Album: Birth of a Prince
Release Date: October 7, 2003
Producers: RZA, Megahertz ("We Pop"), True Master ("Fast Cars"), Barracuda ("Chi Kung"), Bronze Nazareth ("A Day to God is 1,000 Years" and "The Birth")
Review: A RZA album, only half of which is produced by RZA. Lines like "All we wanna do is drink smoke and fuck" and rhymes about promiscuous women vomiting semen. The first appearance by Ol' Dirty Bastard - just on a hook - since "Conditioner" on The W three years prior. Typos on the tracklist and countless incorrect lyrics in the booklet, multiple songs missing lyrics entirely.
This is RZA's third album, Birth of a Prince, and it's a pretty tough pill to swallow. "Bob N' I" opens the album with a Bobby Digital freestyle, and any follower of RZA's career up to this point knows that Bobby seems to bring out his worst. "You superficial, nigga, buck and I'm a superhero / My super pistol will turn you into a super zero." "The Grunge" comes after, with an awesome uptempo blaxploitation beat for its first half then regressing into '80s hip-hop minimalism like "Bob N' I" did 90 seconds prior.
"We Pop" is the third song in under five minutes, and contains a verse rhyming "Jersey" with "Jersey" four times in a row, pairing "pills" with "pills" and "still" with "still." If Megahertz's beat weren't so damn addicting, I can't say I'd be a fan of this track. Thankfully it's followed by "Grits," a bittersweet remembrance of growing up poor in New York featuring Masta Killa in his first of three appearances on Birth. "Grits" is as sincere as Raekwon's "All I Got is You Pt. II" on Immobilarity - not my favorite album, but a song with striking emotion. "Grits" follows suit with sad imagery of poverty by RZA - "Four seeds to a bed, eight seeds to a room," where "seeds" means "kids" - and Masta Killa - "Young shorties in my hood started hustlin' / Packin' bags at the neighborhood Associate / Growin' up not as fortunate to have the fly shit / I'm too young, no jobs to hire me legit."
"Chi Kung" offers the most classic Wu beat on the album - but is produced by Barracuda. For every solid lyric in it - "The word of God always intervened with sin / From insight my inner light beams within" - there's an id-driven drawback - "Love, love, thugs, thugs, is in your club, club / Nigga pass the motherfuckin' drugs."
"You'll Never Know" has some great music and is a lyrical high-water mark so far, but that's not saying much. Is this really the same producer and emcee who brought us "Samurai Showdown" single-handedly? This same frustration permeates the rest of the album - the next and last notable song (in a positive context) is the beat on "Koto Chotan," experimenting further with picked electric guitar, but by the time it comes up, I've mostly checked out, especially while it suffers from rhymes like "A to Zigzag, you get smacked, thrown in the shitbag / Bust like the spermbag."
Birth of a Prince is as maddening an album as I've heard from the Clan (up to 2003, anyway). RZA is, as I repeatedly say, one of the best music producers on Earth. He's also an amazing rapper when he wants to be, as has been repeatedly evidenced on other albums. He uses magic and alchemy to brew delicious beats and he writes lyrics with an almost eerie religious and medical wisdom. That's why it's so confusing that Birth of a Prince is full of songs like "Drop Off," with is monotone beat and atrocious lyrics ("Music blastin', she orgasm like a singer / Sweet wet pussy all over my fingers / Now I'm sniffin' my hand").
Legacy: I could go on, but why bother? Birth of a Prince is RZA's third solo album during his time in the Wu, and easily his most troubled. Bobby Digital in Stereo was forgivable as a failed experiment with about five solid tracks on it; Digital Bullet was markedly better - if not exactly a classic. With Birth of a Prince, RZA seems to suffer an identity crisis: To Be Bobby Digital or Not to Be? There's enough player-centered, sex-seeking, drug-dealing violence to fuel two more Bobby Digital records and only a few sincere or Wu-sounding tracks, resulting in a 4:1 song ratio of losers to winners. Fortunately RZA brought it back for most of his non-solo work since this. Both Afro Samurai soundtracks - and The Man with the Iron Fists - sound phenomenal, and 8 Diagrams is a wildly different direction for Wu-Tang but admirable and respectable in most ways. Despite the haters decrying the Wu by now, it's worth noting that Birth of a Prince lies comfortably between the stellar The Movement (Inspectah Deck's sophomore album, discussed last week) and Raekwon's bounce-back album The Lex Diamond Story. Hang in there, readers; there are some serious highlights coming up.
Recommended Tracks: Grits, Chi Kung, You'll Never Know.
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