Celeb News: 'Watch the Throne' review thread (78 on Metacritic) - Page 5

DG1

The Independent UK - 'Watch the Throne' Review:

Sometimes, music requires more than merely combined star power to make it work, as Watch the Throne, the eagerly-awaited alliance between Jay-Z and Kanye West, seems to confirm.

Too often here their complacent, back-slapping laxity leaves tracks floundering, and most cuts rely on a single notable line or sentiment to pull them through. And in some cases, they pay what might be called the Puff Daddy Penalty, by using samples so familiar they overwhelm the track. Having built an arrangement around a prominent chunk of Otis Redding singing "Try a Little Tenderness", the two rappers' contributions are summarily obliterated by that massive soul presence – though at least they give due props by titling the piece "Otis"; and even swaddling Nina Simone in vocoder melisma fails to diminish her impact on "New Day".

The best track is surely the opener "No Church in the Wild", whose deep, detuned twang groove, over a marching organ motif, is the most striking music on the album, promising rather more than the rest of the record is able to deliver. Both this and the other stand-out track, "Made In America", feature assured vocal refrains from Frank Ocean, while the two rappers muse over familiar themes of loyalty, sexuality and maternal solidarity.

Elsewhere, the main interests are, predictably, careerism and vulgar excess, with the ritual litany of Rolex, Maybach and Gucci now joined by Basquiat and Warhol, Jay-Z apparently keen to display his taste in wall furniture, while also taking a pop at what he considers the racist tendencies of the art world: "Why all the pretty icons always all white?" he wonders. "Put some coloured girls in the Moma."

A dissonant guitar riff and quirky girl-group refrain underpins the pair's fretting about black-on-black violence in "Murder To Excellence", while a similar theme receives less empathy in "Who Gon Stop Me", Jay-Z offering a "middle finger to my old life" as he preens about how he "Graduated from the corner/ And I did all this without a diploma" – suggesting disdain for those less able to effect that manoeuvre. Likewise, in "Why I Love You", his paranoia about ingrates and haters finds him huffing dismissively how "I tried to teach *****s how to be kings/ And all they ever wanted to be was soldiers".

Kanye, by comparison, is more sympathetic, albeit typically hyperbolic: "This is something like the holocaust/ Millions of our people lost," he laments about ghetto life; and he's also more open and vulnerable on a personal level, worrying in "The Joy" about how "I still hear the ghosts of the kids I never had".

But, outflanked by the samples they chose to borrow, Watch the Throne is more notable for its general lack of impact. Neither as compulsively neurotic as Eminem, as languidly characterful as Snoop Dogg, nor as furiously articulate as Nas, the raps here represent a pretty mediocre, cardboard kind of throne, truth be told.

DOWNLOAD THIS: No Church In the Wild; Made In America; Who Gon Stop Me

RATING: 2/5, 40/100

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...y-2336024.html

DG1

MetaCritic Scores:

The A.V. Club - Positive - 91/100
DJ Booth - Positive - 90/100
Pitchfork - Positive - 85/100
American Songwriter - Positive - 80/100
NOW Magazine (Canada) - Positive - 80/100
New York Times - Positive - 80/100
The Guardian (UK) - Positive - 80/100
Hip Hop DX - Positive - 80/100
Boston Globe - Positive - 80/100
Absolute Punk - Positive - 79/100
Rolling Stone - Positive - 70/100
Los Angeles Times - Positive - 75/100
URB - Positive - 70/100
Sputnik Music - Positive - 70/100
BBC Music (UK) - Positive - 70/100
Rap Reviews - Positive - 70/100
Entertainment Weekly - Positive - 67/100
Spin Magazine - Mixed - 60/100
The Quietus (UK) - Mixed - 50/100
Sputnik Music - Mixed - 50/100
Chicago Tribune - Mixed - 50/100
The Independent (UK) - Mixed - 40/100

Overall Score: 76/100 based on 21 critics (1 review not added)

Relative

Quote:

Originally posted by DG1

MetaCritic Scores:

Overall Score: 76/100 based on 21 critics (1 review not added)

Which review hasn't been added?

DG1

Quote:

Originally posted by Relative

Which review hasn't been added?

Spin Magazine

beyoncefan1

Damn bless u DG1 for havin the patience to post all those reviews.

iamvladd

Quote:

Originally posted by beyoncefan1

Damn bless u DG1 for havin the patience to post all those reviews.

+1 !!

DG1

Drowned In Sound - 'Watch the Throne' Review:

Misery loves company, so it was perhaps inevitable that Kanye West would follow his woe-is-me set of 2010, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, with a collaborative affair that welcomes not only co-headliner Jay-Z but also Beyoncé, Odd Future affiliate Frank Ocean, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, The-Dream, Mr Hudson (remember him?), La Roux’s Elly Jackson, Kid Cudi, Swizz Beatz, the RZA and Q-Tip across production and performance roles. And that’s just scratching the surface of the personnel involved – also along for a most enjoyable ride are the ghosts of Otis Redding, Nina Simone and Curtis Mayfield via samples, and several tracks borrow elements from James Brown numbers. Clearly classics within the pair’s record collections were freshly raided – some change from the King Crimson and Aphex Twin lifts on Kanye’s last LP.

