RZA - The RZA Hits
MusicMash Rating: not rated yet
Pitchfork Media Rating: 6
While watching The Box recently, my roommate made a brilliant observation--
in music videos, R&B is in the future and rap is in the ghetto. TLC and R.
Kelly twist in monochrome chambers. Destiny's Child, swaddled with strips of
teal PVC, vogue and pivot in jerky bursts like Nintendo sprites. Meanwhile,
DMX pounces off chain-link fences and dangles foaming pitbulls from abandoned
tires, and Tear Da Club Up Thugs bounce in rail yards and public housing.
By this definition, the Wu-Tang Clan is the Siamese beast of R&B and rap.
Method Man's barks from a post-apocalyptic throne in "Judgment Day."
Inspectah Deck dodges nightvision snipers in crumbled alleys. RZA bursts
through brick walls, Kool-Aid style, under a buzzing cloud of robotic bees,
and transforms into sexaholic superheroes after a chug of green serum.
Essentially, Wu-Tang is the sound of futuristic city streets.
The glut of spin-off releases (does the world really need U-God, Raekwon
and Inspectah Deck solo albums?) makes you almost forget that
the Wu-Tang Clan shadows other contemporary rappers in talent. The Wu's
playful vocabulary, chock-a-block with martial arts, cuisine, film, video
game and comic book references, makes the monosyllabic barking of DMX and
Ja Rule sound like Down's Syndrome stuttering.
Wu-Tang's debut, Enter the 36 Chambers, weaved a dark, stark
soundscape of Japanese b-film scores, gothic piano loops, raw snares, and
stealth explosions of city din. It was the closest anyone had come to
Public Enemy's landmark It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,
and it slipped blindfolds over urban eyes, then ripped them off, leaving
listeners lost in a quiet Japanese garden, under cold rain and full moon,
surrounded by the sparkling of stars and kitanas. The only problem is,
Wu-Tang feels the need to incessantly point this out to you. The Steven
King-ization of Wu-Tang albums has diluted their revolution.
At last count, Wu-Tang has released 24 records... this year. The RZA
Hits is the second "Best of Wu" compilation to surface in just the last
couple months. The Earth's atmosphere has now been officially super-saturated
with Wu-Tang albums-- just one more Wu album will trigger the condensation
of the atmosphere into a plastic lattice of Wu. And on top of all the
sub-standard rap albums, there's even a Wu-Tang video game coming out.
Still, this record neatly condenses all the Wu's best into one tight package.
The album's title, of course, is an egotistical misnomer. RZA only has one
solo song on this collection, the ridiculous, thinly disguised advert,
"Wu Wear: The Garment Renaissance". Just as an aside, I must comment on
the utter ridiculousness of this song. For one thing, did Wu-Wear really
trigger a "Garment Renaissance"? Grey t-shirts, skull caps, and warm-ups
don't seem very Machiavellian. It's one thing to beat your chest and profess
that you changed hip-hop, but does RZA honestly believe that the Wu-Tang Clan
revolutionized...
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