BBC music journo, Zane Louw, got to chat with Jay-Z about Magna Carter: Holy Grail recently. When asked when he started to plan this album, Jigga told Zane about the plan after Watch The Throne and how arguing with Kanye over the tracks ‘Oceans’ and ‘Holy Grail’ resulted in the Grammy Award song ‘No Church In The Wild’:
“We had this whole plan when me and Kanye did Watch the Throne album that we would go right into our solos after that, and as soon as we wrapped up I had two records, ‘Holy Grail’ and ‘Oceans’… I played those records for Kanye and he was like ‘Nooooo! 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 ‘cause I had this whole idea of making an album called Magna Carta. We were literally arguing four days, not like fighting. Well there was some pushing at one point, but not between us. Just everyone else got a little excited… we was at this place… we just wanted to make sure this Throne album amazing. I was like you know what, let’s just call in Frank and let’s call in Dream . Dream wrote on ‘Holy Grail’ and Frank did the hook on ‘Oceans’ and that’s how we got the record ‘No Church in the Wild’. We also got ‘Made in America’ from those sessions.”
For the full length interview go to http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/videos/id.13702/title.jay-z-zane-lowe-interview