Spray Cans Vol. 015: Shyheim - "On & On" b/w "The B Side (Bring the Drama)"

Shyheim - "On & On" b/w "The B Side (Bring the Drama)" (Virgin Records, 1993)

Yesterday Jeff Weiss put up a new entry in his always good weekly series Bizarre Ride over at LA Weekly. This week’s topic? “TeenageRappers Are Experiencing a Renaissance,” which is an argument that’s pretty difficult to refute given the success of Odd Future, Joey Bada$$ and Pro Era, and numerous others over the past few years. In the middle of the article, he stated that “in the wake of Kriss Kross, the early ‘90s yielded often-overlooked teenage talents like Illegal, Ahma, Shyheim and Da Youngstas. Even if their albums were often unmemorable, they dropped minor classic singles and rapped impressively.” He neglected to mention the Wascals, who were produced by J-Swift of Bizarre Ride to the Pharcyde fame. The quartet worked really hard to sound like a miniature Pharcyde, with intermittent success, and considering how Weiss feels about the Pharcyde (check the name of his column) it’s an odd omission.

He does however mention Shyheim, the youngest and one of the most overlooked of the Wu-Tang Clan’s original crop of Killa Bees. He got signed to Virgin Records and put out his debut single in 1993 at the age of fourteen. The subsequent album AKA the Rugged Child is a bit of a mixed bag, but that first single “On & On” is amazing.

Yoko Ono and the RZA Have a Baby

At a Yoko Ono concert back in 2010, the RZA joined her on stage to silently play chess for a few minutes and then perform a new song “Seed of Joy/Life is a Struggle.” It starts out well enough, with the band playing a beat that is kind of like a rockier version of the old Wu-Tang sound and RZA rapping from the perspective of a sperm. It’s better than it sounds. The lyrics actually sound like something that could have been on the second half of Birth of a Prince. Ono doesn’t distract too much with her howling during the verses, and she sounds great during the chorus.

Unfortunately, things go off the rails around the time that RZA, rapping from the perspective of a baby being born, dances in a way that a woman giving birth while standing up would and Ono uses her trademark wail to stand in for the woman in labor that RZA is rapping about. I actually laughed out loud when RZA started yelling “push!” repeatedly. And while RZA’s old yell flow from the Enter the Wu-Tang/6 Feet Deep days is sorely missed, it just kind of sounds forced when he’s using it as a dust-free 41 year old.

R.I.P. No Longer: Holograms at Rock the Bells

I’ll admit that when I first saw the 2Pac hologram from Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s Coachella performance last year, I thought it was amazing.[1] There had been rumors that there would be a Nate Dogg hologram, but what a hologram of a dead artist would entail was up for conjecture. That the Pac hologram looked eerily real—albeit with not exactly historically accurate abs—and that he said “Coachella” in a voice that sounded exactly like 2Pac, was pretty remarkable, and watching him perform “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” alongside Snoop was great. I thought it was a great tribute to 2Pac.

Yet by the fourth or fifth time I watched the video I started to feel gross. It wasn’t a blatant cash grab like most of his posthumous albums have been, but it wasn’t all that far off. I’m sure it increased sales of his back catalog, but it struck me as more of a publicity stunt than a heartfelt tribute. 2Pac was probably watching that hologram from Cuba and shaking his head.

Review: Inspectah Deck and 7L & Esoteric - Czarface

Let me address this before I do anything else. Yes, this album is called Czarface, and yes, that is a terrible, awful name. I’m willing to bet that Deck, Eso, and 7L thought this name sounded cool and no one in their respective circles felt like chiming in to tell them how dumb Czarface actually sounds.[1] Get past the name, however, and there’s a lot about this project that’s worth getting excited about. In spite of the diminishing quality of his solo albums since 1999’s Uncontrolled Substance, Inspectah Deck never fell off as a rapper.[2] Instead, Deck’s weaknesses are in the beat selection and album crafting departments. Deck’s ear for beats is often terrible and his albums have accordingly come out disjointed, repetitive, and generic. When he has an executive producer or someone else guiding the project, as he did on Uncontrolled Substance, he ends up with a much better collection of beats and a more satisfying album than he does otherwise. So in spite of Esoteric’s deficiencies as a rapper—one can only have so much patience for interchangeable verses about how good he is at rapping—Deck choosing to link up with 7L and Esoteric for an album was a shrewd choice. 7L is a very good but occasionally generic producer, and Esoteric is much better at putting together listenable and satisfying albums than Deck is. Deck and 7L & Esoteric balance out each other’s worst qualities.

Review: Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge - Twelve Reasons to Die

Since Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele dropped in 2000 and essentially closed the book on the Wu-Tang Clan’s near-unimpeachable nineties run, there have been only a handful of serious landmarks in the Wu-Tang catalog: Masta Killa’s No Said Date in 2004, Ghostface’s Fishscale in 2006, Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II in 2009.[1] With the latter, Raekwon knocked Ghostface out of the top spot in the Wu-Tang pantheon, and since then Ghostface has been spinning his wheels a bit, releasing the ill-advised but amazingly titled R&B project Ghostdini: Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City, the good but undercooked Apollo Kids, the tossed off Ghost/Rae/Meth collaboration Wu-Massacre, and the painfully generic Wu-Block with the LOX’s Sheek Louch. On Twelve Reasons to Die, Ghostface is reenergized and focused, and he sounds hungry again for the first time since Fishscale. Ghost has given the Clan their fourth landmark album of their second decade.

