and, you know, big watches. And then, of course, there’s the incredibly odd “N—as in Paris,” surely the first rap song to give equal face time to Will Ferrell. A weird, wonderful, whirling album — the kind that, sadly, they don’t make all that often, mostly because it’s impossible to do so.
Pitchfork: #21 of 50
Watch the Throne may have felt wretchedly excessive at times, but as anyone who can attest to getting down to “Niggas in Paris” seven or eight or nine (or ten!) times in a row can tell you, it’s sure fun to play dress-up to. Maybe there was something in the more relatable elements presented here– ruminations on the price of fame, fatherhood, and race– that lead us to take momentary respite from this embarrassment of riches and try to grasp the bigger picture. Maybe not: For these guys, overblown excess is a rewarding means unto itself.
Clash Magazine: #32 of 40
Leveling a relationship which has endured for well over a decade, the Master (Jay-Z) and Apprentice (Kanye West) finally came together for a full-length album which wove rhymes and samples into a perfectly balanced hip-pop fabric.
SPIN: #9 of 40
“Niggas hate ballers these days,” says Jay-Z, ruefully. Watch The Throne is an apologia for the one percent, but he and Kanye rebuff #occupiers with Otis Redding in full-blown melisma, then segue into dubstep and ’70s art rock, as Beyoncé promises to take us to the moon. Meanwhile, flashbacks to the pre-Grammy deprivations that the duo endured lie just beneath the grandeur. “If you escaped what I escaped / You’d be in Paris getting fucked up, too,” muses Jay.
Washington Post: #2 of 10
Instead of blushing over their embarrassment of riches, pop’s most intriguing partnership delivered a self-congratulatory opus that was adventurous enough to remind us that they’re rap visionaries first, 1 percent bazillionaires second.
AV Club: #9 of 26
The pairing of Jay-Z and Kanye West was never going to live up to expectations. (The absence of a monster breakout single like “Empire State Of Mind” certainly didn’t help.) Yet with players this titanic, Watch The Throne couldn’t be anything other than a seismic cultural event. Tellingly, Throne thrives less on collaboration than on competition. Kanye isn’t content to play fawning little brother any more, and Jay-Z isn’t about to concede the throne without a fight. Watch The Throne thrives on the bristling tension between Kanye’s live-wire energy and rule-breaking abandon, and Jay-Z’s innate cautiousness. It’s an album of the moment—a point underlined by the presence of Frank Ocean on two tracks—yet it has the substance to endure.
Consequence of Sound: #45 of 50
Watch the Throne, likely the most widely anticipated album of the current decade thus far, sounds exactly like what it is: Two of hip-hop’s most powerful overlords reveling in knowing that they’re just that. In barely 45 minutes, Yeezy and Hov plow through the likes of bionic pop-rap (“Lift Off“), borderline-dubstep (“Who Gon‘ Stop Me“), exotic grandeur (“Murder to Excellence“), and bare-bones soul (“Otis”), all of which is – this cannot be overstated – immaculately produced. Plus, with these two guys constantly playing verbal ping-pong, the whole album is indubitably and nearly incessantly fun. And that’s really all it ever needed to be.
