Album: Wu-Tang Forever
Release Date: June 3, 1997
Producer: RZA (except "Cash Still Rules/Scary Hours," "Older Gods," "A Better Tomorrow," "Impossible" and "The City" produced by 4th Disciple, "Visionz" produced by Inspectah Deck, and "The MGM" and "Heaterz" produced by True Master)
Review (Disc One): It's essentially impossible not to discuss Wu-Tang Forever track-by-track for three reasons: its place in Wu-Tang's history, its role as the sophomore effort from the whole group and its sheer volume - the US version has 26 songs on two discs, clocking in at 110 minutes; the international version features two bonus tracks and runs over two full hours. In fact, the first disc is so tightly packed with amazing tracks, I'd be remiss not to mention them all.
The first disc kicks off with "Wu Revolution," a 7-minute spoken word track by Popa Wu. While this slow, steady beat would sound great behind verses from Masta Killa and GZA especially, Popa Wu takes his time to explain the teachings of the Islamic sect of the Five Percent Nation and to scoff at Darwinism and evolution. Although I believe in evolution, my only real problem with it is that "Wu Revolution" essentially keeps the listener from the slick beats and rhymes of the WTC for way too long. Except for my 10 or so listens to the album for this review specifically, I skip "Wu Revolution" almost every time.
However, with so much to live up to following six superb albums, Wu-Tang Forever delivers the goods immediately after stumbling on its intro. "Reunited" kicks off with verses by GZA, ODB, RZA and Method Man - all four established solo artists by this point, although RZA is best known for his production. The beat is dense, with an emphasis on an acoustic guitar. This curious loop is the first of a new style that persists throughout the album and the video game Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style as well. Between "Reunited" and the next two tracks, "For Heaven's Sake" and "Cash Still Rules/Scary Hours," every core member of the Wu besides U-God gets a turn on the mic. This is excellent sequencing by RZA, getting most fans a taste of who they want in the first 12 minutes of emceeing. The music, likewise, offers a classic heavy Wu-beat ("For Heaven's Sake") and an ethereal, choppy piano-and-female-vocals loop ("Cash Still Rules") to help convince the listener there's a broad spectrum to come.
Inspectah Deck's production debut, "Visionz," brings an impossibly cool Method Man-led song with electric guitar and piano trucking along behind him, Raekwon, Masta Killa, Deck himself and Ghost. It's a toe-tapper that leads into the goofy "As High as Wu-Tang Get" with a Sanford and Son-style production under an ODB hook. U-God finally appears on "Severe Punishment," rocking his uptempo flow and tongue-twister rhymes like "Check these hi-hats sting things moving through the rubbish / Party robust, rec room style for you brothers." His classic style has remained through the 2013 release of The Keynote Speaker and is utterly on point here and throughout the album. Masta Killa's ability to weave strange rhyme schemes shines on "Severe Punishment" as well: "Shots I give, while researchers of rescue teams / Look for means of survival and and who's liable / For this harrowing experience / You scream for the extreme, fiend for the cap." He rhymes "survival" with "liable" in the same line, then uses the end of the line ("teams") with the beginning of the next line ("look for means") and holds off another line and a half before closing that rhyme with "You scream for the extreme." It's bizarre, it's fascinating and it just works.
The music on "Older Gods" is pure bliss, while Ghost and Rae pair up for the first half of the track before a great closing verse by GZA. "Maria" borrows from the skirt-chasing themes of "Ice Cream" as Cappadonna and ODB rap about women. Finally, taking a cue from the vulnerable Raekwon verse on "C.R.E.A.M." and Ghost's solo "All I Got is You," "A Better Tomorrow" regrets the bad habits and vices of modern life: "You can't party your life away, drink your life away / Smoke your life away, fuck your life away / Dream your life away, scheme your life away / 'Cuz your seeds grow up the same way." The closing song, "It's Yourz," features exceptionally strong verses from U-God, RZA and Deck and ends the disc on a high note with RZA's classic production.
