Wu-Tang Clan - 8 Diagrams
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Wu-Tang Clan - 8 Diagrams
(Tuesday February 5, 2008 3:39 PM
)
Released on 04/02/08
Label: Bodog Music
They don't make life easy for themselves. Seven years after their last LP, the eight surviving members of the Wu-Tang Clan finally reconvene - only to go out of their way to ruin it. The story is by now familiar: group take umbrage at producer/leader Rza's work, Raekwon disses him and the album on YouTube, sales are poor, US gigs feature no songs from the new album, and Rza doesn't turn up. It's so typically Wu - woolly-headed, crackpot, self-destructive, but the kind of heart-on-sleeve soap operatics that have kept their fans loyal through the lean years of crappy side-projects and chaotic gigs. The supreme irony, of course, is that it's all so unnecessary. Here, Rza deftly melds his ever-deepening understanding of composition and songcraft with the traditional Wu-Tang sonic fug of martial arts movie samples, jagged string stabs and rattling, pugilistic drum patterns, and the rappers all bring their best to the party. Rza rates Rae the best emcee in the world, and he proves why here; Method Man is stellar, a born lyrical leader seemingly in his element; a newly limber U-God improves on increasingly assertive and impressive turns on "Iron Flag" and "The W"; and Inspectah Deck, his verses chiselled out of 60-line freeform epics by Rza, the master editor, is better than he's ever been. The result is the best end-to-end Wu-Tang Clan album since their debut, 15 years ago. "Take It Back" finds Rae, Deck, Ghostface Killah and U-God trading lyrics over Bob James b-boy staple "Nautilus". "Get Them Out The Way Pa" sounds like Rza has been listening to "Dragnet"-period Fall, rumbling, as meandering bass is decorated with insistently delicate cymbal work and wind chimes, while a rudimentary lead guitar pirouettes around somewhere above the measured, seething verses. The Beatles-inspired "The Heart Gently Weeps" is better than widely billed, its real-life tales of drugs and death perhaps as honest and self-eviscerating as anything Rae, a splenetic Ghostface at his sublime best and Meth have ever done. Elsewhere, Rza namedrops J. R. R. Tolkien, Gza turns battle rap into a chess match, and everyone bar Ghost hymns the late ODB on the surprisingly moving "Life Changes". What happens next is far from clear. Much may depend on sales outside the US,...
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