Watch The Throne was an epic collaboration of giants, bringing together Jay Z and Kanye West for a historic and opulent album. Despite their different approaches, or maybe because of them, they delivered a critically acclaimed project that found Kanye pushing Hov to his best form in years. But there were still conflicts, including a four-day argument over whether “Holy Grail” and “Oceans” would appear on WTT or Magna Carta Holy Grail. Jay would win that argument, and according to journalist David Cho, he also talked Kanye out of an idea that surely would have been controversial.
“Jay wanted to call [‘N*ggas In Paris’] ‘Ball So Hard, and Kanye’s like, ‘No we have to put the n-word in the title,” Cho said while appearing on ItsTheReal’s A Waste of Time podcast. Hov relented on that one, but apparently Kanye wanted to go a step further and include the n-word in every single song title on the album. “Kanye said, ‘We’re going to put the n-word in every single [song] title on this album so that everyone has to say it, to confront it,'” Cho continued.
Clearly, the two made a compromise, as there is only one song title with the n-word on the album. So Kanye’s elder was able to spare him from at least one more controversy in his career.
Listen to the full podcast below.