Review (Disc Two): If it's possible to make anyone a die-hard Wu-Tang fan in 10 minutes, it's by playing them "Triumph" and "Impossible" back-to-back. They're my go-to for introducing people to the Wu. "Triumph" features verses from all nine members (besides ODB, who does hype lines) plus Cappadonna, so it's even more balanced than "Protect Ya Neck" in terms of acting as a sampler platter of every Wu general, and almost every verse is outstanding. Inspectah Deck sets off a bomb with his opening verse, which starts with the following stanza:
"I bomb atomically
Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses
Can't define how I be droppin' these mockeries
Lyrically perform armed robbery
Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me
Battle-scarred shogun, explosion when my pen hits
Tremendous, ultraviolet shine blind forensics."
The only verse on "Triumph" that doesn't quite amaze me is Cappadonna's. Here his better-known style emerges, loose and strange without the complex rhyme schemes that Masta Killa uses to tie his lines up. Couplets like "Run for your team and your 'six can't rhyme' groupies / So I can squeeze with the advantage and get wasted" and "I twist darts from the heart, tried and true / Loop my voice on the LP, martini on the slang rocks" demonstrate how I feel: I just don't have a place to hang my hat on a lot of his appearances. He can really bring the pain on his tighter verses, as we heard throughout Ironman, but a lot of his stuff is this open prose style that just isn't for me.
"Impossible" follows and gives any Wu newbie a sense of how serious rap can be. RZA drops a vocabulary-heavy verse about economic disparity and paranoia about the government: "Innocent black immigrants locked in housing tenements / Eighty-five percent tenants, dependent welfare recipients" is followed later by this stanza:
"Electric microbes, robotic probes
Taking telescope pictures of [the] globe
Babies getting pierced with microchips inside their earlobes
Then examinated, blood contaminated, vaccinated, lives fabricated
Exaggerated authorization, Food and Drug Administration
Testing poison in the prison population
My occupation is to stop the inauguration of Satan
Some claim that it was Reagan, so I come to slay men
Like Bartholomew, 'cuz every particle is physical article
Was diabolical to the last visible molecule."
U-God provides a sturdy verse next, but the real star on "Impossible" is Ghostface, with an award-winning verse about a friend being shot dead in the street. It's easy to get choked up hearing Ghost relate the story of comforting his boy as he died: "Oh shit, here comes his Old Earth (mother) with no shoes on / Screamin' holdin' her breasts with a gown on / She fell and then lightly touched his jaw, kissed him / Rubbed his hair, turned around and the ambulance was there [...] Finally this closed chapter comes to an end / He was announced, pronounced dead y'all, at 12:10."
Even after the knockout one-two combo of "Triumph" and "Impossible," the second disc has some other very strong group tracks: "Deadly Melody," "Little Ghetto Boys," "Hellz Wind Staff" and "Heaterz" are heavyweights on the CD, with compelling music and expert verses by most of the clan. There are also three or four solo tracks depending on which version of Wu-Tang Forever you bought, following suit from Method Man's solo "Method Man" on Enter the Wu-Tang. Here, Inspectah Deck shines again on "The City," which feels to me like a precursor to his impeccable solo record The Movement (check back in months to come for that review); Ol' Dirty Bastard jokes on the character-defining "Dog Shit," which ends with recorded audio of Dirt heckling a group onstage at a club ("What's up with yo Speak-n-Spell shoes? Fisher Price: My First Timberlands"); and U-God raps solo on "Black Shampoo," the last proper hip-hop track on the album. The international version of the disc also features a RZA solo track, "Sunshower."
Unfortunately, the second disc is bogged down by a few lukewarm songs. Even though RZA, 4th Disciple, True Master and Inspectah Deck bring very enjoyable music throughout the entirety of the album, there are a few songs that I feel don't add enough to the project on the whole that justify being "must-hears." For example, "The Projects" has a throwaway beat, the verses lack some focus and Ghost's extended bit about sexing up some girl is just too much. "Suck my dick it's the kid with the fat knob / I bust all into ya face, plus it come in globs." 20 more lines like that follow. "Bells of War," likewise, has cool music and decent verses but doesn't stand out. "The MGM" is a solid Ghostface/Raekwon team-up, but I feel like it would work best on one of the Cuban Linx albums - it even has the bolder string sound and back-and-forth between the two emcees. "Duck Seazon" falls a bit flat for me too. I hate criticizing these four tracks, as a lifelong Wu fan and standing in awe of these nine rappers, but I honestly feel like any one of them would do fine, saving the other three tracks for other projects and cutting up to 15 minutes from the second disc's 66 minutes.
