Oceans

Jay ponders the generational effects of the transatlantic slave trade on this cut as he contemplates the lives of his ancestors who traversed the Atlantic Ocean. The aptly named Frank Ocean joins Hova on the song. The R&B singer previously appeared alongside Jay on two Watch the Throne tracks "Made In America" and "No Church in The Wild."

Jay also condemns colonialism. On one line he succeeds in both dissing Christopher Columbus and lauding The Notorious B.I.G: "I'm anti-Santa Maria The only Christopher we acknowledge is Wallace." (Christopher Columbus's ship was called the Santa Maria and Biggie Small's real name was Christopher George Latore Wallace).

Jay-Z explained the meaning behind the song in a video preview of the album. "It sounds like a celebration of where we are now on some big yacht, throwing champagne in the water," he told Rick Rubin. "But the undertow of the thing is that this is the same water that brought us here originally as slaves, so it has this whole duality and even how we re-write history, the stories we were told about the history of America."