Title: Blackout!
Release Date: September 28, 1999
Producers: Erick Sermon, Mathematics, RZA, etc.
Review: On their first full-length collaboration (following tracks like"How High" and "Big Dogs"), Method Man and Redman made it really easy for any reviewer to discuss Blackout! - it's just a damn solid album from start to finish. The beats thump and groove for its entire 71-minute run time (on the CD, which has three bonus tracks I'll discuss in a bit) and the rhymes never sound awkward or forced throughout. Some previous steps on the Map of Shaolin have taken a lot of careful verbiage to dissect - mainly Bobby Digital in Stereo and Nigga Please - because there are hits and misses, esoteric tracks and so on. Others, like Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, have ended up almost as essays because they'll have so many diverse and brilliant tracks it would be a crime not to mention and explain them all. Blackout! stays pretty congruent for the whole disc, but fortunately it's not so samey that it comes across as repetitive or boring - and there are some definite highlights that shake things up here and there.
Oddly enough, the only crime the album commits is that nobody raps over the beat on the first track, "A Special Joint (Intro)," which is one of the sickest on the album with its bass and slow drums - produced by Redman himself. Method and Red talk over it, but I'd have loved to hear a Method Man verse over it, considering his amazing flow. Luckily they kick the album off proper on the title track, "Blackout," giving props to The Fat Boys by interpreting lyrics from "Stick 'Em." Saul Williams did the same on his track "Black Stacey" many years later. Next, on "Mi Casa," Redman cleverly mixes metaphors with lines like "It's a cold world, better pack your own heat." Erick Sermon's phat beats continue with "Y.O.U." and "4 Seasons" - the latter features LL Cool J and Ja Rule. RZA offers a comically mischievous beat on "Cereal Killer" before one of the album's most lasting tracks, "Da Rockwilder" - which is also my ringtone.
Here, Method Man reminds us this may sound different but he hasn't forgotten Wu-Tang as he rhymes "Microphone checka, swingin' sword lecture / Closin' down the sector, supreme neck protector." Of course the Wu are famous for their martial arts lyrics and their first single was "Protect Ya Neck," so "swingin' sword lecture" and "supreme neck protector" work well as shout-outs. Redman shines on this track as well, with a nod to the hip-hop classic film Breakin' ("Suckers break like Turbo and Ozone," two characters from the film) introducing the most intricate rhymes on the album so far: "When I grab the broom, moonwalk platoon hawk my goons bark / Leave you in a blue lagoon, lost true." Red is using the scene in Breakin' where Turbo (who helped teach Michael Jackson to dance, hence the moonwalk reference) dances with a broom, then reinforcing the image of featuring in front of his crew before giving another film nod, this time to Blue Lagoon. The vocal patterns are killer too: broom, moon, platoon, goon, you, blue, lagoon and true all ring together, interspersed with walk, hawk, bark and lost. Two lines, 12 words that rhyme. Damn.
On the album's second half, "1, 2, 1, 2" offers some of Meth's best - and most "blink-and-you'll-miss-them" - couplets. The first is "From debutante down to stripper / I'm too nonchalant, a drink mixed with four kinds of liquors." The second is "You've just been fitted for them cement shoes / This is bottom of the lake raps, stab you in the back kung-fu." Next, "Maaad Crew" offers the other sickest beat on the album - this time courtesy of Erick Sermon. Four-on-the-floor drums and one-chord strummed '70s guitar support an all-over-the-neck funk bass that will never in a million years get old. It's a solid duet with plenty of back-and-forth between both emcees during the verses and chorus, but nothing tops that bass guitar.
Tical 2000 alumni Streetlife and fellow Wu-general Ghostface Killah guest amicably on "Run 4 Cover," produced by RZA. After so many densely-packed songs, you'd expect the album to wind down around "The ?" but there are a good six tracks after it (three on the proper album plus those three bonus tracks). I'd love to say it's too much, or that it's a bloated record, since things wind down a bit towards the end. But even with the extra previously-released songs ("Well All Rite Cha" from Redman's Doc's da Name 2000, "Big Dogs" from Tical 2000 and a remix of "How High"), Blackout! is reliable as Hell for all 19 songs. The bouncy update of Das EFX's "Mic Cheka" shows Meth in a much more quickfire style and "Fire Ina Hole" is an airtight closer.
Legacy: Blackout! was released just one week before both Inspectah Deck's debut Uncontrolled Substance and U-God's debut Golden Arms Redemption. It was certified platinum three months after its release and remains a staple in the Wu catalog, arguably the best solo release so far after Wu-Tang Forever. Much like Uncontrolled Substance (and Deck's sophomore release The Movement in 2003), Blackout! is just a tightly-packed hour of classic East Coast hip-hop. It's a high-water mark in Method Man's solo career, alongside the first Tical, and one of the best Wu releases of 1999. I've heard many fans boo-hoo Golden Arms Redemption and Raekwon's Immobilarity, both released later that year, but even if one dislikes both those albums, Blackout! is here to remind you that Wu-Tang has survived and will continue to do so.
Recommended Tracks: Blackout, Maaad Crew, Da Rockwilder.
Next Week: Inspectah Deck - Uncontrolled Substance. Technically, Golden Arms Redemption came out the same day, but I want to give them each their own step on the Map so I'm just going alphabetical by artist. See you next Wu-Wednesday!
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