Last summer, when Kanye West was in the throes of promoting My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he announced via Twitter that he and Jay-Z were working on a new collaborative album called Watch the Throne. The pair have been making hits together since the heyday of Roc-A-Fella Records and Jay-Z’s classic 2001 album, The Blueprint, but this new project was potentially monumental. At present, Jay-Z has superseded rap to become a worldwide entertainment icon, and Kanye is a walking nexus of critical adulation and media attention. And so, during New York Fashion Week, in February, the duo took over a floor at the swanky Mercer Hotel in SoHo, moved in recording equipment and knocked out the bulk of the album. Kanye wasn’t talking to the media then, and few people associated with the project are willing to discuss much about the album now: “We are not authorized to speak publicly regarding the details of the record,” a member of his team told XXL.

Whatever the reasons for the wall of silence, Jay-Z and Kanye may already have discovered that Watch the Throne was simpler in theory than in practice. Last New Year's Eve, Kanye used a joint appearance at a party at the Marquee nightclub in Las Vegas to declare, “Watch the Throne coming in one week.” That one week came and went. We did hear a single in January, the Lex Luger–produced “H.A.M.,” an orchestral, melodramatic amuse-bouche that whetted the appetite but did little to satisfy the hunger for the project. After peaking at No. 23 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, the single has seen a natural decline (at press time, "H.A.M." was at No. 95 on the chart). Not exactly disappointing, but given the magnitude of the duo, not earth-shattering, either.

None of this should come as a surprise. While the contributions of duos, from Eric B. and Rakim, to OutKast, to Mobb Deep, to UGK, prove the dynamic potential of two-man rap operations, sadly, the history of duet albums between already established artists tells a different story. Delays, confusion and uncertainty are par for the course of the recording process. Under the weight of inflated expectations and hamstrung by label politics, more often than not, full-length collaborations fail to equal the sum of their parts.

Out of all the hip-hop albums that have brought together a pair of bankable solo artists—two rappers or a rapper and a singer apply here—only Jay-Z and R. Kelly’s The Best of Both Worlds series and Method Man and Redman’s Blackout! have sold more than a million copies. Omarion and Bow Wow’s Face Off was certified at gold. Distant Relatives, from Nas and reggae artist Damian Marley, received positive reviews but lackluster sales. I Can’t Feel My Face, a duet album between
Lil Wayne and Juelz Santana, resulted in a number of leaked tracks but has remained in the vault for several years. Other rumored collaborations, like Nas and AZ, Jeezy and Akon, and Lil Wayne and T-Pain, have produced little beyond hopeful whispers.

Still, with the music industry collectively clinging to the rim of an elevator shaft, there has been a surge of interest in the collaborative album. The steady decline in the viability of the multimember group has created an environment where legions of soloists are competing for attention—and joining forces with another rapper may offer an advantage. Veterans and underground acts, by virtue of their independence and willingness to experiment, have led the charge. In recent years, Kurupt and DJ Quik released BlaQKout, KRS-One and Buckshot put out Survival Skills, Masta Ace and Edo. G made Arts & Entertainment, and Keith Murray and Canibus dropped a self-titled EP as The Undergods. Last September, Tony Yayo and Danny Brown put out the Hawaiian Snow mixtape together. This month, Mack 10 and Glasses Malone joined forces on Money Music. On the mainstream side, Cash Money Records owner Birdman, who released Like Father, Like Son with his artist Lil Wayne, in 2006, has reportedly recorded full, as-yet-unreleased albums with R. Kelly and with Rick Ross. After years of seeing groups disassembled into solo acts, hip-hop is reverse-engineering itself.

Back in the day, labels occasionally mashed solo artists together into groups, but the current pairings are based more on natural chemistry, respect and the success of past single-song collaborations. Before toying with the idea of dual albums, Drake and Trey Songz made 2007’s “Replacement Girl,” Fabolous and Ne-Yo made 2007’s “Make Me Better,” and Wayne and T-Pain made “Can’t Believe It” and “Got Money,” in 2008. Few artists will have the same rapport as Redman and Method Man, guys who have been touring, shooting films and smoking pot together for over a decade, but mutual admiration is crucial. For Buckshot, part of the thrill of working with KRS-One was sharing the studio with a legend. “When it came to Kris, it was a shocking revelation that it was actually possible to happen,” he says. Buckshot cites the benefit of bringing their fan bases together, but it’s clear his primary interest was more artistic than financial. “You’d have to be equipped for KRS-One to say, ‘Aight, I’ma rhyme with you.’ Obviously, that was something that I would want in my wildest dreams.”

Keith Murray and Canibus were acquaintances for years before hooking up as The Undergods, but they spent some quality time together before recording. To build chemistry, Canibus visited Murray’s hometown of Central Islip, on Long Island, and ate at his family’s Jamaican restaurant. “We didn’t just come to the studio and rap,” says Murray.

Most rappers are comfortable jumping on tracks with other artists. (It would seem that at least 75 percent of Southern acts have guested on a DJ Khaled posse cut at some point.) But sharing artistic responsibility for an entire album is a different level of commitment. Some alpha-level stars may be unwilling to surrender partial control of their projects. Others prefer the group dynamic. “I ain’t with the solo shit unless I have to,” says Birdman, who made five albums with Mannie Fresh as a member of the Big Tymers. “I’d rather be in a group,” he says. “Some niggas feel different. Wayne, he like to do solo shit. A nigga like Ross, real rap niggas, they like that. I’ve never considered myself a rapper. I’m a game-spitter.”

