Debut album by Brooklyn rapper Lamont "U-God" Hawkins, eighth official member of the Wu-Tang Clan. Production is handled by RZA, True Master, Inspectah Deck, Wu-affiliate John the Baptist, Homicide, Bink, Hak da Navigator and Omonte "O" Ward. Guests are Wu-Tang members Inspectah Deck, Method Man and Raekwon, and affiliates Hell Razah of Sunz of Man and Leatha Face.
The record opens with a skit in which U-God does an overbeat freestyle with an inflection reminiscent of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive", but he doesn't seem to have the personality to spit out something memorable. True Master realizes the rhythm of "Turbolence": honest boom bap, good tight tough drum, discrete samples, three Golden Arms stanzas with a flow difficult to appreciate, fragmented, slow, boring, forgettable. Among the few merits of the song, there's that of not having hooks, good thing. Track number three is "Glide": heavy dry drum, decent sample with distant female melodic soul extract in the background. On this production of Inspectah Deck, U-God seems to have regained energy, followed by a verse by his friend Leatha Face, who spits with a messy flow with more energy than the main rapper. The cut would have been solid enough at two and a half minutes, but U-God decides to take it beyond six minutes, handing over two more stanzas, leaving one to his friend and reserving the hook only for the end. Indeed, the song ends before three minutes, but for the next three minutes, the two future members of The Hillside Scramblers spit out random phrases, let the rhythm breathe, and close the song with a skit.
True Master produces "Dat's Gangsta", three verses for U-God: simple boom bap, decent loop, regular dry drum, slow, monotone, meager rapper's delivery. Like the previous one, it would be a perfect song at two minutes, maybe less, but Lucky Hands decides to perform it beyond four minutes, exaggerating. "Soul Dazzle" features a beat produced by Homicide: ah, that's not bad. Boom bap average, decent loop, decent skinny drum, decent verse from Baby Huey, who then sings a hook that's almost as long as his previous verse and closes the tune with a simple second verse. Bink provides the sample of Marvin Gaye's "Far Cry" to build the beat of "Bizarre": boom bap, rough tight dry drum, good sample, decent, monotonous, slow delivery of U-God, offering three too long and forgettable stanzas and hooks, before the final kung-fu movie skit.
The album takes a sharp turn in "Rumble" when Leatha Face, Rebel INS and Method Man show up under the production of True Master: boom bap that finally breathes the Wu-sound, dirty dusty quick dry drum, sad and gloomy piano sample, compelling True Master loop that puts on the table one of the best rhythms of the edition. U-God knows that he's about to be buried by the other members of the Wu-Tang Clan, he has practically always been like this since before the start of his career. So, he decides to wake up, finds energy, personality and a rough and decent flow in his opening verse. He performs a ridiculous chorus, easily more acceptable than all the others, then there's Leatha Face's second verse, hardcore and energetic delivery, but metrically uncoordinated and disordered, at first too early on time, at the end too late. The verses of Rollie Fingers and Johnny Blaze aren't among the best of their lives, but they deliver them much better than the previous two performers and help create one of the best joints on the album, and consequently, of U-God career. They are both effortlessly flowing and prove to have a far superior "lyrical miracle spiritual" game to anything Golden Arms has demonstrated so far.
Baby U has to work overtime on "Pleasure or Pain", where Hak da Navigator places the best beat on the album, probably: the wind anticipates the rhythm, lean, tight, hard, dry drum machine, soft-psychedelic sample, the rapper performs an extra-verse, thinking that it may be enough to limit the guest. The host, unfortunately for U-God, is Hell Razah, which is one of the best Wu Killa Beez that history has ever delivered. The Sunz of Man rapper has the best attack to date in the record, and brings out socio-conscious bars with hardcore, energetic, and velvet delivery. Between lyrics and performance, it's the best spot on the record, it's beautiful: his flow is clear, smoothness, dope, he has an excellent technical cleanliness and he's metrically impeccable, fantastic. Then U-Godzilla returns, with a second extra-verse, without energy, but he doesn't interest me anymore, for me the track is already over.
