Kanye West & Jay-Z: "H.A.M."

Kanye did a bunch of shit last year, but one of the things he really fucking did was place guests. A legacy of half-assed posse-building (remember the Consequence co-sign?) suddenly stirred, spiraled, fomented into something remarkable. Seven-minute posse cuts are a privilege normally reserved for the Wu, but throughout last year Yeezy showed an almost architectural elegance in his construction of these cuts: leaving Cam’ron for the best few bars of “Christmas in Harlem,” letting a bit-player like Nikki Minaj strut like a true-blooded superstar on “Monster,” enshrining Pusha eternally on “Runaway.” Even with most of the record leaked, the structure of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy still staggered listeners when it finally stampeded into existence.

Which is why I’m both disappointed in and reserving judgment of the gargantuan, unconvincing “H.A.M.” I’ve read mostly dispirited takes on the emceeing here, but Ye’s austere opening verse is an aggressively, sublimely weird thing, moving winningly from fleet-footed double-time (“What niggas gonna do, Hov? / This is new crack / On a new stove”) into a bob-and-weave (“Just forget it / You talk it, I live it”) all before the booming Old Testament hook drops. Which, about that: it’s hard not to suppress a nervous grin when Lex Luger’s gates of Mordor choirs rupture the track entirely, but queasy soul-baring is what super-ego Ye traffics in these days. I feel like questioning these choirs will put me on the wrong side of history, especially since he’s now Tweeting about bassoons.

From there, though, the track ramps consistently up in intensity and down in enjoyability. Hova is an old man, and, as “The Joy” proved, he should be rapping over old-man beats, not trunk-rattling electro. Like, it’s fun, but it’s sorta like ripping Red Bull and vodkas with a forty-year-old with a pierced ear. As opposed to one in a killer fucking rich-guy suit, pouring you two-finger high-balls of single-malt. What Watch the Throne will end up as is anyone’s guess; the structure of this track could be like Drake’s similarly strange single “Over,” confounding on its own but crucial to the greater album’s pacing. The two minutes of ceaseless breakdown and bombast go nowhere in January 2010; in March, mid-record, it might be paramount. My point either way, I guess, is this: why the fuck isn’t there a third verse? Didn’t Weezy just get out of jail?