In the trajectory of the aging musician, partnership in a gastropub with Bono may be inevitable, but becoming an old man is not. At least, that is what Jay-Z, self-proclaimed “40-year-old phenom” (he’s actually 41, but who’s counting) would have you believe.
Among the many hoary rock ’n’ roll clichés perpetrated on us by aging boomers is the adage that as artists grow older, they grow softer, bloating in time with the swell of their discographies and stock portfolios. But “Watch the Throne,” the new collaborative album from Jay-Z and Kanye West, 34, is not a late-career victory lap in the manner of the Beastie Boys’ “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.” Nor is it the sort of fawning, ingratiating, self-aggrandizing thing that bands like U2 do when they feel their audience waning — “reapplying for the job ... [of] the best band in the world,” in Bono’s words.
What “Watch The Throne” is, first and foremost, is market-based performance art, in the current style of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” — brand partnership mixed uneasily with social advocacy, myth-making fused determinedly to an ethic of boastful transparency. Having ransomed advance copies of the LP from independent retailers and other outlets likely to leak the record before it came out, West and Jay-Z contrived a midnight iTunes-only premiere in name of giving us all an opportunity to pay Apple for it at the same time.
Jay-Z has aged awkwardly since his post-“Black Album” “retirement.” As his worldview and social conscience have grown, his charisma has gone missing — 2009’s “The Blueprint 3,” his last LP, was an earnest but awkward listen. West, meanwhile, discovered the artistic possibilities of total misanthropy with “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” a record that just narrowly edged its own promotional campaign in the race for 2010’s best public spectacle.
“Watch The Throne” is, theoretically, a kind of marriage of all the above — Jay-Z’s burgeoning sense of responsibility balanced against West’s unrepentant flair; West’s grueling emotional honesty offset by Jay-Z’s breezy confidence. In reality, it’s a largely unlikable record, alternately strident, defensive and boastful. Its best parts are in many ways its ugliest: “Coke on her black skin make a stripe like a zebra / I call that jungle fever / You will not control the threesome,” West raps on “No Church in the Wild.”
Elsewhere, the two address their unborn sons on “New Day,” a hallucinatory RZA production, like looking in a smoky mirror — “Sorry junior, I already ruined ya,” Jay-Z raps, “you ain’t even alive, paparazzi pursuin’ ya.” Fame is the thing to be reckoned with here, always, whether its broadening the circle of black celebrity — “Shoutout to O,” Jay-Z raps on “Murder to Excellence,” but “we gon need a million more” — or the paranoid delusions of “Who Gon Stop Me,” on which West rhymes: “This is something like the Holocaust / Millions of our people lost.”
Grandiosity has a way of corrupting whatever it touches. This was Jay-Z’s artistic undoing throughout much of the last decade, and West’s primary, if often grotesque, virtue. Here, they trade places. Jay-Z, uncharacteristically reflective on songs like “Why I Love You,” loses ground to the “sophisticated ignorance” of songs like “Otis,” on which West dispenses with the nods toward social justice and instead celebrates the ridiculous heights to which these two have ascended: “Can’t you see the private jets flying over you? / Maybach bumper sticker read ‘What would Hova do?’ ” Contemptible, maybe, but rude euphoria trumps a conscience every time.
> Download from iTunes
Among the many hoary rock ’n’ roll clichés perpetrated on us by aging boomers is the adage that as artists grow older, they grow softer, bloating in time with the swell of their discographies and stock portfolios. But “Watch the Throne,” the new collaborative album from Jay-Z and Kanye West, 34, is not a late-career victory lap in the manner of the Beastie Boys’ “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.” Nor is it the sort of fawning, ingratiating, self-aggrandizing thing that bands like U2 do when they feel their audience waning — “reapplying for the job ... [of] the best band in the world,” in Bono’s words.
What “Watch The Throne” is, first and foremost, is market-based performance art, in the current style of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” — brand partnership mixed uneasily with social advocacy, myth-making fused determinedly to an ethic of boastful transparency. Having ransomed advance copies of the LP from independent retailers and other outlets likely to leak the record before it came out, West and Jay-Z contrived a midnight iTunes-only premiere in name of giving us all an opportunity to pay Apple for it at the same time.
Jay-Z has aged awkwardly since his post-“Black Album” “retirement.” As his worldview and social conscience have grown, his charisma has gone missing — 2009’s “The Blueprint 3,” his last LP, was an earnest but awkward listen. West, meanwhile, discovered the artistic possibilities of total misanthropy with “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” a record that just narrowly edged its own promotional campaign in the race for 2010’s best public spectacle.
“Watch The Throne” is, theoretically, a kind of marriage of all the above — Jay-Z’s burgeoning sense of responsibility balanced against West’s unrepentant flair; West’s grueling emotional honesty offset by Jay-Z’s breezy confidence. In reality, it’s a largely unlikable record, alternately strident, defensive and boastful. Its best parts are in many ways its ugliest: “Coke on her black skin make a stripe like a zebra / I call that jungle fever / You will not control the threesome,” West raps on “No Church in the Wild.”
Elsewhere, the two address their unborn sons on “New Day,” a hallucinatory RZA production, like looking in a smoky mirror — “Sorry junior, I already ruined ya,” Jay-Z raps, “you ain’t even alive, paparazzi pursuin’ ya.” Fame is the thing to be reckoned with here, always, whether its broadening the circle of black celebrity — “Shoutout to O,” Jay-Z raps on “Murder to Excellence,” but “we gon need a million more” — or the paranoid delusions of “Who Gon Stop Me,” on which West rhymes: “This is something like the Holocaust / Millions of our people lost.”
Grandiosity has a way of corrupting whatever it touches. This was Jay-Z’s artistic undoing throughout much of the last decade, and West’s primary, if often grotesque, virtue. Here, they trade places. Jay-Z, uncharacteristically reflective on songs like “Why I Love You,” loses ground to the “sophisticated ignorance” of songs like “Otis,” on which West dispenses with the nods toward social justice and instead celebrates the ridiculous heights to which these two have ascended: “Can’t you see the private jets flying over you? / Maybach bumper sticker read ‘What would Hova do?’ ” Contemptible, maybe, but rude euphoria trumps a conscience every time.
> Download from iTunes