RZA produces decent rhythm for the ninth choice, decent snare drum, discrete loop, Baby U spits uninspired, raw, spoken word for four minutes. "Shell Shock" is the latest Wu-posse track: Hak da Navigator's good boom bap, hard dusty dry drum, discrete sample, hardcore, energetic, decent delivery by Leatha Face. It follows Four-Bar Killer, he anticipates the other guests and regains energy, nevertheless, he shows his limits in the flow as he tries to go faster than usual, struggling to find smoothness and coming out with a slow and monotonous rap style. Leatha Face helps him, placing a hook so long that you forget how much the lead rapper struggled to get to a decent level of smoothness right before Wu-Tang Clan's latest MC, Raekwon, mastered at this: Lou Diamonds provides the best flow of the album and drops an effortlessly smooth, crisp, clean, dope delivery. Hell Razah attacks immediately and ends the song, before Leatha Face's final hook: the MC of Sunz of Man's attack is worthy of the best Wu-Tang albums, then he delivers with a smooth, crisp, magnificent flow.
The piece number eleven is one of the worst of the edition: Clan-affiliated beatmaker John the Baptist doesn't get the correct sample right here, his drum is too heavy and thin, and the rhythm is weak and annoying. U-Godzilla doesn't care and he drops three stanzas and a weak hook, dragging this beat for nearly four minutes. "Hungry" highlights a profound lack of inspiration by the MC of Brooklyn: Omonte "O" Ward achieves an almost decent rhythm, heavy hard dry drum machine with honest and good samples, but U-God performs a very long spoken-sung hook, a single verse with poor flow and still the chorus. For all the time, he's pretty weak, soft-core, this kind of song isn't what you expect from an official Wu-Tang album. Not even in a mixtape. "Turbo Charge" boasts a promising beat from RZA, it looks like a waste from Raekwon's debut: boom bap, perfect dirty and dusty drum, good samples with semi-mafia vibes, great rhythm, among the best made by The Abbot in this period.
Unfortunately, Golden Arms has no idea where he's and what he's wasting and he doesn't know how to best interpret this rhythm: he randomly spits out random bars for three minutes and places an annoying and embarrassing and exhausting hook, how long does it last? The fact that Lucky Hands decides to kick more hooks than stanzas isn't a good sign and it's a shame that he wasted one of the last good Bobby Digital beats of the nineties. John the Baptist wasn't the best producer in the Wu-Tang Clan stable and, sadly, this LP confirms it. Twice. The second is more evident than the first: boom bap that clashes in all its mediocrity, almost decent drum midtempo, completely annoying sample that ruins everything. Well, ruin what little U-God offers, most of the time he's singing the hook. Leatha Face isn't saying anything but, at least, he spits with energy, then U-Godzilla returns in one of the his less successful tracks. Homicide is the beatmaker responsible for the last rhythm: the drum hits hard, there's no other way to put it, it's heavy, tough, rough, the samples are almost good, so the musical carpet works. Golden Arms delivers three extra-verses and a poor hook, dragging the piece past five minutes and taking away what little replay value it could have.
U-God is the eighth and penultimate official Wu-Tang member to get his solo debut: his LP comes out two weeks after Inspectah Deck debut, during the second wave of Wu-Tang Clan releases and five years later his debut in "36 Chambers". By the time the album comes out, RZA is practically withdrawn from the game and decides to limit its contribution on this record. Most of the production is made by individuals linked to the supergroup, however, the overall soundscape doesn't breathe the typical mood of a Clan album: Bobby Steels and True Master provide three rhythms each, the disc also features two beats designed by Inspectah Deck, two by the affiliate John the Baptist, two by Homicide and Hak da Navigator, one each by Bink and Omonte "O" Ward. The contribution of «Wu-Elements» is quite good, RZA is in charge of providing the beats for some solo songs of the Brooklyn rapper and offers potentially excellent production in "Turbo Charge", while True Master is dedicated to "Turbolence", including the most appreciated by fans, "Dat's Gangsta" and "Rumble", which for the mere presence of two out of three guests of the Wu-Tang, is among the highlights of the edition.
