It isn’t hard to imagine that Kanye West usually gets anything he demands, except that wasn’t the case with his collaborative project Watch The Throne with Jay Z. According to media mogul David Cho, West wanted each song title on the joint album to feature the N-word, but Hov nixed the idea.
Cho, the former publisher of Grantland and co-founder of The Awl, sat down with brothers Eric and Jeff Rosenthal, collectively known as ItsTheReal, for their podcast, A Waste Of Time. During the wide-ranging chat, which included talk about Cho hob-nobbing with the likes of Justin Timberlake, Pharell Williams, Timbaland, and Tyrese, the focus got rightly weird when the discussion turned to the development of Watch The Throne.
After discussing a chance meeting in California where he met his idol, Kanye West, the conversation switched to how Cho once played Jenga with the other half of The Throne. But things got interesting when Cho spoke about Yeezy’s insistence on adding the N-word to the album.
“‘We’re gonna put the N-word in every single title of this album so everyone has to say it and they have to confront it,'” Cho recalls Kanye saying.
He adds that Jay Z wanted to rename WTT’s mega-hit “N*ggas In Paris” to “Ball So Hard” but West pushed back and wanted what would become the current title. Cho suggests adding the N-word to that title was perhaps a compromise.
Check out David Cho talk Kanye West, Jay Z and much more on ItsTheReal’s A Waste Of Time podcast below. To get to the juicy bits we reported on, hit the :34 and 1:50 marks.
instead they left the word on the only bad song on the album. Cool.
So, on the article about the new Nas album, you said that lyricism has evolved so much that he doesn’t matter anymore(yeah, I still remember that ridiculous comment you made), but you like this shit made by a washed up post-Black Album Jay-Z and Kanye who just says shitty random lyrics here and there?.. nah, lyricism didn’t evolve, your standards just dropped, drastically.
Kanye West is a white kid who wants to be black, trapped in a black man’s body….
Homie, dem alredi gottdat
Dat f4g emo Hopsin fit dat description doe
^Obvious wigger is an obvious wigger
Oh my gosh! What an outcry this would have engendered! I’m always so stoked for Kanye West new music but had he gone through and done that, I would have no longer been a fan. Like, I completely understand the mood swings and his cantankerous character, but like, what an egomaniac to actually entertain the idea. Like, why would somebody dance around such potential deleterious decisions? Machinations like these lead to ignominious outcomes, like, but his ensuing insouciance had that transpired would further diminish his fanbase; myself being one of those that would leave him.
Thank You!
TI, is that you?
You seen that Samuel L Jackson meme where he’s on the Jackson 5 album cover and all the songs have Motherfucker in the title? This is what it reminded me of
imagine if some white rock band would have demanded to have the N-word in every song title on their album.
bra you internet kiddies. how does that situation compare buddy? yea imagine if a white band demanded that..imagine that..that would be racist lol that was ‘black’ album…
All of my white friends say NINJA cause they don’t feel like getting drop kicked in the throat.