If that sounds like a case of way too many cooks, rein in your expectations for a messy, unfocussed collection, as Watch the Throne frequently surprises with its potency and relative compositional providence. It’s not an album that needed to happen, but millionaires have a habit of fraternising with their own, as any cursory look at the love lives of Hollywood’s elite will prove. And with so many of those unions ending in separation, who can predict how much life this hook-up between two of rap’s biggest stars has in it? There’s a tour booked for the end of 2011, so they’re at least taking Watch the Throne seriously enough to wheel these cuts around their home country (UK dates, pleeease?). Truth be told, though, if this is the only studio release to emerge from the partnership, it’s enough to justify the many dollars spent and air miles accumulated.

What could have been pure indulgence repeatedly surprises with its lean physique and palpable hunger. Despite the vast array of producers aboard, and myriad recording locations – France, England, Australia, the United Arab Emirates – Watch the Throne flows from cut to cut with commendable slickness (although some may bemoan a shortage of conspicuous compositional variety). Despite neither key rapper having anything to prove, both go at their verses with great gusto; and thematically they’re not simply dropping whatever pops into their heads. True, Kanye is still fairly preoccupied with his penis and what/who he can put it in – but there are snatches of social commentary and political rhetoric, predominantly from Jay-Z but far from restricted to the words of the older artist (he’s 41, Kanye 34). So while one’s jaw does drop at some points – Jay-Z: “I got that hot bitch in my home.” / Kanye: “You know how many hot bitches I own?” (‘Nggas in Paris’); Kanye’s dick-swinging swagger on ‘That’s My Btch’ – it’s picked up again by astute and timely observations on other tracks. Issues of racism and poverty may not affect these artists today, but Jay-Z’s tough childhood places him in a position where his aggressive lyrical stance on ‘H-A-M’ – “**** you mad at me for? / Y’all don’t even know what I’ve been through” – has been hard-earned. And though his boasts might irk some listeners – “N*ggas ain’t got my lady’s money,” he sneers, taking aim at would-be peers – nobody can accuse him of lacking the sufficient resources to support his proclamations.

A few lazy tracks are non-events compared to what surrounds them. Single ‘Otis’, sampling the late singer’s cover of ‘Try a Little Tenderness’, runs around in circles for three minutes without leaving an impression; and the assimilation of Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’ on ‘New Day’ sees the preacher’s daughter from North Carolina dominating the mix from beyond the grave, to the detriment of the end product. It’s far from one of the RZA’s finest. But when Watch the Throne truly sings, it’s utterly compelling. ‘Lift Off’, featuring Beyoncé, is the next-scheduled single, and rightly so. It’s this album’s ‘All of the Lights’, minus that number’s over-subscribed guest list; a brilliantly breathless exposition on the players’ position in the industry – “How many people you know can take it this far?” asks Queen Bee, on the kind of form she must wish she found on her own album of this year, the disappointingly sedate 4 – which manages to combine braggadocio with bashfulness in a way that should (in an ideal world) see it top many a chart worldwide. And Mr Hudson is a revelation on the chorus to ‘Why I Love You’, which comes on like a hip-hop Chase & Status if, y’know, they were any good. Who knew, eh?

Those with finely tuned listening gear will be able to pick out problems with the mix here – it’s inconsistent, perhaps in keeping with a record that was stitched together in such piecemeal fashion (and which began life as an EP). But hearing a commercial heavyweight like Jay-Z rapping with all his heart, auto-tune as alien a concept as inventiveness at Syco, is truly refreshing in a climate where mainstream rappers persist with past-it clichés and misplaced bravado. The faults, if you must, actually lend Watch the Throne a more organic quality than what was evident on either …Dark Twisted Fantasy or The Blueprint 3, and that human touch, that first-take imperfection, proves to be an endearing quality. It’s no Pitchfork 9.5, which many a DiS reader may have anticipated prior to its release, but this is an excellent record which cherry-picks from the catalogues of its pivotal architects and encompasses constituents from across the genre spectrum to scintillating effect. Haters are gonna hate given the artists in question – but to be disappointed with Watch the Throne is to be disappointed with the rap game in 2011.

RATING: 8/10; 80/100

http://drownedinsound.com/releases/1...eviews/4143320

DG1

Pop Matters - 'Watch the Throne' Review:

By David Amidon 12 August 2011
In 2001, Jay-Z teamed up with Kanye West and Just Blaze to create one of the past decade’s most influential, evocative hip-hop soundscapes. The Blueprint proved to be as aptly titled as any hip-hop LP ever has been, and over the following three years, all three artists experienced great success on the strength of that album’s ubiquity. But by 2004, Jay had tired of life as the king of the castle and Kanye was increasingly bored playing second, even third, fiddle to his labelmates. Amidst apexing drama between Roc-A-Fella’s State Property and Dipset factions, Jay declined to reign supreme over the rap world any longer, loudly passing his scepter to Kanye, widely considered the least likely of choices for the role.