Similarly, the album's end raises some questions for me. Tekitha's "Second Coming" is beautiful, offering the extended outro to mirror Popa Wu's "Wu Revolution" intro. I get the relaxed opening and closing of the album, like an epic film - it reminds me of The Thin Red Line - but she's followed by Raekwon talking on "The Closing" about the Wu style and mission. I respect the Hell out of Rae, but if you add in "Wu Revolution" and the second disc's first track, "Intro," this makes for the third spoken word track about Wu-Tang, totaling in 11 full minutes of dialogue. Rae made a great point on "Shark Niggaz" on Cuban Linx about not plagiarizing, and he has another solid monologue on Supreme Clientele about 50 Cent, but here I think Tekitha should've finished the disc as an "end credits" track.
Review (Quick Summary): Let's take a quick step back to analyze the project as a whole. Totaling 122 minutes, Wu-Tang Forever is an amazing effort by the band to continue their earth-shattering effect on the music industry and American pop culture. It showed that the nitty-gritty of Enter the Wu-Tang and Tical could be expanded upon with a new sound while maintaining real hip-hop. It's a prime example of a band evolving and bringing something new to the table while adhering to much of what their fans love about them. Solid music and lyricism throughout, with the aforementioned hiccups on a couple tracks bloating the second disc a bit.
In terms of each member's presence?
- RZA produced 75% of the album and has 11 verses (excluding choruses, shared verses and dialogue) plus one solo track.
- Method Man dominates with 12 verses.
- Raekwon offers at least 11 verses, sharing another two or three and helping on interludes and intros.
- U-God brings eight verses to the album besides shared verses and his solo track "Black Shampoo."
- Ghostface also has 11 verses plus various minor contributions.
- Masta Killa sees a huge rise from his one verse on Enter the Wu-Tang to a full seven verses plus shared verses and choruses.
- Inspectah Deck earns a name for himself on "Triumph" and "The City" especially, but offering a total of seven verses plus his solo track, also producing "Visionz."
- GZA makes a very lean appearance with only five verses - four on the first disc, only appearing on disc two for a quick line of dialogue, his verse on "Triumph" and a shared verse on "Deadly Melody."
- Cappadonna appears on the album as much as GZA with five verses across the 28 tracks.
- Ol' Dirty Bastard has just four verses to himself, plus choruses and hype lines on several tracks and a solo track. Legacy: For many fans, Forever is the last album in the so-called "Golden Age of Wu," arguing that few records in the following 17 years stack up to those we've already discussed on Map of Shaolin. There have been some real popular releases subsequently (Ghostface's Supreme Clientele and Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. 2 chief among them), but too many listeners checked out after Forever. It's actually one of the reasons I stated this blog - to keep the talk going about post-Forever releases - but this is an important anchor point for the storied career of Wu-Tang Clan. Swapping one tour for another in support of this album, the group essentially stopped operating under RZA's command to pursue their solo careers, although they continue to guest on one another's albums and have put out three more group albums (with two more on the way) as of this writing. Listening to Wu-Tang Forever gives us a great foreshadowing for the careers to follow. For example, as I mentioned, Deck's "The City" is reminiscent of his first two albums (Uncontrolled Substance and The Movement); the production sound here comes back throughout Wu-Tang Shaolin Style; ODB's occasional contributions would continue throughout his lack of appearance on Wu-Tang's The W and Iron Flag; and so on. This splintering of the Clan that started after Wu-Tang Forever is most apparent on their later, worst-received solo efforts, as well: Raekwon's Immobilarity, U-God's Mr. Xcitement and Method Man's Tical 0. No disrespect - all these albums have their qualities - but the public didn't latch on the way they did the "first phase" of the Wu. Stay tuned for thorough looks at all those and more as the Map of Shaolin continues.
Recommended Tracks: "Triumph," "Impossible," "It's Yourz," "The City."
Next Week: Method Man's bizarre apocalyptic concept album Tical 2000: Judgment Day.
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