• Band Name: Jay-Z
  • Record Label: Def Jam
  • Release Date: Aug 12, 2011
Watch the Throne Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 42 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 224 Ratings

  • Summary: Jay-Z and Kanye West join forces to form their own group and release their collaborative new album.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 34 out of 42
  2. Negative: 0 out of 42
  1. Aug 12, 2011
    100
    Perhaps the most extraordinary achievement of this funny, hard-hitting, thrilling album is that it actually sounds like a coherent and purposeful piece of work, a statement of what hip hop can mean, and where it can go.
  2. Sep 21, 2011
    80
    Hip hop heavy weights stop squabbling for long enough to justify their star billing. [Oct 2011, p.116]
  3. Nov 11, 2011
    80
    They turn out to be pretty good influences on one another. Jay sounds generally reinvigorated: good-humored, full of nimble, intricate wit and atypically emotionally revealing, and if Kanye's rhymes occasionally remain as clumsy and crass as his personal life choices, he drops far fewer boners than usual. [#81, p. 56]
  4. Aug 19, 2011
    60
    Watch the Throne is far too good to condemn them thus, but not good enough to erase the possibility.

See all 42 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 72 out of 82
  2. Negative: 6 out of 82
  1. Best album of this year.. so it deserves a ten. No other album compares to the swag this album explores. Kanye really just stepped up and dropped an album that sounds like it has many hit on it.. expect to see them climb to the top of the charts. Expand
  2. One of the years best album. Jay Z and Kanye made an outstanding album. All songs on the album hS A GOOD beat and the lyrics to the songs are very good. Kanye made a another hit album in less than twelve months. Expand
  3. Its okay. Could have been better and they also left out some songs that where originally planned . Disappointing. But the some songs blew me away. Good album Expand
  4. I'm not a fan of the "I'm so rich and powerful" lyrics that spew from even the most self proclaimed greatest rappers alive. JAy Z is a great artist and Kanye West is a great producer. But together they managed to put out a boring, fart of the mouth with lyrics that mimic any rapper out there today. In short this album is not very good. Expand

See all 82 User Reviews

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