It’s Pretty Crazy Kanye West and Jay Z Dropped "Watch The Throne" 11 Years Ago Today
Pretty crazy this album dropped 11 years ago.
Not because it doesn’t feel that long ago, but rather because it’s insane how much has transpired for Kanye, Jay Z, and the two of their relationship since then.
For me, “Watch The Throne” was the turning point where student bested teacher.
Kanye had spent the majority of his young adult life idolizing Jay Z. Then stalking him to the point of annoyance. Jay Z caved and let Kanye play him some instrumentals, which eventually led to him “producing” a few songs for him which eventually led to Kanye executive producing “The Blueprint 2”.
As everybody knows, from there Kanye put the full court press on Roc-A-Fella to sign his own deal.
The rest was history.
Kanye maintained his respect and reverence for Jay Z up until this album.
After WTT dropped, it was clear that Jay Z hadn’t so much passed the torch to Kanye as much as Kanye snatched it away from him.
On nearly every track on the album Kanye bested, if not straight up destroyed Jay Z.
Except for maybe “New Day” which coincidentally was one of the few tracks Kanye didn’t produce- RZA did. (One of my favorite songs on the album and that either of these two have ever done).
From that point on it felt like Kanye’s “chip on his shoulder”, underdog attitude also disappeared and he transitioned into full “fuck you I’m the greatest” mode.
Yes, he’d always been confidently cocky to an annoying degree, but it had seemed to come from a mindset of “him against the world”.
Not anymore.
He began a senseless feud with Jay Z, which bubbled into a full blown rivalry and stonewalling where the two didn’t speak to each other for a couple years.
Source- Tensions between the rappers began to rise after Kanye's infamous 2009 VMAs stage invasion which upstaged both Taylor Swift and Jay’s wife Beyoncé. The public first began to question if there was trouble between the two when Jay and Beyoncé failed to attend Kanye and Kim Kardashian's wedding. When Kim was robbed in Paris, Jay failed to offer Kanye support in his "hour of need". Then in November 2016, he launched into a 17 minute speech at the Saint Pablo Tour concert in Sacramento, California that went from praising Donald Trump to asking Jay Z not to have him assassinated. While Jay Z's 2017 album release 4:44 laid down several glaring disses to Kanye.
Soon after, Kanye hit back by taking all his music off Jay Z's streaming platform Tidal, announcing that he's "done with streaming". In July 2017 Jay Z admitted they have a "brotherly rivalry". That same month, a documentary titled Public Enemies: Jay-Z vs Kanye aired on Channel 4, following the "meteoric rise and colossal falling out of two of the world's most iconic popstars. But in May 2018, during a long interview with Charlamagne tha God, Kanye confirmed to iHeartRadiothat he felt "hurt" by Jay Z and wife Beyoncé didn't attend his wedding to Kim.
Jay Z hasn’t put a good solo album out since.
Kanye has gone full blown psycho and his “sound” has altered drastically.
But at least the two of them gave us this classic.
P.s.-
