Jay-Z has revealed that he had a four-day argument with Kanye West over two tracks from his new album ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’.
The disagreement occurred while the rappers were recording their joint album ‘Watch The Throne’, which came out in August 2011. It concerned the tracks ‘Holy Grail’ and ‘Oceans’, Jay-Z explains in an interview with BBC Radio 1’s Zane Lowe that will be broadcast in four parts from Monday to Thursday this week (July 15-18).
“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,” Jay-Z recalls. “Soon as I thought we had wrapped up ‘Watch The Throne’, I made two records – I had ‘Holy Grail’ and ‘Oceans’.”
Jay-Z continues: “[There were] no lyrics on ‘Holy Grail’ and I recorded ‘Oceans’ and I played those records for Kanye. And he was like, ‘No those have to go on ‘Watch The Throne”, so we spent four days arguing about those records and I was explaining to him why it wasn’t right for this project and I had a whole idea for making this album called ‘Magna Carta’… ‘Holy Grail’ [part of] the name came after.”
However, Jay-Z insists that the argument never really turned nasty, describing it as “four days, four days literally arguing… not like fighting. Well, there was some pushing at one point but not between us, just everyone else got a little excited.”
Jay-Z evidently won the argument as ‘Oceans’ and ‘Holy Grail’ now appear on his 12th LP ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’, which has just become his first Number One album in the UK. “Number One in 59 countries and most importantly, my first in England,” he told the crowd during his headline set at London’s Wireless Festival on Saturday night (July 13).