Watch the Throne (Jay-Z and Kanye West)

JAY-Z and Kanye West aren't exactly poster boys for feminism.

Jay-z album cover

JAY-Z and Kanye West aren't exactly poster boys for feminism.

The American monsters of hip-hop, coming together for their first collaborative album, Watch the Throne, are in predictably bombastic, macho form. Winding up the album's seventh track, That's my Bitch, Jay-Z ruminates on the male attention Beyonce -- the mother of his unborn child -- attracts: "Shoot trigga, stop looking at her tits. Get ya own dog, ya heard, that's my bitch."

West, himself never far from profane self-aggrandisement, is overshadowed here. But he doesn't let his elder upstart get away with it at other points. West drives the raw, thumping opener No Church in the Wild with trademark choleric delivery before Beyonce, presumably accustomed to gangster terms of endearment, chimes in with cameo Lift Off, a melodic pop song punctuated by Jay-Z's and West's wild ramblings.

The pair gets introspective on Welcome to the Jungle and the lyrically brilliant Murder to Excellence before sampling one of the great soul artists on retrospective Otis. Whether this is "luxury rap, the Hermes of verses" would probably have been of little consequence to the retiring Otis Redding.

But then, perhaps that's the point. Where success across the racial spectrum largely eluded Redding, West and Jay-Z find themselves two of the most powerful musicians in the world. They have the mic. And, like what they say or not, we're still listening.

LABEL: Universal
RATING: 4/5 stars