Yet, as is a king’s wont, Jay made a decision he felt was for the best of the Roc, and, if the previous seven years have taught us anything, it was his best business move since eschewing major label money in favor of starting his own label in 1996. Kanye quickly developed a signature sound, and then another, and then another, and by the time they reconvened to work on Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 in 2009, the tables had very obviously turned. Kanye was now in Jay-Z’s ear more as a peer than a hitmaker, and the respect ran deeper than musical aptitude. The two began to view each other as two sides of the same coin; Jay with his collected, DeNiro-like demeanor and Ye, the bombastic Pacino out for the blood of all who dared doubt him.

Watch the Throne is undoubtedly the album fans of both artists have been on the edge of their seats for since the Blueprint album dropped ten years ago, the musical equivalent of a Righteous Kill had it gone tremendously right, taken no glaring missteps, and delivered on all the accrued talent and self-awareness of a decade spent at the top of your game is expected to evidence. Which is, honestly, a bit of a surprise. After “H•A•M” released to about as unexpectedly lukewarm a reception as a Jay-Z & Kanye record could receive, Watch the Throne became enshrouded in mystery and doubt.

The intended EP expanded into an album, and the recording sessions continued to extend themselves past one due date and then another. After a while, the duo opted instead for utter mystery, keeping the album as close to their chests as possible until a listening party earlier this month in New York. Then suddenly at midnight August the 8th, Watch the Throne was upon us. No leaks, no lead singles other than the still blossoming “Otis”. For the first time in a long while, not only did hip-hop fans have an event album, but an event album that we were all going to experience at the same time.

Considering the anticipation, one would certainly be forgiven for their immediate reaction being tinted with varying shades of disappointment. For starters, fans of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy will probably be a little let down at Watch the Throne‘s lack of thematic consistency. There are moments of half-hearted collusion between tracks, such as Jay-Z’s gun reference that concludes “Who’s Gon Stop Me?” and bleeds into the immediate conceit of “Murder to Excellence”. But musically the two songs couldn’t be further apart, as Sak Pase’s bombastic sample choice of Flux Pavilion’s “I Can’t Stop” butts heads with Swizz Beatz and Symbolyc One’s “Power”-referencing tribal chants sourced from the Indigo Twins’ “La La La”.

Elsewhere there’s the brilliantly mind-****ing auto-tuned Nina Simone texturizing RZA’s “New Day”, the west coast blog rap bop of Hit-Boy’s “*****s in Paris”, “Made in America”‘s understated “We Are the World”-style soft pop and “Welcome to the Jungle”‘s allusions to raw New Yorkian street rap like Nas’ “Made You Look”. The supervision of Kanye West and Mike Dean over most of these tracks lends them all a sound that is ultimately distinctly Kanye, and a Jon Brion-like interlude creeps up a few times to remind us we’re listening to the same album, but the first few listens will feel a little schizophrenic as one tries to place exactly which hats they prefer the duo wear.

It also doesn’t help that “*****s in Paris” is the third track on the album but feels like it’s proper starting point. “Lift Off” is built around a Beyoncé hook that feels like the song’s main selling point and doesn’t help itself with Jay-Z’s most disturbingly maudlin delivery since American Gangster‘s “Pray”. “No Church in the Wild” meanwhile wastes a guitar-based beat that one-ups Twisted Fantasy‘s “Gorgeous” on a meandering Frank Ocean chorus and verses that, again, feel a little out of focus compared to the hook and beat’s opulence.

But after “*****s in Paris”, the next six tracks are a whirlwind of excitement, particularly “Gotta Have It”, which finds Kanye and Jay spitting such decadent, pro-Black-laden material as “Maybachs on bachs on bachs on bachs on bachs / Who in that? / Oh, ****, it’s just blacks on blacks on blacks,” and “New Day”, the song that’s sure to make its rounds through the majority of reviews thanks to its personal nature, especially in comparison to the rest of the album. There’s also Jay’s pimp-slapping of Beanie Sigel’s well-publicized grievances on “Why I Love You”, or Kanye’s charmingly c-list puns involving Mary-Kate & Ashley and South Park to keep listeners’ ears to the speaker.

But the subject matter is something that will divide listeners as much as the zig-zagging production, which is personally a little disappointing. I admit that I struggled with some of the album’s content at first, what with Jay-Z “planking on a million” and the numerous accounts of hotel parties and shopping sprees in lavish locations I’ll only ever dream of witnessing myself. Hua Hsu of Grantland.com labeled Watch the Throne “income-gap rap”, and I’ve come to embrace the phrase as appropriately evocative of half the content here. But to interpret this album as strictly that does a disservice to the previously mentioned “New Day”, or Kanye’s brilliantly simple references to gangland violence on the “Murder” portion of “Murder to Excellence”.

