No Church In The Wild (West, Carter, Njapa, Dean, Breaux, Nash, Wright, Manzanera, Brown, Roach)
Lift Off (West, Carter, Bhasker, Dean, Williams, Hernandez, Samuel)
Niggas In Paris (West, Carter, Hollis, Dean, Donaldson)
Otis (West, Carter, Woods, Campbell, Connelly, Robinson, Hammond, Brown, Roach)
Gotta Have It (West, Carter, Williams, Brown, Roach, Pinckney, Wesley)
New Day (West, Carter, Diggs, Dean, Bricusse, Newley)
That's My Bitch (West, Carter, Fareed, Bhasker, Vernon, Brown, Byrd, Lenhoff, Lordan)
Welcome To The Jungle (West, Carter, K. Dean, M. Dean)
Who Gon Stop Me (West, Carter, Joseph, Dean, Simmonds, Kierkegaard)
Murder To Excellence (West, Carter, K. Dean, Griffin Jr., Mescudi, Jones, Mason Jr., Rosenbaum, Semenya, Summers, M. Mordorcea, G. Mordorcea)
Made In America (West, Carter, Joseph, Dean, Breaux)
Why I Love You (West, Carter, Dean, Cerboneschi, Blanc-Francard, Camillo, Sawyer)
Frank Ocean - guest on 'No Church In The Wild' and 'Made In America'
Beyonce - guest on 'Lift Off'
Otis Redding - guest on 'Otis'
Mr. Hudson - guest on 'Why I Love You'
Produced by Kanye West, 88-Keys, Mike Dean, Jeff Bhasker, Q-Tip, Pharrell, Don Jazzy, Hitboy, Anthony Kilhoffer, The Neptunes, RZA, Ken Lewis, Swizz Beatz, Shama Joseph, and S1
Label: Roc-A-Fella/Roc Nation/Def Jam
Though this has been billed as the "first collaboration" between hip-hop behemoths, Jay-Z and Kanye West, the two have actually been working together pretty consistently for over a decade at this point, with West always producing at least one track on each of Jay's albums in that time.
This is however the first time the two of them have created a full album together, with both of them sharing vocals throughout and West co-producing most of the tracks.
As you would expect from two of the hip-hops sole shining lights in the 21st century, this is tightly packed with some great moments, and though there are a couple of things I would regard as mistakes - the sample of 'Try A Little Tenderness', complete with vinyl pops and sputters in 'Otis' make the raps recorded crisp and clear sound out of place - but this is largely a very impressive album. I hope to hear more of what these two can do together in the future.
(Apologies if you've been waiting for this... I found that doing it every day was really burning me out for finding things to say, so decided to give it a rest for a while).
