"Good" should NOT be an adjective used to describe anything created by this iconic duo

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Written by Sarah Hernandez

The summer’s most highly anticipated album, Watch The Throne, finally dropped this past Monday. It’s not a surprise that the album was so hyped, because what else can you expect from Mr. Hov and the Louis Vuitton Don besides excellence? The question now that it has dropped, is whether or not it lived up to the hype. Unfortunately only less than a handful of songs met the expected dopeness level, and the rest fell short, making the album as a whole somewhat of a disappointment.

The album started out to be very promising with “No Church In The Wild," giving me high hopes for the rest of the album to deliver greatness, just like it did with this track. Genius lines like “Coke on her black skin make a stripe like a zebra, I call that jungle fever” and the thought inducing chorus, sung by the crooner Frank Ocean himself , going “Human being to the mob? What’s a mob to a king? What’s a king to a God? What’s a God to a non-believer, who don’t believe in anything?”, is exactly the kind of content you’d expect from the first track of a project such as this. Ye did his thing, Jay did his thing, and Frank did his thing, making this the perfect start to what otherwise could have been an amazing album.

Next you have “Lift Off" which features Jay’s wife, the Queen herself, Beyonce. This track was not exactly up to par with what you’d expect from the Bonnie & Clyde couple, but it’s a good listen, has catchy lyrics and the triumphant vibe that it exudes can serve as inspiration to someone else’s life. This song has been trending all over twitter and I’m pretty sure it will be played all over the radio also.

Then you have the third track “Ni**as In Paris”, what many, including myself, agree to be THEE HOTTEST TRACK on the album! The sonic sounds of the snare and sub bass created the proper back drop for these heavy hitters to lay down their genius. The end where Ye repeats “Don’t let me into my zone” and then both Ye and Jay simultaneously say “I’m definitely in my zone!” is an excellent summation to the murdering of this track.

Skipping over a few tracks we arrive at “Welcome To The Jungle”, which was produced by Swizz Beatz. This is one of the few tracks in which Jay Z shines, because he finally didn’t rap about how much money he has, this time his lyrical content actually had content. He also cleverly changed up the way most people would mention the King of Pop and said “RIP to the leader of the Jackson 5." This was a perfect pairing of a dope beat from Swizzy, and Hova in his element.

Unfortunately the rest of the album, excluding the singles, consisted of either good tracks or bad tracks. The biggest disappointment of them all was the dubstep track, “Who Gon Stop Me”, which sounded pretty dope at first but crashed and burned at the end, due to Jay’s contribution. Sorry to say this, but his lyrics were elementary and his flow was borderline annoying. It’s a real shame that the opportunity to take an ill dubstep beat and marry it with hip hop to create something epic, was thrown away.

Jay Z has done a lot to get to where he is now, and was no doubt one of the best rappers out there, keyword being "was." Recently it seems that his delivery, flow, and lyrical content isn’t what it used to be, and that played a good part in the downfall of this joint album. The production of each track, mostly the work of Kanye, but which also comprised of Swizz Beatz, Mike Dean, Hit-Boy, the Neptunes and a few others, along with the never ending swag and genius of Kanye’s verses, was this album’s saving grace.  In general it’s a good album, but "good" should NOT be an adjective used to describe anything created by this iconic duo, Kanye West and Jay Z.