Click to listen to Kanye West and Jay-Z's "H.A.M."

The first release from Kanye and Jay-Z's Watch the Throne starts out big — twitchy synths giving way to spooky opera ululating — and then gets humungous, with a choir booming over what sounds like a dozen symphony orchestras. You expect God, or Gandalf, to come striding out of the mist. Instead, we get two stars out to prove they're "hard as a motherfucker": 'Ye tells life itself to suck his dick, while Jay shifts his cadence into light speed to call out his "half a billi" net worth. It's the chest-thumping cry of kings determined to prove that their thrones aren't easy chairs.    

Photos: Kanye West's Career Highs — and Lows

“Baby Got Back”

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”