Jay-Z and Kanye West release 'Watch the Throne'
Roc-A-Fella / Roc Nation / Def Jam issues the Jay-Z + Kanye West collaboration LP. It is the first joint album either has fully co-credited; production is split between Kanye, Hit-Boy, Q-Tip, Mike Dean, Pharrell Williams, RZA, S1, 88-Keys, and the No I.D./The-Dream/Swizz Beatz bench. 'Otis,' 'Niggas in Paris,' and 'Lift Off' (with Beyoncé) become the singles. Debuts at #1 on the Billboard 200 with 436,000 first-week units.
Why it matters
*Watch the Throne* is hip-hop's most public articulation of Black wealth-as-aesthetic at the post-2008-recession scale. The luxury references — Hermès, Maybach, Basquiat — read at the time as triumphant; in retrospect, as both Jay's and Kanye's later catalogs make explicit (*4:44*, *Ye*, *Donda*), they read as the high-water mark of a particular bling-era logic. The album's tour grosses $75M and is structurally the model for every later major hip-hop arena package.
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