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For every collaborative project that blooms into fruition, there are dozens proposed that die on the vine. Estranged N.W.A members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre were supposed to reunite in the mid-1990s for Helter Skelter, but all we received was 1994’s “Natural Born Killaz” single (appropriately venomous, it wasn’t the colossal effort the public craved). Ten years later, Cam’ron and R&B singer Jahiem were reportedly working on The Best of Both Hoods, but they only mustered “Lord You Know,” a video and single that never appeared on an album, and “More Reasons,” for Cam's 2004 LP Purple Haze. More recently, 50 Cent mused about the possibility of making an entire album with Eminem—we’re still waiting for an update on that.

In most cases, talk about an exciting tag-team project starts with the rappers themselves. To no one’s surprise, people who earn their livelihood stringing together boasts and hyperbole are prone to wild speculation. Of course, it’s the atmosphere, too. With a million blogs, message boards and gossip sites to echo every unsubstantiated half-truth until it resonates with authenticity, a rapper’s casual remark to a camera crew filming a hood DVD can balloon into something resembling fact. “Artists usually agree to do [collaboration albums] on a bumping, passing mission in the club, with two bottles of Patron, three girls next to them and 50 dudes around them,” says Buckshot. “That’s why a lot of them do not go down.”

In the sober light of day, there are plenty of logistical difficulties that can put a tandem project on the shelf. Contractual obligations, tours and the erratic lifestyle that accompanies an entertainment career make it difficult for artists to sync up their schedules. Ghostface Killah and MF Doom started talking about their album Swift & Changeable way back in 2006, but after repeated recording delays, only a handful of tracks have materialized thus far. Such snags are commonplace. “There are at least four or five artists on our roster that have talked about making a collaboration album together,” says John Franck, senior vice president of marketing at E1 Music. “Unfortunately, these things don’t come together, because they’re moving on totally different planes.”

Even if a pair of rappers manage to finagle their schedules into lockstep, record labels are prone to put a kibosh on the project. Artists are investments, and the suits often aren’t so enthusiastic about committing their stables to risky endeavors wherein they’re unlikely to see 100 percent of the profits. “They got that mentality like Death Row had back then,” says Kurupt, referring to the powerful West Coast label that notoriously forbade him and other signees from working with rappers outside their immediate camp in the early 1990s. “They want to keep the artist all to themselves, because they don’t want to oversaturate or jeopardize the records they’re selling.”

You can expect an entanglement of bureaucratic red tape when record companies are charged with sorting out the details of a collaborative album; the question is how suffocating it will be. For albums that involve artists from different labels, negotiations determine which company will put out the project. Another sticking point is whether the album will count against an artist’s contractual commitment to the label. Then there’s the problem of figuring out who gets more compensation when artists of varying stature work together.

Lil Wayne and Juelz Santana were on similar tiers when they first floated the idea of I Can’t Feel My Face, in 2006. Since then, though, Wayne has emerged as a triple-platinum icon, while Juelz has languished on the sidelines due to contractual issues with his label. Citing Cash Money’s long-standing relationship with Juelz’s Dipset clique, Baby says the disparity in popularity between the artists doesn’t concern him. “Even though Wayne might weigh a little more, in the business of it, everybody gonna manage that part to where everyone is happy,” he says. “We understand that, but that’s our partner. We always gonna do things together.” Of course, most artists don’t have the luxury of making such decisions themselves. “Once the machine gets involved, these labels make it fucked up for niggas to do collaboration albums,” Baby says. “The labels be wanting this and that. My artist weighs this; my [artist] weighs that. It puts friction in the game. Labels don’t understand a muthafuckin’ thing.”

Even If logistical landmines have been avoided, a full-length collaborative album between two highly regarded artists has to live up to lofty expectations. Back in the early naughts, the idea of Jay-Z and R. Kelly teaming up together for an entire album was both audacious and obvious. The top dogs of their respective genres, the pair had previously collaborated on 2001’s “Fiesta (Remix),” a single that rose into the top 10 on Billboard’s pop chart and demonstrated the potential of their combined hit-making abilities. The album’s vainglorious title, The Best of Both Worlds, seemed fitting. But the outcome was less triumphant. The grand design for the 2002 union of superstars was dismantled by critical indifference and R. Kelly’s controversial sex tape. When the smoke cleared two years later, Kelly and Hov released a second album, of unreleased material, titled Unfinished Business. The two musical icons then embarked on a tour, but after a bizarre confrontation at Madison Square Garden, where Kelly was pepper-sprayed by a member of Jay-Z’s entourage, Kells and Jay parted ways, and the tour collapsed. “The truth of the matter is that they’re two very different guys,” says Samuel “Tone” Barnes, one-half of the production team The TrackMasters, and the executive producer of Unfinished Business. During a recording process that yielded the material used for both albums, Tone acted as an intermediary, as the two headliners separately sent tracks back and forth from their respective bases, in New York and Chicago. “I don’t think we would have gotten an album done if they were in the studio together day in and day out,” he says of the arrangement. “They were never in each other’s company, so they never had to deal with animosity or competitiveness or being in each other’s faces.” Despite the drama, discontent and disappointment surrounding The Best of Both Worlds, the album made the journey from conception to public consumption—for that alone, it probably qualifies as a success.

It’d be difficult to find any two artists better suited for corralling their talents into something special than Jay-Z and Kanye West. They’ve worked together for years, admire each other’s abilities and have reached such pinnacles of artistic and financial success to make jealousy unlikely. That said, they’re wading against the tide of history. And due to their shared reputation for top-quality output, they’ll need to approach Watch the Throne with the same level of scrutiny they’ve always placed on their solo projects. “A lot of times, after you get into the studio with someone you respect, the artists themselves have to say whether or not it’s a good record,” says Tone. “Maybe you shouldn’t put it out. It could be as simple as that.”—Ben Detrick

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