With a debut album as game-changing and singular as
36 Chambers, it was obvious that anything else the Clan would put out wouldn't approach that one in quality and historical importance, and the relative success of this one is more a function of how great
that album was than this one; because of all their followup records, this is the one that hews closest to the style of the debut. The star here, as always, is the RZA's beats, which are like nobody else's: thin, creepy and distorted. RZA's at his best when he sticks to what he's good at, which is frightening little horror-raps like "Hollow Bones"; when he tries to expand the palette, as on stuff like "I Can't Go to Sleep", the results are pretty embarrassing. But he sticks to the former more than the latter, and in its sheer atmospheric and cinematic brilliance, this still puts most hip-hop to shame. RZA actually constructs
worlds with these songs, rap tracks you can
live in, and at its best this album is less a generic rap record than a kind of book-on-tape to set off dark and violent images in your own mind. If this album had a look it would be black and white, grainy and high-contrast: everything is leached out, enervated. Tonally it sits on the opposite side of Kanye West, because where West's work is candy-colored and huge, the Wu-Tang work in minimalism, darkness, the night, cigarette smoke and bullets. It's a very evocative record and while about a fourth of it is embarrassing experiments, the best stuff is about as good as hip-hop music gets.
MY RATING:
8.4
Wu-Tang Clan - "Hollow Bones"
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