Watching Jay-Z and Kanye West slowly roll out their “Watch The Throne” collaboration has been a maddening but hilarious exercise in “OH COME ON!” The release date itself has been the subject of much “will they, or won’t they” speculation — it was hotly rumored to be released on July 4th, but that didn’t happen, obviously. Anticipation has been so high that news was made even when they rolled out the album’s art. The art. Who does that? Jay-Z and Kanye West, that’s who. It’s like we’re all hungry dogs and they’re holding the steak.
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that even the way the two presented the record to music writers was a bit odd and shrouded in secrecy: Jay-Z held a private listening party in a suite on the second floor of the Mercer Hotel in New York. There were strict rules the invited few had to follow, one of which included no tweeting about the album, a rule that was broken by someone from Fader, which resulted in an ejection from the room. I am not kidding. Other ground rules included no direct quoting of lyrics, and the writers had to sit on the floor of the hotel room, Indian-style, as if they were back in third grade or something.
Here’s how GQ described the scene…
So in honor of Watch the Throne, he and Kanye West’s first shared-billing collaborative album, Jay did what he always does, which is turn a formality into intimacy and dispense with the trappings. In a cramped room on the second floor of the Mercer Hotel, a dozen or so reporters and editors, along with Jay’s publicist, manager, trainer (!), and assistant, and two album pre-order contest winners—imagine Willy Wonka’s golden ticket, only it looks like this—huddled up. Jay was decked in standard casual gear: crisp black denim, a white tee, white shell toes, and a suddenly au courant Yankees snapback—the event actually kicked off an hour late because the guest of honor was at Yankee Stadium hoping to catch Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit. (Alas, The Captain sits at 2,998, foiling a perfect night.) Without much fanfare, Jay-Z pressed play on the black MacBook in his lap and the album began.
Here’s how Billboard described it…
The listening was held in a suite on the second floor of the Mercer Hotel, in SoHo, and lasted for roughly three hours, with Jay-Z playing eleven songs from an Apple laptop for a select group of music journalists and two teenage fans who had won access to the session for being the first two customers to pre-order the album through Jay-Z’s lifestyle site, Life and Times, which began accepting pre-orders on Monday, July 4. Kanye West did not attend.
Following the eleventh song, Jay-Z invited those in the room to have an informal conversation that lasted for about an hour.
“We can have a conversation,” he said. “I don’t want to do an interview. Put your pads away – we can talk all night.”
He then played snippets of at least three other songs, including one featuring producer Swizz Beatz, that may or may not be included on the album. Other songs that have been rumored to be on the album, including the single “H*A*M,” which was released in January, and “That’s My B*tch,” which appeared online late last year, were not played. Frank Ocean, the Def Jam singer and Odd Future affiliate, appeared on two of the initial eleven songs played, while Jay-Z’s wife, Beyonce, appeared on one.
Jay-Z suggested that a video for the song featuring Beyonce, tentatively titled “Lift Off,” could appear, but that he was reluctant to follow a traditional, single driven release for “Watch The Throne.” Jay-Z would not confirm a release date for “Watch The Throne,” saying only that the album would come “soon,” and no information was given regarding how the album would be released or through what label or combination of labels.
One last thing…though cameras were not allowed in the room, Uproxx was able to obtain a photo of Jay-Z and the music writers in attendance…