It ignores the moments where Jay takes a breather to reflect on his past life, describes his multi-millionaire lifestyle in project language or admits that in many ways, he struggles just as much with his life in the clouds as he did with his life in the streets. No, Kanye and Jay aren’t very empathetic characters on Watch the Throne, but I think to criticize them for that is ultimately missing the entire conceit of the album’s framework, being that of two hip-hop kings patting each other on the back for a job well done and putting their peers on notice that, yes, it really is this easy for them to make one of the best—or at least most enjoyable—albums of the year if they feel so inclined. Watch the Throne succeeds in both and in giving us both sides of both artists—the braggadocio and the social consciousness—in nearly equal measure. Which means it should be considered a success without question by all who come across it. I’d hope so, anyway.

RATING: 8/10; 80/100

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/...ch-the-throne/

DG1

The Irish Times - 'Watch the Throne' Review:

This is what you get when a brace of hip-hop heavyweights join forces. Jay-Z and Kanye West have worked together before, so these collaborations benefit from each knowing which buttons to push to get the best out of the other. It’s a likeable mix of radio-friendly bangers (Beyoncé’s soaraway contributions to Lift Off are perfectly paced in that regard); raw, tough, swinging rhymes, which power *****s in Paris and Murder to Excellence ; and some well-thought-out contributions from the likes of Odd Future crooner Frank Ocean ( No Church in the Wild ). As you’d expect from a West production, the beats range all over the shop, from a sample of French ravers Cassius’s Why I Love You to La Roux shoulder-padding her way on to Prime Time alongside Public Enemy and Apache. A dynamic work from the leaders of the pack. See watchthethrone. com Download tracks : *****s in Paris, Murder to Excellence, No Church in the Wild

RATING: 8/10; 80/100

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...302273739.html

DG1

One Thirty BPM - 'Watch the Throne' Review

By Sean Highkin

A few weeks ago, when Kanye West and Jay-Z released “Otis,” the first single from their new joint album Watch the Throne, the majority of the backlash it faced was over the fact that they dared to rap about their wealth and material possessions in the midst of a recession. These criticisms are shortsighted (people do know how much money these two men have, right? Gotta keep it real). They also miss the point on the very real flaws of this album, without question the most breathlessly anticipated release of 2011. Both Kanye (“Good Life,” “Celebration,” “So Appalled”) and Jay (“Roc Boys,” “Public Service Announcement,” or hell, the entire Blueprint album) have rapped compellingly about their financial situations in the past. If there’s a real flaw with Watch the Throne, it’s how bored they sound mining this familiar lyrical territory on some of these tracks.

On paper, it seems like there’s no way this collaboration could fail, but throughout most of these 12 tracks, I found myself wishing Watch the Throne had been a Kanye solo album. The inconvenient truth here is that Jay-Z’s reputation as an all-time great MC stems almost entirely from three of his 11 albums and a handful of guest appearances. With the exception of 2007’s underrated American Gangster, he’s been on near-constant autopilot since 2003. Not that anyone can blame him — his net worth is well into nine figures and he’s married to Beyoncé; he doesn’t need the rap game to further his career. He released the best hip-hop album of the post-Biggie/Tupac era 10 years ago this September, so he has nothing to prove to anybody artistically. Collaborating on a full-length studio album with Kanye is as much a savvy career move for him from a continued-relevance standpoint as it is a legacy-cementing event for the man he once mentored. There’s nothing resembling a master-and-student dynamic on Watch the Throne — between Kanye’s current critical cache and Jay’s brand value, it’s a wash as to who the bigger draw is here.

And yet, the first voice heard on Watch the Throne is that of Frank Ocean. “No Church in the Wild” and “Made in America” have the Odd Future singer nailing his audition to become hip-hop’s next omnipresent hook man. Kanye, of course, takes a more-is-more approach to production, and his ideas stick about two-thirds of the time. Fans of College Dropout-era Kanye will wet themselves over “New Day” and “Murder to Excellence” — not just for the sped-up-vocal-sample production, but also for the subject matter. On the RZA-produced “New Day,” Jay and Kanye cop to the fact that their future kids’ lives are probably already ruined by their fame (Kanye has what might be the best line on the album: “I might even make him be Republican/So everybody know he loves white people”). “Murder to Excellence,” meanwhile, tackles the problem of black-on-black murder. It’s a rare instance on Watch the Throne where they rap about something that isn’t themselves, and it’s fantastic.

