Album: Every Hero Needs a Villain
Producers: 7L and Todd Spadafore
Release Date: June 16, 2015
Review: If this is your first time visiting this page, welcome! I don't rate albums, so don't expect to count stars or read a verdict based on arbitrary "__ out of 10" scores. Next, Map of Shaolin is a weekly Wu-Tang retrospective, so over the last year I've been catching up from 1993 to 2015 covering one new album every Wu Wednesday in chronological release order - only breaking the timeline for new releases (e.g. 36 Seasons, Sour Soul and A Better Tomorrow). So here's an advance review of Tuesday's upcoming release Every Hero Needs a Villain by Czarface (Inspectah Deck, 7L and Esoteric).
As would be expected in the follow-up to 2013's debut release from this team, Every Hero Needs a Villain makes its mark with a distinctive late-'90s production style. Dramatic intros, turntables and a fusion of rock instruments and street hip-hop all appear, topped with comic book references and sweet guest spots. The copy that came to me in the mail is the deluxe edition of the CD, with a hardcover case binding a 70-page book. The book features a CD-sized comic book that includes a scene where the police show up and shoot at Czarface because they "have a long history of shooting the wrong guy" and are "trigger-happy, shoot-first-ask-later swine." Oh yeah. It goes there. Even better are the fake ads for ridiculous products like dinosaur eggs and x-ray eye patches. It's fresh from the pages of golden age Adult Swim and it's great to flip through and get into the retro comic book style of the album itself - which, you'll come to see with its near-constant references, is utterly steeped in geekdom and nerd culture.
After the intro "Don the Armor," things start off with a bang on "Czartacus." The fat roadhouse rock guitar is fuzzy along the lines of Jimi Hendrix or early White Stripes; Inspectah Deck and Esoteric bring the hype to open the album up. Deck's opening line is "Yo there go the speakers / I'm natural glowing, blowing sativa / Amazing display of art, unique as the Mona Lisa / Non-believers, they bitching like R&B divas." We don't get a breather with the next track, "Lumberjack Match," which has an even quicker and more intricate rock guitar line. Props to Deck for name-dropping Miami Dolphins defensive tackler Ndamukong Suh in his second verse ("Fear me coming like Ndamukong Suh / Bottom line I'm a problem for dudes").
Up next is "Nightcrawler" with an appearance by Method Man. The vocal sample used throughout (sorry I don't have the source handy) makes it as Wu-Tang-sounding as the album's been so far, but not by much. But that's not a complaint; Deck references the Wu several times on Every Hero Needs a Villain but it's clear this is an independent endeavor. Also, Esoteric shines for the first time here (in my opinion). He spits some really tight braggadocio lines in his verse like "Tight kicks, flow holy water like Christ spit / Ice pick, swing that motherfucker like a nightstick." Ticallion Stallion brings it with his verse, and this is the first we've heard him since he dominated Wu-Tang's latest album A Better Tomorrow. It's not as brilliant a verse from Meth as some of his off that album ("Keep Watch" and "A Better Tomorrow" come to mind)...but he bounces off the beat like a fucking rubber ball. It's a thing of beauty, and you need to hear it.
"World Premier" feels darker and more like the "hardcore" side of rap than the rest of the album so far - and that's a good thing because it shows that the album varies and doesn't depend solely on its main (albeit brilliant) go-to sound. "The Great (Czar Guitar)" brings things back to normal, even though the guitar is vicious and great and simple in that 1990s sense, and Esoteric brings a great comics reference with "It's Czarface, back to attack your heart again / Destroy your ass like Drax from The Guardians" (obviously Guardians of the Galaxy).
Then comes "Red Alert" where Esoteric drops another sweet Marvel reference with "Drunk off that Jameson / On my J. Jonah, and I'm out," but not before a hilarious metaphor with "It's that high-end shit, I'm on another level / Like I'm in Macy's and can't find the men's shit." Much respect to Juju for sticking with one rhyme his whole verse on "Junkyard Dogs" ("Look at you, can't even hold that Hennessy / Never gonna like you, we don't have chemistry / Old No. 7, only throw back Tennessee / Ain't tryin' to feel you and I don't have empathy" etc). Another great reference comes from Esoteric who calls out The Silence of the Lambs' secondary villain with "Nurture beats like Buffalo Bill, it puts the lotion on the track," which helps to save this verse which is more all over the place than usual.
Now, I have to pause and pay respect to Inspectah Deck here on "Junkyard Dogs." Deck gambles big to cement the nerdy side of the album with lines like "Wordplay wizard, my mic is Harry Potter's wand / Czarface nominated at the comic con," and it pays off. In The Wu-Tang Manual, RZA devotes a whole section to comic books and hip-hop, since Ghostface Killah uses Ironman/Tony Starks as one of his alter egos (a riff on Iron Man / Tony Stark) and Method Man is also known as Johnny Blaze, aka Ghost Rider. If the conceptual nature of Czarface, their artwork (see above), the included comic and Esoteric's Marvel references haven't tipped you off, Deck goes all in on fanboy culture with the nod to Harry Potter and comic conventions. It may be his ballsiest move on the record, even if the verse ends a little loosely.
