On Tuesday, Soul Temple Records will be releasing Twelve Reasons to Die, the new
collaborative album by Ghostface Killah and producer/multi-instrumentalist Adrian
Younge.[1]
The record’s been streaming for nearly a week now, and it’s great. It’s
definitely the best Ghostface album since Fishscale,
and I’m tempted to go back even further and place it third behind only Supreme Clientele and Ironman. I’ll be putting up a review of
the record later this week, but in the meantime, I thought I’d look back at the
Wu-Tang Clan’s previous endeavors with bands and live instrumentation.
When the Clan first came on the scene in 1993, RZA’s warped
sample-based beats were a big part of their appeal. The dust and grit of old
records was a palpable part of their grimy sound. Throughout the initial run of
Wu-Tang solo albums, RZA gradually refined this sound, culminating in the
cinematic Only Built 4 Cuban Linx and
Liquid Swords and the soulful Ironman. When it came time for the Clan
to reform like Voltron for their second group album in 1997, RZA had begun
moving away from this strictly sample-based sound. Most of the album’s
twenty-seven songs have samples, but quite a few of them are spiced with
keyboards. Notably, “Reunited,” the first song on the album (after the extended
opening skit that is “Wu-Revolution”) is built almost entirely from some
incredible live violin.