For all the big-budget tricks on this album, though, the two most musically impressive tracks are the two most stripped-down. The opening “No Church in the Wild” rides an ominous, darkly funky bass groove and chilly synths tailor-made for Ocean’s off-kilter crooning. Q-Tip’s production on “That’s My Bitch” is all turntable scratches and ‘80s keyboards (not to mention a killer hook from La Roux’s Elly Jackson), and Kanye and Jay actually push each other as MCs for once. It’s one of the few times that Jay’s verses don’t feel like they were CGI’d in from an online Jay-Z boast generator. And if you can get past the absurdity that is crediting Otis Redding as a featured artist for a run-of-the-mill “Try a Little Tenderness” sample (“My favorite track on College Dropout is ‘Through the Wire’ – you know, the one that features Chaka Kahn?”), “Otis” is actually a pretty good song. Elsewhere, Kanye piles on the horns, strings, synths, vocal samples, and whatever else. It’s all roughly as subtle as the majority of the lyrical content is modest, but does anybody on earth listen to either of these guys expecting restraint? An IMAX production is what we want from them, and that’s exactly what they deliver. And for the most part, it sounds great.

That’s not to say everything works, however. The Beyoncé-assisted “Lift Off” is an unqualified disaster. It’s a plodding, tuneless mess that takes a layup of a Bey hook, does absolutely nothing with it for four minutes, and somehow manages to sound overproduced and unfinished at the same time. “Welcome to the Jungle” features some of their hottest rapping on the album, but it’s absolutely ruined by Swizz Beats’ grating production and contractually-insured ad-libbing (which, by the way, is the single biggest cancer of the last several years of mainstream hip-hop. Forget raising the debt ceiling — Congress should pass a law banning Swizz and Will.i.am from coming within 15 feet of a working microphone on any track they produce for another artist). “*****s in Paris” is basically a Waka Flocka song with 30 seconds of dubstep stapled to the end. And I still can’t figure out the point of the 15-second horn interlude that runs between several of the songs. It’s almost as if they realized Watch the Throne didn’t have My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s impeccable pacing and cohesion and threw this in to fool listeners into thinking there was something to tie it together. For someone who’s mastered the art of album sequencing to the extent that Kanye has, it feels like a cheap ploy.

But you know what? For all its shortcomings, Watch the Throne is still damn good. Kanye and Jay have a few misfires on the album, but they’re the kind of misfires that come from overambitiousness, not from complacency. For the two most commercially viable rappers of the past decade to care this much about the quality of their art is something nobody could argue is a bad thing.

RATING: 7.7/10; 77/100

http://onethirtybpm.com/reviews/albu...ch-the-throne/

DG1

MetaCritic Scores:

The Telegraph (UK) - Positive - 100/100
The A.V. Club - Positive - 91/100
DJ Booth - Positive - 90/100
Pitchfork - Positive - 85/100
Pop Matters - Positive - 80/100
Drowned In Sound - Positive - 80/100
American Songwriter - Positive - 80/100
NOW Magazine (Canada) - Positive - 80/100
New York Times - Positive - 80/100
The Guardian (UK) - Positive - 80/100
Hip Hop DX - Positive - 80/100
Boston Globe - Positive - 80/100
Absolute Punk - Positive - 79/100
One Thirty BPM - Positive - 77/100
Rolling Stone - Positive - 70/100
Los Angeles Times - Positive - 75/100
URB - Positive - 70/100
Sputnik Music - Positive - 70/100
BBC Music (UK) - Positive - 70/100
Rap Reviews - Positive - 70/100
Entertainment Weekly - Positive - 67/100
The Boston Phoenix - Positive - 63/100
Spin Magazine - Mixed - 60/100
The Quietus (UK) - Mixed - 50/100
Sputnik Music - Mixed - 50/100
Chicago Tribune - Mixed - 50/100
The Independent (UK) - Mixed - 40/100

Overall Score: 76/100 based on 21 critics (5 reviews not added)

DG1

Quote:

Originally posted by beyoncefan1

Damn bless u DG1 for havin the patience to post all those reviews.

Quote:

Originally posted by iamvladd

+1 !!

Thank you

DG1

The Boston Phoenix - 'Watch the Throne' Review:

Kanye West has recently espoused the virtues of an album of raps suitable for home listening, as opposed to say club, or car listening. A worthy cause, but personally speaking, I've never lounged about my villa in Margiela PJs while anticipating a callback from Oprah. Other things mentioned on Watch the Throne that are likely to remain financially unobtainable to this writer for his life's duration: a Black Card with no limit, a beat from 'Ye, Maybachs on bachs, Beyoncé.