7L's rock-n-roll overdrive guitar comes back strong on "Sgt. Slaughter." The drums play a military-style snare-heavy beat that's a bit on the nose for me, but it's saved by INS's strong lyrics: "Call the coroner for this immortal orator / Drop game like Doc Strange, sort of a sorcerer / No slumber, pullin' odd jobs for odder numbers / Dart runner, lay my hammer like the god of thunder." Deck has always been one to repeat vowel and consonant sounds to build strength in a rap. Just look at the soft O's and long E's in "Triumph" - "I bomb atomically / Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses..." It works pretty well here too, but he blows himself out of the water when he drops his next verse, on "When Gods Go Mad." There, Deck sounds as young and live as he did on The Movement, which is my favorite Inspectah Deck album (and the one I asked him to sign when I saw him live last year and he warned us to look out for this record). Some of his lines on "When Gods Go Mad" need repeat listening to digest, like "Of course ready steady, winning the feeling / The rain heavy confetti, bet he toastin' up Pepsi and Henny / Plenty before him had bored him / But all that saw him had soared him." GZA guest stars on this track, once again dropping teasers for his upcoming record Dark Matter. He did this on "Ruckus in B Minor" on A Better Tomorrow with his opening rhyme ("Forms circles like the rings of Saturn / Dust, rocks and ice in a particular pattern"), and here he spends some time on the earth's interior:
"The lowest and hottest places on Earth
Large pools of sulfuric acid mark the turf
Giant land masses that pull away
A crack in the crust, no trust, and the killers are willing to pay
Eruptions for years in lakes of lava
Huge dome of rock on the block that's from the plaza."
And it's working great. If GZA's testing the waters to see how the public will react to his science bent, I have some feedback: Dear GZA - Drop this album on us! We get it, we want it, we need it!
DOOM appears on "Ka-Bang!" but as good as it is to hear him, the beat is the star of this show. It's all weird percussion for half of each verse - obvious drum machine kick-and-snare, occasional random cymbals - and an eight-note cheap keyboard teetering on the left channel like Frankenstein walking. There are also scattered samples of distorted vocals and strings, and it makes for a comically eerie sound that damn near distracts from these three emcees shining (DOOM, Deck and Esoteric). The track ends with a clip from an old X-Men show (fitting since Esoteric references Scott Summers aka Cyclops in his last line), presumably backed by the music that DOOM sampled for "Beef Rapp" in 2004. "Deadly Class" uses oodles of Ennio Morricone-sounding guitar and serious monotone trumpet along with more drum machine and what sounds like an upright or acoustic bass being played slap, although big skratching returns too. The result is similar to Ghostface's 12 Reasons to Die.
Getting down to the end of the album, "Escape from Czarkham Asylum" is an eight-minute opus with plenty of bass and big drums to fill up the track. But be warned - this is a weird-ass number. If you decide you like it, it probably won't be on the first listen. It's pretty standard fare for its first three minutes, but then it basically switches up to a completely different song every minute or so after that. Each beat nearly/barely resembles the first, but the change-ups are so sudden and frequent that it's easy to get thrown off. The closest thing to compare it to is Smashing Pumpkins' 23-minute "Pastichio Medley," which was a random collection of 5- to 10-second clips of dozens and dozens of demos that SP never put on albums. It's a little off-putting at first listen (complete with a sample of a kid saying "Czarface - fast like car chase" and '80s industrial synths near the end), but it doesn't ruin the album.
"Sinister" brings a guitar loop and cleverly buried piano with singular notes straight from a suspense movie. Lending to the horror influence is Esoteric's first verse with lines like "Catch bodies like possessed Rotties off the leash / Less shotties more zombies 'cuz I wanna feast / And if I ain't being fed I'm seeing red I'm Evil Dead / People bled, I am Sam Raimi don't you be misled." It's the most clearly horror-esque vibe I've caught from any Wu-related track since Method and Red's "Cereal Killer." The last track is "Good Villains Go Last" with R.A. the Rugged Man. The four-on-the-floor crash cymbals let you know Czarface is ready to go out big. It's pretty wise they let R.A. go last on the track, because he slays his verse as always and his style flows best with the beat. Deck and Esoteric hold their own, but for my money R.A. ekes them out for the strongest verse on the song.
Bottom line? Cop this album from Get On Down if you're ready for popping rhymes from all emcees involved, a unique sound that blends '90s rap with other retro genres, a near-constant trip to geek pop culture territory (comics, horror movies and science) and a clear sequel to the original Czarface. Deck has regained the energy on these Czarface projects that he seemed to have lost on Manifesto, Esoteric stands out more to me here than he did the last go-around and 7L's production has enough to it that you'll find yourself splitting your listens between focusing on music and focusing on lyrics. It's a cool, weird monster that looks like an evil lovechild of Adrian Younge, Jack White, Rage Against the Machine and Cypress Hill. The only reason not to pick this up is if you're only looking for an album from Inspectah Deck that sounds like Uncontrolled Substance or The Movement.
Please check out the rest of the blog at MapofShaolin.blogspot.com - we're currently up to 2011's Legendary Weapons. Or, if you're into comics and superheroes as the boys in Czarface, pick up my book Penny Cavalier from Amazon. It's an investigative journalism project about real-life superheroes - actual masked vigilantes that roam the streets. It reads like a cross between Apocalypse Now and Kick-Ass. Also, like our company A Carrier of Fire on Facebook. Otherwise? Until next Wu Wednesday, keep it real!
No comments:
Post a Comment