This is the first track to appear from the hotly anticipated album, Watch The Throne, by hip hop giants, Kanye West and Jay-Z. Does a collaboration get any bigger than this?
Kanye West first earned his stripes as a producer at Roc-A-Fella Records, where he worked on Jay-Z’s seminal album, Blueprint. The two have regularly hooked up together ever since, such as Kanye’s appearance when he walked on stage during Jay-Z’s show at the Isle Of Wight Festival last year. Jay-Z has been involved with Kanye’s own work ever since he appeared for his debut album, College Dropout.
It’s a collaboration that is surely going to find every single hitting number one and every leak or release topping the Hype Machine charts. It was only fitting that this first instalment appear on the day that has number one written all over it (1/11/2011).
But is it any good? If you took the Twitter response you could argue that it’s been met with a mixed reaction, as is perhaps expected with something this big. DJ Rory Phillips tweeted, “H.A.M? More like M.E.H“, with NME’s editor, Becca Nicholson, agreeing with and re-tweeting, “It’s really fierce, but quite camp“.
The other test will be the slightly strange competition for the biggest chatter online, with the release of the new single from Britney Spears, ‘Hold It Against Me‘, which is coincidentally abbreviated and hashtagged on Twitter as “H.I.A.M“. Confusing, yes, but both tracks are bound to race all week, with Britney zooming to the iTunes number one spot within just eight hours of it’s release.
Although we consider H.A.M. a pretty terrible name/abbreviation to apply to a track, we consider the music to actually be pretty good. Kanye and Jay-Z’s flows are always listenable, although there’s perhaps too much talk of the stereotypical hip hop subjects, aggression, as they talk of being a hard-ass motherfucker (hence H.A.M.), alongside money and more money, but what else would you expect two egos of this magnitude to rap about?
With the hot producer, Lex Luger, (who worked on Kanye’s recent LP, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy), in the studio, the song thumps along with a size and power befitting these two kings of hip hop. There’s even a section that breaks mid-way through for a slightly embarrassing, self-indulgent piece of mis-placed opera, but at least it shows them in towering form. We want our biggest stars to be unobtainable and over-confident, so it’s forgivable.
Grab yourself a listen to the track below and look out for the album which is due to be released on March 1st. The key questions will be whether the eventual album is simply a vehicle (probably some kind of blinged-up juggernaut) for their egos, or whether there’s more art and creativity from two clearly talented musicians. We also have Dr Dre’s new LP, Detox, due out, so it will also be interesting to observe how they compare and compete. One thing is for sure, hip hop will no doubt be a large feature of 2011.
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KANYE WEST and JAY-Z – H.A.M