Also, the «Wu-Element» creates one of the best rhythms on the record on that track. Among the more positive producers, Bink draws a better contribution than usual in "Bizarre" and Hak da Navigator surprises positively with a couple of guessed productions for "Pleasure or Pain" and "Shell Shock", where the guests give value to the pieces. The other guys behind the keyboards disappoint: John the Baptist invents two forgettable and shoddy rhythms for "Lay Down" and "Knockin 'at Your Door", two pieces that seem much longer than they actually are and DJ Homicide (also credited like Homocide) doesn't look as weak here as it will prove to be in the future, but it's definitely not memorable. This guy, friend of U-God and member of the Hillside Scramblers, is noteworthy among Wu-Tang fans for being responsible for some of the worst beats ever performed on an official Wu album, with his contribution to U-God's sophomore jinx "Mr. Xcitement" (2005).
As for U-God's lyricism, it can't really be said that there's a lyrical contribution here, I mean, to say that most of the content he releases is abstract, seems like a great compliment to me. He focuses most of the bars on battle rap and braggadocio and on a continuous "lyrical miracle spiritual" pun that almost comes to annoyance and in which he proves not to be particularly capable and strong, because when Inspectah Deck and Method Man arrive, after about twenty-five minutes of Lucky Hands having fun doing this, they kill him on his battlefield. The choice of delivery is one of the many questionable points in this debut: the eighth member of the Wu-Tang Clan has always been one of the most insulted, underestimated and ignored within the supergroup. In this, he's second only to Cappadonna, maybe. With this project, he can prove how much his detractors are wrong, however, the end result seems to agree with his detractors.
U-God features a slow, weak and bland flow, with no energy or personality, he attempts to execute a sophisticated and personal style of rap, but he can't do it in this listening hour, preferring also spoken-word delivery or sung hooks that sound ridiculous over a more hardcore rap, which would also be typical and ideal on a Shaolin album. Even in his best moments and when he pulls out his most successful bars, he always spits them out with such a weak style as to make them practically immediately forgettable, often not helped by a discontinuous and boring production. Golden Arms is one of the less technical performers in the Wu-Tang and here he shows several limits, struggling sensationally when he tries to accelerate and failing to keep up with the guests in all songs. Leatha Face is the only exception: Lamont Hawkins' friend makes his debut in the rap game with an acceptable contribution, metrically light-hearted, incomplete and not very attentive, compensating with an adequate hunger to arrive and energy, and also boasting four appearances that allow him to be the main guest of the edition.
One of the main weaknesses of the album is the absence of Wu: there's great space, too much space, for U-God's solo songs (10 out of 15), and few guests, few from the supergroup. Inspectah Deck & Method Man lift "Rumble", while Raekwon gives his best in "Shell Shock", making it one of the few really strong moments of the edition. Both songs are at the level of the best of the supergroup, maybe a step below wanting to be picky, in any case, they're that good. Hell Razah deserves a separate section: Leatha Face immediately demonstrates more energy than the lead rapper, the other Wu performers easily outgrow him, but Hell Razah disintegrates U-God in his two appearances. The Sunz of Man's MC outclasses and obscures him in "Pleasure or Pain", where Golden Arms spits things out most of the time, while the Killa Bee destroys the cut with a tidy sixteen, and a few minutes later, he kills "Shell Shock", making full use of Raekwon's wake and proving he could have been an interesting feature in one of the collective's many mid-nineties classic albums. By a wide margin, Hell Razah is the album's MVP.
Distributed by Priority and Wu-Tang Records, the LP ends up in the top 15 of the rap chart, in the top 60 of pop records and produces a single that climbs Hot Rap to the top ten, however, it's completely ignored by critics. Made up of 15 songs and 63 minutes of listening, on the whole, the album isn't too bad, but not a classic in the Wu discography and not an essential listening. It's U-God finest album, Wu-Tang fans will surely find something interesting.
Highlights: "Rumble", "Pleasure or Pain", "Shell Shock", the beat of "Turbo Charge".
Rating: 7/10.
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