The blogging pendulum continues to swing from one extreme (jaded, couldn’t-give-a-fuck, everyone-can-die-slow) to the other (inexplicably excited about music in 2011), and today you’re lucky to catch me in a good mood. I’m sure plenty of regular readers (the few we have) will react with either apathy or disgust, but the fact is Jay-Z and Kanye West‘s Watch the Throne album is coming whether you like it or not. Jay hosted a listening party last week that revealed a few notable details–Frank Ocean appearing on two tracks; a more serious tone to what we heard on “H.A.M.”–that was well summarized by Sean Fennessey in his piece for GQ. Regardless of what you may think of the music itself, it’s hard to imagine a more fun or ridiculous scene than a recording session featuring Yeezy and his Big Brother; whereas Ye invited Bon Iver to Hawaii to smoke weed with Rick Ross for the making of his last album, these sessions included a revolving door of guests including Givenchy designer Riccardo Tischi (who designed the above cover art), British designerPhoebe Philo (who got a shout-out on the last Kanye album) and Russell Crowe. Over-the-top and pretentious? Sure, I’ll give you that. But hip-hop could use a little bit of weird right now. via Jay’s uber-kewl Life + Times blog

01 No Church in the Wild (ft. Frank Ocean)
02 Lift Off (ft. Beyoncé)
03 Niggas in Paris
04 Otis (ft. Otis Redding)
05 Gotta Have It
06 New Day
07 Prime Time
08 Who Gon Stop Me
09 Murder to Excellence
10 Welcome to the Jungle
11 Sweet Baby Jesus (ft. Frank Ocean)
12 Why I Love You (ft. Mr Hudson)

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