Album: Grandmasters
Release Date: October 25, 2005
Producer: DJ Muggs
Review: Take one of Wu-Tang's best lyricists and have him write 40 minutes of rhymes over music by Cypress Hill's DJ and producer. The result is Grandmasters.
There is a chance it could've failed - look at supergroups like Audioslave who added two great talents together and ended up with less than either had by themselves - but fortunately the album exceeds expectations on all fronts. DJ Muggs brings a lot of insightful beats and GZA spits solid rhymes throughout the record, as do his guest stars - Wu-Tang's Raekwon, RZA and Masta Killa as well as Cypress Hill's Sen Dog and Wu-affiliate Prodigal Sunn.
"Those That's 'Bout It" kicks the album off after a quick intro, and GZA sounds calm and at home over Muggs' beats with rhymes like "Enemies get cooked like eggs while they scramble / He lived but he still lost his legs as he gambled." RZA shouts a quick intro to open "Destruction of a Guard" before Raekwon operates the hooks and occasional hype lines. Muggs' quick vocal loops and piqued drums don't sound completely foreign to the emerging Wu sound of the time but still offer his personal flavor.
"Exploitation of Mistakes" offers a quaint and curious piano loop and typewriter sounds while GZA tells low-key, sweeping stories of New York life - "He said he knew a man who killed a pop star / And almost got caught by a passing cop car / The inmate said 'Probably the motive was robbery / And knowing this and keeping it a secret, it bothers me.'"
RZA comes alive on "Advance Pawns" by lighting off his verse with "I examine your diameter, third eye light the camera up / Be careful, I got four ninjas inside your parameter / Perimeter, flames burst out all sides like the Gamera / My poisonous is released, gas from the canister." Raekwon brings it too with a solid, slang-heavy verse ("When you see it, you better acknowledge, you're all swords / Blaze the green hundred fours").
Any longtime GZA fan would come to expect him to have at least one song namedropping a large collection of products to tell a story. On Liquid Swords, it was record labels on "Labels." On Beneath the Surface, GZA worked magazine names into "Publicity"'s lyrics, then on Legend of the Liquid Sword there were celebrities on "Fame" ("Alicia Keyed his car..." and "George Burns a cigar..." etc). On Grandmasters, GZA works NFL team names into a story about an actress with an abusive boyfriend. "She loved stuffed animals, especially the Bears / Was a role model, like the Cardinal to our peers / A Patriotic tomboy like Mary Ellen from the Waltons / A former lifeguard who had the skills of a Dolphin." As usual, it's a great concept that's executed pretty well. Sometimes it seems that the concept tries a bit too hard to make ends meet, but I'm never not impressed by GZA's namedrop/story mechanic.
"All in Together Now" is next, which ties in with the Ol' Dirty Bastard song of the same name from Nigga Please with its hook "All, all, all in together now / Kept the balance stay dressed for the weather now" etc. Also, since GZA, RZA and ODB were in a group called All In Together Now before starting Wu-Tang, it's no surprise that this is one of the first posthumous ODB tribute songs (besides the scratch/sample-heavy "ODB Tribute" from Think Differently last week). GZA credits Dirty as "He was intelligent, his style was relevant / I could name ten niggaz that stole an element."
Masta Killa and Prodigal Sunn appear on "Unstoppable Threats" and offer solid verses over Muggs' infectious bass-and-guitar-led beat. MK throws out tight couplets like "It's goin' down, wait for the sound, my soldiers rally 'round / Ninja men blending in with the surrounding."
The final three tracks on the album - "Unprotected Pieces," "Illusory Protection" and "Smothered Mate" - are quality hip-hop, just like the rest of the album. I hate glossing over them, but they're all equally enjoyable without having some of the standout elements of tracks like "Advance Pawns" or "Exploitation of Mistakes." I'm glad that this album is just an all-around great LP, but it makes it a bit tricky to discuss when I want to keep saying "Yeah, _______ is a solid track; check it out." So don't take my brevity here as a complaint; give this whole album a listen and love it like it deserves to be loved.
Legacy: After the lukewarm Beneath the Surface and the good-but-inexplicably-censored Legend of the Liquid Sword, it's good to hear GZA provide an airtight album like Grandmasters. By seeking production outside the Wu-Tang family, it helps his career seem a little less incestuous and more worldly. The album was well-received by critics and helped break what some believed to be a slump following GZA's two records that followed Liquid Swords. It still stands out today, almost another 10 years after its release, as a secondary or tertiary high-water mark in GZA's catalog. It also doesn't hurt that this is the first album of at least four or five in a row on the Map of Shaolin that is really kickass, which helps following the speedbumps of Mr. Xcitement and a couple other early-'00s hiccups.
Recommended Tracks: Exploitation of Mistakes, Advance Pawns, Unstoppable Threats.
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