The Jay-Z and Kanye West song that was sat on a hard drive for over a decade
Built around Curtis Mayfield’s warm, syrupy vocals in a structure that blends introspective, nostalgic lyricism with brilliant production, Kanye West and Jay-Z’s The Joy is not just a success lap for the two rappers, but co-producer Pete Rock, too.
And yet the 2010 single sat in production purgatory for over a decade, 13, 14 years, even.
“‘The Joy’ is a beat I had since 1996, ’97,” said Rock in an interview with Complex magazine. “And I was just sitting on it, debating on who I would give it to. First I gave it to Strong Arm Steady, and that didn’t work out, because Busta said he did something to it. Then that didn’t work out, so I gave it to Kanye West and he did something to it and put Jay-Z on it, and that was the end all be all right there.”
Rock, who is also known as Soul Brother No. 1, is celebrated as being one of the greatest hip-hop producers in history, working with the likes of Nas, Run-DMC, and Mary J. Blige throughout his career. He played a major role in fusing jazz in modern hip-hop, and is often credited alongside The Roots and A Tribe Called Quest in the birth of jazz rap.
So it’s no wonder, as Rock narrates, “Kanye’s ex-bodyguard reached out to me and said he was looking for me. I went to Hawaii, and I played it for [Kanye] and he loved it, and he wanted to use it as soon as he heard it. I brought a lot of other stuff there that he liked.”
“I laid down a version to ‘Dark Fantasy,’ and on ‘Runaway’ those are the drums from ‘The Basement’ that I chopped,” Rock continued. “Those drums, the way that they’re looped, you can’t just put the record down and get it. The pattern, the way I put it together, is like a jigsaw puzzle.”
“He got Jay-Z on it. That’s his homie, you know. Jay-Z didn’t come to Hawaii to lay his vocals [when I was there]. I was there for a whole week, and then after I left, weeks later, Young Guru the engineer called me and said, ‘I got a surprise for you.’ He played me the song with Jay-Z on it, and I was blown away. Because for years I’ve been trying to work with Jay, and I think he says the same thing, but we just kept missing each other.”
Like Jay-Z, Rock was born and raised in New York City, and is credited as a major player of the 1990s East Coast hip hop production scene. His career started as one half of Pete Rock & CL Smooth before Rock turned to focus predominantly on remixing and producing for other artists. Some iconic moments of his career included making the original demo beat for A Tribe Called Quest’s Jazz (We Got) and the initial beat for The Notorious B.I.G.’s Juicy before it was recreated by P. Diddy and Poke.
“I thought about [rapping on ‘The Joy’], but it’s all good,” Rock concluded. “I didn’t want him to outdo me on my own track either. But I would rap with Kanye, it’s not like I’m scared to do it. At that point in time, I didn’t have anything. I have to be in a certain mode for my rhymes to sound correct.”