I quite enjoyed the prospect of this album, until I read that it was going to be 'grimey'. After chuckling at the Wiley reference and wondering how the term 'grime' can mean two quite different things within the hip-hop genre, I started to worry. I don't have much experience with listening grimey sounding hip-hop, and this is for a very good reason. It's just not good. I'll admit, I'm a bit of a production whore on Hip-Hop, and often I find that albums with bad production stand out as unlistenable. The only artists I've ever really enjoyed with this sort of sound are Q-Unique and Ill Bill, but they have shit production because they are poor. Whats GZA's excuse?
After listening to the album once, I suspected my initial thoughts were correct. However its clear to me after a few more listens that the production isn't poorly done at all, and in fact sounds nothing like I expected to. While I see the similarities between the production on this and on other grimey albums, I think RZA has made it his goal here to provide mesmerising and hypnotic beats, and these beats allow the pure brilliance of GZA stand out. I don't know who gave him the name Genius, but it was certainly earned in this album. His lyrics are astounding and whilst I could pretty much pick lines from any song to show you and prove it, I'd rather leave it to you to listen for yourself. He writes magical metaphors and wonderful wordplay with astounding alliteration, and carries it off with fantastic flow.
GZA is clearly a very talented artist, yet I still find it strange it sold so unbelievably well, selling over a million in America and peaking at 9th in the Billboard 200. The album sounds, by todays standards, far too intelligent and underground to possibly have been a chart success. Perhaps in 10 years time people will say the same about Lil' Wayne, but I personally can't see it. Before this album I had listened to the solo efforts of ODB, Method Man, Raekwon and Ghostface, and with the exception of Raekwon's 'Only Built 4 Cuban Linx', they pale in comparison.
This has been an amazingly short review I now realise, but that is because I really can not pick out any stand out tracks to talk about in particular. Once the music takes you in, the delivery of GZA's wordplay and punchlines does the rest, and there is not a point in the album when his skills aren't evident. The many guest appearances also add a lot to the album, and in particular Inspectah Deck's verses on DOTIM and Cold War are fantastic.
However I have, as previously mentioned, always been partial to a decent bit of production to go along with a decent MC, and for that reason I can't rank this album along side my favourites from the genre. I will, however, grant it a very well deserved 90%.
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