Spray Cans Vol. 010: Wu-Syndicate - "Bust a Slug"

 

Wu-Syndicate - "Bust a Slug" (Wu-Tang Records, 1999)

In my recent post on the Wu-Tang Clan and live instrumentation I wrote briefly about The Swarm, the first of three Wu-Tang Killa Bees compilations the illustrated the Wu brand’s diminishing returns in the late nineties and early 2000s.[1] There are some throwaways throughout The Swarm’s sixteen songs, but for the most part it’s a great introduction to many of the Killa Bees. Some of the artists who provided these highlights (The Beggaz, Ruthless Bastards) never got the chance to put out albums due to financial mismanagement at Wu-Tang Records, while others (Black Knights of the North Star, A.I.G.) never lived up to their potential on subsequent releases. None of the new artists featured on the record sounded like they could ever surpass the Clan, but a few of them carved out effective careers of their own, although some of these careers were extremely brief.

Wu-Syndicate fits this latter description exactly. The group self-released one single under the name Crhyme Syndicate in 1996, but it unsurprisingly didn’t get much attention.[2] Somehow, this 12” found its way into the hands of the RZA, who signed them to Wu-Tang Records in time to include the b-side “Where Wuz Heaven” on The Swarm. Produced by DJ Devastator, “Where Wuz Heaven” is a great slice of ghetto life story song with a plaintive guitar sample, a ghostly soul vocal sample on the chorus, and great rapping from Myalansky.[3] The group changed its name to Wu-Syndicate, presumably as a way of helping it get more attention by making its affiliation with the Clan more explicit.[4]

“Where Wuz Heaven” appeared two more times, first as the a-side on the first single credited to Wu-Syndicate and again as the seventh song on the group’s self-titled debut album, released on Wu-Tang Records in 1999. Wu-Syndicate is a good artifact of nineties New York street rap, but the group struggles in a few respects. First and most importantly, the group never fully transcends its direct influences. DJ Devastator, who handles most of the album’s production,[5] is so indebted to RZA and Havoc that his beats lack personality on many of the tracks, even when his production is quite good. Myalansky, Joe Mafia, and Napoleon (who isn’t listed on the album cover but is part of the group) are all good MCs, but like most of the second-string Killa Bees they don’t quite have the personality or distinct enough personalities to anchor a whole album. As a result, the album’s eighteen songs blend together after a while. When a Wu-Syndicate song pops up on shuffle, I almost never skip it, but when I put on the whole album it’s far too easy to tune it out. The second half of the album suffers more than the first by default, since Wu-Syndicate fatigue isn’t really a problem until after “Where Wuz Heaven” passes around the album’s midpoint. Still, there’s one extremely bright spot near the end of the album that demands attention even if you’ve lost interest in what Wu-Syndicate is serving up: “Bust a Slug,” the album’s second single.

Masta Killa and "Glaciers of Ice"

I was just listening to this song a bunch earlier today and I’m struck by two things that make this one of the best tracks on Raekwon’s nearly perfect Only Built 4 Cuban Lunx. First, it took some serious audacity for RZA to flip the same sample twice on the same album, but he did just that with the rugged strings that drive “Guillotine (Swordz)” and underpin this song. Second, Masta Killa was unstoppable from his first verse on “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” through everything he did on Wu-Tang Forever, and this song is no exception. He was unstoppable enough that he could show up between Raekwon and Ghostface in their primes on a song and still be the illest by a wide margin. Inspectah Deck and U-God were similarly astounding during this five year period, and it’s a shame that all three didn’t get RZA-produced solo albums during the five-year plan. A Masta Killa album in 1996 would have undoubtedly been a classic since RZA didn’t make a bad beat during this era and Masta Killa was capable of verses like this. It probably would’ve even surpassed No Said Date.

Cappadonna, the Fading Dart Specialist

After Wu-Tang Clan’s second album Wu-Tang Forever marked the end of the RZA’s five-year plan, the generals dispersed to focus on their own projects. RZA, freed from the responsibility of overseeing every Wu-Tang solo album, turned his attention to an odd but worthwhile solo project, Bobby Digital in Stereo, and to expanding the Wu-Tang empire. RZA’s two record labels, Wu-Tang Records (distributed by Priority/EMI) and Razor Sharp Records (distributed by Epic) began putting out records by members of the Wu-Tang b-team, the Killa Bees.[1] Great albums by affiliates like Killarmy, Sunz of Man, and Shyheim are minor classics of the post-Forever period, but no Killa Bee album[2] was better than Cappadonna’s 1998 debut The Pillage.[3]