Facing this realization that their bankroll trumps that of their target audience billionfold, Kanye and Jay-Z mercifully scaled the scope of their Super Rich Friends debut back a tad over the course of its conception. Primary proof being that initial lead single and woefully transparent anthem "H.A.M" was largely met with indifference upon its release, and hence delegated to dreaded "deluxe edition bonus track" status here. Thus, instead of an album's worth of the pair yelling at us about how much money they have, we're granted with the less aggressive scenario of them effortlessly boasting their financial acumen over lush-as-**** beats from a cast of typical collaborators and fresh-faced producers. Unceremoniously, it's the former who lay the nicest groundwork: RZA on "New Day" and Swizz Beatz on "Welcome to the Jungle," especially so. And while it sucks to say, the comparison between the two headliners isn't that close either. Jay dawns that ever-frustrating mush-mouth flow throughout the LP's duration, and only sounds awake when his bars are bookended by Kanye. In fact, one could argue that Jay is also upstaged by upstart crooner and Odd Future affiliate Frank Ocean, who turns in star-making hooks on "No Church In the Wild" and "Made In America," but that's really a feature for another day. And while he takes a definitive step back from that schizophrenic cliff that so defined Twisted Fantasy, Kanye has been crafting this braggadocios douchebag persona since he first told us he just wanted to "act ballerific" way back on "All Falls Down," and this is truly the apex of all that ****-talking. He tells Prince Williams that he didn't do it right, reminds his female companion that he paid for her breast augmentation, calls us Urkels, and masterfully talks his **** again while stealing the show in the process.

RATING: 2.5/4; 63/100

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/music/1...ch-the-throne/

DG1

The Telegrahp (UK) - 'Watch the Throne' Review:

Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne is a hard-hitting, thrilling album.

By Neil McCormick 10:48AM BST 12 Aug 2011

Kanye West is where pop music is at right now. If you want to know what the 21st century sounds like, listen to last year’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. In West’s extraordinary mix of rock and soul samples with manic hip-hop grooves, you can hear 50 years of pop culture refracting and contorting in a futuristic digital prism. West has talent on the scale of a Phil Spector or a Lee Scratch Perry: he’s miles ahead of his peers, blazing a trail through his own madness.

But how do you follow a masterpiece? For Watch the Throne, West joins forces with another towering character of contemporary rap, Jay-Z, a lyricist whose skills and delivery are second to none but whose real authority comes from the philosophical and emotional depth that underpins his work.

With its live rhyme-battle roots, hip hop is uniquely suited to pitting wordsmiths against each other. So-called supergroups are all too often less than the sum of their parts, but Watch the Throne showcases rap Olympians competing at their best.

With two big egos on the microphone, braggadocio predictably hits new levels of self-aggrandisement. Yet the wit and absurdity of their rival claims creates a mood of swaggering, cartoonish heroism entirely suited to the epic scale of productions by West and his star studded collaborators.

Tracks bustle and hustle, jamming together samples from soul legends like Otis Redding, James Brown and Nina Simone with counterintuitive snippets of prog rockers Phil Manzanera and Spooky Tooth and ripe, melodic choruses sung by an eclectic array of contemporary stars including Beyoncé, Mr Hudson and La Roux.

West’s attention to detail is mesmerising, piling hook upon sound effect upon melodic twist, so that his grooves never stop developing. This is, indeed, music to boast about.
Crucially, a sense of political purpose drives the whole enterprise towards a higher plane. Counterweighing delight in their own good fortunes with observations from the mean streets, Watch the Throne builds to a powerhouse finale of musings on the worst and best of black culture.

Perhaps the most extraordinary achievement of this funny, hard-hitting, thrilling album is that it actually sounds like a coherent and purposeful piece of work, a statement of what hip hop can mean, and where it can go.

Download this: That’s My B****

RATING: 5/5; 100/100

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...CD-review.html

iamvladd

The Telegrahp (UK) knows the true tea.
But idk bout the Boston Phoenix

DG1

Paste Magazine - 'Watch the Throne' Review:

By Ryan Reed

Strange that, for an album built around what might be the most star-studded duo collab in hip hop history, the first voice you hear on the highly anticipated Watch The Throne is neither Jay-Z’s nor Kanye West’s, but that of Odd Future soul freak Frank Ocean. “What’s a God to a non-believer?” he croons over a four-to-the-floor pulse and strangled metal guitar riff. Kanye answers: “We formed our own religion; no sin as long as there’s permission.”

When it comes to hip hop, these two certainly have created a religion—worshipped by critics and fans alike, they’ve forever altered its history (Kanye with his lyrical soul bearing and genre-blurring production; Jay-Z with his simply untouchable flow). We all know the story: Kanye grew up idolizing Jay—and through his rising in the ranks as a producer, working on some of Jay’s landmark LPs (2001’s The Blueprint, 2003’s The Black Album), the torch was metaphorically passed, culminating in West’s larger-than-life solo career. While they’ve shared the stage on numerous occasions and popped in on each other’s albums for occasional guest verses, their relationship has always remained somewhat mythological, scattered details of their history dispensed on Kanye’s love-letter Graduation tribute, “Big Brother.” Watch The Throne, then, could have resulted in a handful of presentations—but perhaps the most badass route would have been an epic two-sides-of-the-same-coin story with both rappers sharing their histories over some of the finest beats a studio can sprout.

