Jay-Z and Kanye West prove again that they’re one of rap's all-time great tag teams — up there with Run-DMC, OutKast and EPMD — on this teaser from Watch the Throne (due August 8th). West twists a few seconds of Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness" into a Blueprint-style barrage, setting the stage for some slick collar-popping from Jay-Z ("Photo shoot fresh, looking like wealth / I’m about to call the paparazzi on myself"). Jay’s performance, in turn, inspires Ye to step up his wordplay ("Luxury rap, the Hermes of verses / Sophisticated ignorance, write my curses in cursive"); the younger star sounds like he pulled an all-nighter trying to outdo his mentor’s rhymes. They keep trading punchlines for three minutes, opting not to interrupt the fun with anything resembling a chorus. When the verses are packed with this much wit and style, who needs one?

Listen to "Otis":

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“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.