Actual acknowledged tensions between Jay-Z and Kanye West have been few and far between (see: “Big Brother“; see also, Jay on ‘Ye in 2011: “He puts so much into everything, and he’s like, ‘You have to treat it like I treat it.’ It drives you crazy sometimes — like when you’ve put 75 versions of a snare on one song and he’s like, ‘No!’ and you’re like, ‘Come on, man.’â€). Now Jay-Z tells the BBC’s Radio 1 that while Watch the Throne, Yeezus, and Magna Carta … Holy Grail seem like clearly delineated affairs, there was some inter-project tension. “We had this whole plan when me and Kanye did [the] Watch The Throne album that we would go right into our solos after that. Soon as I thought we had wrapped up Watch the Throne, I made two records — I had ‘Holy Grail’ and ‘Oceans’ … and I played those records for Kanye. And he was like, ‘No, those have to go on Watch the Throne.’â€
So the two spent four days arguing about it. “Not like fighting,†Jay clarifies. “Well, there was some pushing at one point but not between us, just everyone else got a little excited.†(What does that even mean, though? Were people seriously getting feisty over a song that says “I’m on the ocean / I’m in heaven / Yachtin’ / Ocean 11†not once but twice?) In ancillary Throne news: Magna Carta is Hov’s first No. 1 in the U.K., and expensive Yeezus-designed clothes are now available for purchase.