Instead, Watch The Throne is as about as soulful as that gold-plated cover art. In lieu of revelatory lyrics, there are dick jokes and stacks of cash. The reason everybody on planet Earth loved Kanye’s masterful My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (besides its game-changing instrumental prowess) was that you could hear a heart beating underneath all that bling. Throne is all swag, no spirit. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t still be amazing. Many critics are whining about the big-headed bitch and wealth brags (particularly in our age of economic disaster), but what Kanye West and Jay-Z albums have they been listening to? Overflowing ego is part of their DNA! The rub is that the content-less boasts are rarely balanced with glimpses into the minds of actual human beings, instead of caricature celebrities bathing in milk with naked models. More importantly, the endless swagger (“Heard Yeezy was racist / Well, it’s only on one basis: I only like green faces”) would be easier to swallow were it matched with the marvelous production levels with which these two have changed rap (and pop) music.

The beats on Throne are well-thought out and perfectly produced, but missing are the nutso, prog-rock layers of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or…well, basically anything Kanye’s ever produced for his own albums. The tones are grittier, loopier, and rougher around the edges, as if the duo (despite constant delays and the contributions of a dizzying array of outside producers) were operating on a “first take is the best take” basis. The positively hypnotic “N****s in Paris” proves that can be a very, very good thing—Jay sounds outright possessed, but his rhythmic gymnastics feel like spontaneous genius; the simple, synth-driven beat, meanwhile, works wonders with the most minimal of palettes.

More often, the sonics are strikingly dull. The repetitive synth and grunting vocal sample on “Gotta Have It” gets annoying about one-third of the way through, The Neptunes’ signature hands-on funk nowhere to be found. “That’s My Bitch” squanders a fantastic Elly Jackson-sung hook with a weak, Fruity Loops-level beat that should have never left the hard drive; the out-of-tune guitar on the first half of “Murder to Excellence” is simply painful to listen to. Some of these beats just barely creep out the speakers—the album was pieced together throughout various hotels across the country, and it frequently feels like they’re keeping the mix at a politely quiet level, as to not disturb their sleeping neighbors.

It’s no surprise that the finest tracks here are those in which the duo take a break guarding their invisible thrones. The stark ballad “Made in America” (featuring a solid but underwhelming Ocean hook) provides fascinating glimpses into Kanye’s past, coupled with his trademark wordplay: “Started a little blog just to get some traffic / Old folks will tell you not to play in traffic / A million hits and the web crashes.” In the Nina Simone-fueled/GZA-produced showstopper “New Day,” both rappers cut the ********, dispensing life advice—learned the hard way—directly to their unborn sons: “I’ll never let him ever hit the strip club; I learned the hard way that ain’t the place to get love,” goes one choked-up Kanye couplet. Jay’s catharsis is even more poignant: “Sins of a father make your life 10 times harder / I just wanna take ya to a barber.”

When two legends unite, you expect pure, unfiltered brilliance. Watch The Throne has moments of that. On the whole, this album is a half-hearted victory lap. It’s a hungover surprise party in honor of two legends, hosted by the same two legends. It’s, in short, a very listenable disappointment. But I, among millions, will continue worshipping at the venerable church of Kanye and Jay, even if I slept through most of this service.

RATING: 6.2/10; 62/100

http://www.pastemagazine.com/article...he-throne.html

DG1

Consequence of Sound - 'Watch the Throne' Review:

By Chris Coplan

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t know about Watch the Throne, I’d also like to catch you up on anything else you might have missed: The Earth revolves around the sun, washing your hands can help reduce the spread of bacteria, and the Union won the Civil War. Yes, after a long history of successful collaborations, Kanye West and Jay-Z formed the supergroup The Throne, tapped the likes of Frank Ocean and Beyoncé to collaborate, and recorded a 12-track effort that, upon its release this past Monday, whipped the Internet into a frenzy. Beyond the hype and the gobs of media attention, Watch the Throne turns out to be a success, even if it isn’t the landscape-altering LP the world had hoped for like a new bike from Santa Claus (oh, he’s not real either, FYI).

Perhaps one of the downfalls of the album is that it doesn’t meet the known universe’s shared insanely high expectations. Unlike a band made up of the unknown half of Fall Out Boy, The Throne is comprised of two of the most important MCs of the last 20 years. And while meeting the demands of fans shouldn’t really be a criteria for how great a record is, when you’re dealing with two of hip-hop’s biggest stars– two dudes who throughout their entire individual careers have wowed audiences and permanently changed the rap game– anything less than a home run is unacceptable. By listening to this album, you almost get the idea that they knew the pressure they were under, which better informs their decision to rest on the laurels of West’s smash hit My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

There’s no denying that West’s Fantasy was a huge album, thanks to its dedication to artistic exploration and its skewing of the tendencies of mainstream rap. As progressive and impactful as Jay-Z is, adding his more populist leanings and aesthetics to Ye’s Crock-Pot of cracked ideas simply waters down the spirit of creating something entirely new. What we’re left with, then, are tracks like the utterly boring “Lift Off”, with some of the most derivative lyrics on the whole album (like Beyoncé’s “You don’t know what we been through to make it this far/So many scars/‘Bout to take this whole thing to Mars” or West’s “Lift off, takin’ my coat off/Showin’ my tattoos/I’m such a showoff”), and a totally uninspired vocal performance from Queen B to boot. Of course, even that disaster pales in comparison to a track like “Otis”. Despite its well-received status, the track is sort of the pinnacle of just how disorganized and sloppy the album can be. The beat and sample aren’t well done, appealing, or an appropriate homage. Here, even the lyrical output of Jay-Z, who is clearly the far superior lyricist, sounds forced: “I invented swag/Poppin’ bottles, putting supermodels in the cab/Proof/I guess I got my swagger back.” The song as a whole feels unfinished, rushed, and strung together for the sake of having a clearly identifiable hit amongst some of the other offerings.

However, that’s not to say that pulling out some tricks from the Fantasy playbook isn’t a good idea, especially when they help create tracks like “No Church in the Wild” and “Made in America”. The former has all the artsy trimmings (Frank Ocean’s perfectly stirring, existential chorus and a vaguely bangin’ yet abstract beat), but West and Hov, beyond the actual lyrical constructs offered up, simply sound more menacing, dangerous, and evocative than anywhere else on the LP. The latter continues that emotional high, weaving a tale of the rise of black culture in the U.S. and celebrating struggle and success with a tiny, minimalist beat that’s hugely sweeping from an emotional standpoint. At the end of the day, these cuts feel far too close to the work of Fantasy (especially in tapping a West-ian artistic maverick in Ocean). Simply put, they’re disappointing in any long-term sense of artistic merit. Instead, they’re more responsible for further recalling the feeling that the album isn’t up to snuff with the usual caliber of its two aces.

Even with the disappointing efforts, there are other cuts on this album that still prove that this was a fruitful record overall. On one end, there’s the simplicity of “Why I Love You”. Thanks to a Mr. Hudson chorus, one that sounds like it could be right at home on a Blakroc album, it’s an intoxicating jam. It also happens to be where Jay-Z is at his best, lyrically (“**** you squares/The circle got smaller/The castle got bigger/The walls got taller/And truth be told after all that said/*****s still got love for you”). It’s also the one song where the proper West-Z dynamic is achieved to create the record’s best song. Jay-Z sits at the lyrical focus, and West plays support, leaving time and energy for Ye to focus on the beat like the dominant producer he is. The cut is also one of the few moments on the album where Hov’s mainstream tendencies and Ye’s art-rap styles blend without limiting or distracting the other, a pitfall that lead to the album’s other, slightly more ineffective moments. “New Day” and “That’s My Bitch”, the two other synergistic moments, range from old-school West beats with a twist of newfound intricacy to a beat that is something beyond the others entirely (and yet still familiar), with a matching lyrical ferociousness. While the mismatches outnumber the strengths on Watch the Throne, these songs are a clear indicator that they’ve worked together so often for a reason, and it’s a relationship made to last.

Maybe it would have been better if none of us really knew this effort was being released (if that were even possible, nowadays). Perhaps announcing it and letting fans mull over the pair’s history and skills, not to mention our own preconceived notions and larger-than-life hopes, are what made the album feel merely impressive and not world-shattering (as if that weren’t good enough). That only speaks to a larger point, possibly the most dire and pressing point of the entire album, and the experience leading up to it: Humans are fallible creatures, and failure is always going to happen, even to our biggest and brightest. Nothing can be accomplished, though, if someone doesn’t stand up and act as the new gold standard. Kanye West and Jay-Z have proven themselves to be, at the very least, kings of just that notion.

RATING: 3/5; 60/100

http://consequenceofsound.net/2011/0...ch-the-throne/

DG1

MetaCritic Scores:

The Telegraph (UK) - Positive - 100/100
The A.V. Club - Positive - 91/100
DJ Booth - Positive - 90/100
Pitchfork - Positive - 85/100
Drowned In Sound - Positive - 80/100
Pop Matters - Positive - 80/100
American Songwriter - Positive - 80/100
The Guardian (UK) - Positive - 80/100
NOW Magazine (Canada) - Positive - 80/100
New York Times - Positive - 80/100
Hip Hop DX - Positive - 80/100
Boston Globe - Positive - 80/100
Absolute Punk - Positive - 79/100
One Thirty BPM - Positive - 77/100
Los Angeles Times - Positive - 75/100
Slant Magazine - Positive - 70/100
URB - Positive - 70/100
Rolling Stone - Positive - 70/100
Sputnik Music - Positive - 70/100
Rap Reviews - Positive - 70/100
BBC Music (UK) - Positive - 70/100
Entertainment Weekly - Positive - 67/100
The Boston Phoenix - Positive - 63/100
Paste Magazine - Positive - 62/100
Spin Magazine - Mixed - 60/100
Consequence of Sound - Mixed - 60/100
Sputnik Music - Mixed - 50/100
The Quietus (UK) - Mixed - 50/100
Chicago Tribune - Mixed - 50/100
The Independent (UK) - Mixed - 40/100

Overall Score: 76/100 based on 29 critics (1 review not added)