Cappadonna was on a hot streak leading up to The Pillage, with incredible verses on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… and Ironman (including the best verse he’s ever spit, on “Winter Warz”), and aside from a few bum tracks The Pillage lived up to his early promise. The album’s first track[4] “Slang Editorial” introduced fans to Cappadonna the solo artist. Wu-Element producer True Master’s O.V. Wright sampling beat lurches uneasily with the horn sample frequently cutting off abruptly, a perfect fit for Cappadonna’s occasionally (but endearingly) awkward flow and claims that his and the rest of the Clan’s lyrics would set black people free.[5]

The Pillage went Gold and marked the end of Cappadonna’s rise. Having peaked early, the quality of his rapping grew wildly inconsistent, and his second solo album, 2001’s The Yin and the Yang, was terrible. A string of more bad solo records was interrupted by a brief and supposedly self-imposed period of homelessness and he all but disappeared from Clan-affiliated records. His time away seemed to improve his abilities, and he returned with great verses on 8 Diagrams, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II, and Apollo Kids, and the lackluster The Pilgrimage and Eyrth, Wynd, and Fyre albums haven’t done too much to dampen excitement among Wu-Tang stans for Cappa’s long-in-the-works sequel to The Pillage.

Unfortunately, “Slang Editorial Part 2,” the first song from The Pillage 2, is awful. DJ Intrigue’s beat features practically non-existent drums, an obnoxious and poorly chopped up vocal sample over the same horn sample used in the first “Slang Editorial,” and an amateurish and sloppy scratch hook. Lyrically, Cappadonna isn’t much more than a shell of his former self, but he shows brief flashes of the fire behind some of his recent guest verses. The song’s association with The Pillage and the original “Slang Editorial” ultimately highlights “Slang Editorial Part 2”’s faults in a way that wouldn’t have happened if this was just another average late period Cappadonna song.

Raekwon set the bar so high with his own sequel to his classic debut that any rapper trying to do the same has no choice but to rise to those standards.[6] I really hope The Pillage 2 turns out well. Cappa’s been working hard the past few years, and he deserves a win, but with “Slang Editorial Part 2” he isn’t doing anything to prove that he has it in him anymore.

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[1] U-God, apparently the only Clan member unable to get a record deal with a major label, also put out his debut solo album through Wu-Tang Records.

[2] With the possible exception of Killah Priest’s Heavy Mental.

[3] Cappadonna’s status as the tenth member of the Wu-Tang Clan has been all over the place over the last decade and a half, but at this time he was still being listed as a featured artist on Clan albums so I’m counting him as a Killa Bee.

[4] Also the first of two singles from the album.

[5] The video also notably featured Tony Sirico, best known for playing Paulie Walnuts on The Sopranos, in one of many “generic mafia guy” roles he’s played throughout his career.

[6] I’m looking at you Ghostface and GZA. Supreme Clientele 2 and Liquid Swords 2 better be mind-blowing if they ever come out.

Ghostface Killah & Adrian Younge - "The Rise of the Ghostface KIllah"

Ghostface never really fell off. Sure, Wizard of Poetry was a weird R&B debacle, and Apollo Kids had some good songs on it, but when you’re the guy who made Ironman and Supreme Clientele, some good songs isn’t nearly good enough. It’s hardly a coincidence that Ironman and Supreme Clientele, his two best records, are the only two Ghostface albums executive produced by RZA. While most of the Abbot’s beats haven’t exactly been helping his legacy over the last few years, his vision and ability to oversee an entire project hasn’t really diminished. That RZA is executive producing Ghostface’s new album Twelve Reasons to Die is just one of several reasons why it’s one of my most anticipated albums of the year. Two other reasons: First, the album is produced by Adrian Younge, the sonic architect behind the amazing soundtrack to Black Dynamite and his own Something About April album. Younge produced the Delfonics’ new album, their best since their self-titled album in 1970. The backing tracks on Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics sound like the kind of things that RZA would have sampled on the first round of Wu-Tang solo albums. Adriane Younge has become better at channeling the classic RZA sound than the RZA is these days, and he’s able to do it without sacrificing his own style in favor of rote imitation. Fittingly, the Delfonics appeared on “After the Smoke is Clear,” one of the best songs on Ironman, and will also be making an appearance on at least one song on Twelve Reasons to Die.

The other reason to be excited is “The Rise of the Ghostface Killah,” the first track released from the album. RZA delivers a great spoken intro, and the kung-fu soundtrack beat sounds it could have been an Ironman bonus track, while Ghost is spitting criminology raps and non-sequiturs with an urgency unseen since at least the Fishscale days. It sounds like Adrian Younge would probably have done a better job of scoring The Man with the Iron Fists than the RZA did. If the other Wu-Tang members that guest on this record sound this good, and Trife and Sheek Louch don’t show up to drag down any of the songs, we’ll have a Wu-Tang classic on our hands. Hopefully the other generals have Younge’s number in their rolodexes. 

Download "The Rise of Ghostface Killah" and pre-order Twelve Reasons to Die

Twelve Reasons to Die is out on April 16.