Critical Excess: Watch the Throne and the New Gilded Age
by J. Griffith Rollefson
University of Michigan Press, 2021 Paper: 978-0-472-05487-9 | eISBN: 978-0-472-12889-1 | Cloth: 978-0-472-07487-7 Library of Congress Classification ML420.J29 Dewey Decimal Classification 782.421649092
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Jay-Z and Kanye West’s 2011 Watch the Throne is a self-avowed “luxury rap” album centered on Eurocentric conceptions of nobility, artistry, and haute couture. Critical Excess performs a close reading of the sonic and social commentary on this album, examining how the album alternately imagines and critiques the mutually reinforcing ideas of Europe, nobility, old money, art, and their standard bearer, whiteness. Reading the album alongside Black critical theory and work on the prophetic nature of music, Rollefson argues that through their performance of black excellence, opulence, and decadence, Jay-Z and Kanye West poured gas on the white resentment of the Obama presidency—a resentment that would ultimately spill over into public life, make audible the dog whistling of the Far Right, and embolden white supremacists to come out from under their rocks. Ultimately, Rollefson argues, Jay-Z and Kanye West’s performance of what Rollefson calls “critical excess” on this album exceeds the limits of conspicuous consumption and heralds the final stage of late capitalism—“the New Gilded Age.”
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
J. Griffith Rollefson is professor of music at University College Cork, National University of Ireland. Rollefson is author of Flip the Script: European Hip Hop and the Politics of Postcoloniality.
REVIEWS
“Critical Excess offers a much-awaited and outstanding meditation on hip-hop’s drive to imagine the end(s) of racial capitalism. From Fanon to Black gospel, from Magilla Gorilla to Afrodiasporas, Rollefson tracks the iconoclasms of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne, detailing how the record not only anticipated the explosive national and international racial politics of the late 2010s but came to be deeply implicated in their emergence. It is electrifying to see W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, and Achille Mbembe sit in the company of Jay, Ye, and Mos Def—and wince not. I simply cannot wait to teach with this book.”
—Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University; author of Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League and Divine Institutions: Religions and Community in the Middle Roman Republic
— Dan-el Padilla Peralta
“Rollefson does a solid job of establishing that Watch the Throne was mostly received as a tasteless flaunting of wealth, then presses that reception and offers something far more compelling and rooted in deep histories of double—and triple—meanings in Black arts and cultures. The argument becomes particularly timely in the way Rollefson ties the album’s performance to the contemporary political moment on both sides of the English-speaking Atlantic.”
—Justin D. Burton, Rider University
— Justin D. Burton
“This is an excellent book with a highly original thesis and thorough theoretical analyses of the album and its related themes. Rollefson has a flair for prose that is at once academic and performative.”
—Justin A. Williams, University of Bristol
— Justin Williams
“J. Griffith Rollefson delivers a fresh and necessary revisitation to Watch the Throne in time for the pivotal album's 10th anniversary. Rollefson's analysis is wide-ranging and deep-probing, offering an intersectional framework for understanding Watch the Throne as a significant case study of engaging hip hop’s tethering to globalization, commercialism, and racial performance.”
—Regina N. Bradley, Assistant Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University, author of Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South
— Regina N. Bradley
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Death Dance for Capitalism: Watch the Throne as Prophetic Critique
1. “Welcome to the Jungle”: Essence and the Western Inheritance
2. “Lift Off” to Sunday Service: Transcendence, Black Capitalism, Black Rapture
3. “After They’ve Seen Paree”: The Mastery of Form
4. “Niggas in Poorest” to “That Shit Creil”: NIP’s Realpolitik in the US and France
5. “Sophisticated Ignorance”: The Deformation of Mastery
Conclusion. Black Noise: Re-composition in the Last Gilded Age
Notes
Bibliography
Discography and Videography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Critical Excess: Watch the Throne and the New Gilded Age
by J. Griffith Rollefson
University of Michigan Press, 2021 Paper: 978-0-472-05487-9 eISBN: 978-0-472-12889-1 Cloth: 978-0-472-07487-7
Jay-Z and Kanye West’s 2011 Watch the Throne is a self-avowed “luxury rap” album centered on Eurocentric conceptions of nobility, artistry, and haute couture. Critical Excess performs a close reading of the sonic and social commentary on this album, examining how the album alternately imagines and critiques the mutually reinforcing ideas of Europe, nobility, old money, art, and their standard bearer, whiteness. Reading the album alongside Black critical theory and work on the prophetic nature of music, Rollefson argues that through their performance of black excellence, opulence, and decadence, Jay-Z and Kanye West poured gas on the white resentment of the Obama presidency—a resentment that would ultimately spill over into public life, make audible the dog whistling of the Far Right, and embolden white supremacists to come out from under their rocks. Ultimately, Rollefson argues, Jay-Z and Kanye West’s performance of what Rollefson calls “critical excess” on this album exceeds the limits of conspicuous consumption and heralds the final stage of late capitalism—“the New Gilded Age.”
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
J. Griffith Rollefson is professor of music at University College Cork, National University of Ireland. Rollefson is author of Flip the Script: European Hip Hop and the Politics of Postcoloniality.
REVIEWS
“Critical Excess offers a much-awaited and outstanding meditation on hip-hop’s drive to imagine the end(s) of racial capitalism. From Fanon to Black gospel, from Magilla Gorilla to Afrodiasporas, Rollefson tracks the iconoclasms of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne, detailing how the record not only anticipated the explosive national and international racial politics of the late 2010s but came to be deeply implicated in their emergence. It is electrifying to see W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, and Achille Mbembe sit in the company of Jay, Ye, and Mos Def—and wince not. I simply cannot wait to teach with this book.”
—Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Associate Professor of Classics at Princeton University; author of Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League and Divine Institutions: Religions and Community in the Middle Roman Republic
— Dan-el Padilla Peralta
“Rollefson does a solid job of establishing that Watch the Throne was mostly received as a tasteless flaunting of wealth, then presses that reception and offers something far more compelling and rooted in deep histories of double—and triple—meanings in Black arts and cultures. The argument becomes particularly timely in the way Rollefson ties the album’s performance to the contemporary political moment on both sides of the English-speaking Atlantic.”
—Justin D. Burton, Rider University
— Justin D. Burton
“This is an excellent book with a highly original thesis and thorough theoretical analyses of the album and its related themes. Rollefson has a flair for prose that is at once academic and performative.”
—Justin A. Williams, University of Bristol
— Justin Williams
“J. Griffith Rollefson delivers a fresh and necessary revisitation to Watch the Throne in time for the pivotal album's 10th anniversary. Rollefson's analysis is wide-ranging and deep-probing, offering an intersectional framework for understanding Watch the Throne as a significant case study of engaging hip hop’s tethering to globalization, commercialism, and racial performance.”
—Regina N. Bradley, Assistant Professor of English and African Diaspora Studies at Kennesaw State University, author of Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise of the Hip-Hop South
— Regina N. Bradley
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Death Dance for Capitalism: Watch the Throne as Prophetic Critique
1. “Welcome to the Jungle”: Essence and the Western Inheritance
2. “Lift Off” to Sunday Service: Transcendence, Black Capitalism, Black Rapture
3. “After They’ve Seen Paree”: The Mastery of Form
4. “Niggas in Poorest” to “That Shit Creil”: NIP’s Realpolitik in the US and France
5. “Sophisticated Ignorance”: The Deformation of Mastery
Conclusion. Black Noise: Re-composition in the Last Gilded Age
Notes
Bibliography
Discography and Videography
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE