Studio album number thirteen for Darryl Hill aka Cappadonna: with an impressive comeback, Wu-Tang Clan's Cinderella releases three albums in the span of ten months and establishes himself as the group's most prolific solo rapper, equaling Ghostface Killah, which remains the MC with more overall albums, with twenty discs including collaborative ones. Hill's contribution has been important so far: not from the qualitative point of view, he has in fact the poorest performance among the members of the supergroup and the worst discography of all, but from the point of view of historical heritage. With his two 2020 releases, Cappadonna has managed to continue the tradition of releasing at least one studio album a year by members of the Wu-Tang Clan, something that has been happening ever since the supergroup's founding in 1993. At the end of the first quarter of 2021, Cappadonna returns for yet another declaration that will fall on deaf ears. The guests on the album are Killah Priest, A-F-R-O, Crime Life and Amar Divine, main guest with four appearances.
"Mean Streets" is the first song on the tape. Skit, triumphal intro of strings, then it's too funny: there are at least half a dozen different animal noises, it seems to be in a zoo. Downtempo pounding drum machine, yet accessible, confident and slow delivery by Cappadonna, succeeded by Killah Priest, who dominates the beat with a rough flow. Cappa goes back to the third verse and closes the piece in what appears to be one of the rare accessible songs in his life. The arrival of "Grip the Mic" makes you realize that clearly something is wrong: there's another accessible and decent rhythm. It doesn't look like the typical production of the rapper's records: simple boom bap, midtempo dry drum, good samples. The rapper delivers slow and hardcore, he hasn't been so focused for at least ten years, finally, he seems to have found a competent beatmaker. There's also Amar Divine in the song, but his contribution is short and doesn't affect.
The same Amar Divine remains for "Concrete Jungle", the production immediately gives me immediate Griselda vibes, who made the rhythm copied from there or clearly paid homage: there's another simple musical carpet, boom bap jazzy uptempo and slow pounding drum, with a sample that seems to be made up of pendants. Pendants, yeh. They sound like Westside Gunn's in one of his songs: I went looking for the cut I'm referring to and it's "Big Basha's" from the Westside Gunn album "Who Made the Sunshine". Cappadonna even does the same adlibs as the Buffalo rapper, it's something sensational. I don't think there will be anyone else crazy enough to go and listen to this thing, so I'm going to tell you that it's a spectacular tribute from Cappadonna: you certainly don't expect him to go spitting out random bars on a Griselda beat. Obviously, the sound changes: while Gunn has a practically melodic drum and spits with a velvety flow, Cappa has a hard and tough drum and spits with a raw style.
The fourth piece coincides with the first solo choice: heavy, pounding dry drum and lively samples make up the rhythm, Don Cappachino delivers hardcore and confident, performing a simplistic hook. The title track has a decent rhythm, with a tight drum and an honest sample: Cappadonna offers generic bars with a syncopated style, then comes A-F-R-O and it's obviously another thing, he eats the beat with his unattainable flow. Wu-Tang's MC continues to suffer in his solo excerpts, not like his previous albums, but he's still not completely confident in his own means: the next two cuts are less successful than the others, the string loop in "Life on Welfare" is too tight and is joined by a cheap drum. Killah Priest animates "Cancel Culture", flowing with a calm and sublime style on an honest jazzy production, with good samples and a hard, slow, pounding drum machine; Cappadonna and Amar Divine have a slower and more cumbersome flow, similar to each other.
"You Can't Defeat Me" is another strangely solid production: jazzy boom bap, slow pounding and hard drum, elegant piano sample in the background on which the rapper spits slow and hardcore bars. He maintains a similar style in the following song, on a beat that's somehow good, and probably shouldn't be: the drum is slow and poor, there's a glossy sample and deep keys of synthesized electronic keyboard in the background, normally they should sound bad and annoying, but here they don't. Instead, they offer relaxed vibes close to mobb music. It would be an almost good joint, if it weren't for the auto-tuned singing hook. At ten choices and half an hour of listening, it would have been the ideal LP for Cappadonna and clearly one of his best in his career, however, he decides to lengthen the tape with four more tracks: production and tape quality drop both. "Walk with Me" has a cheap, slow and tight drum coupled with a decent sample, it's one of the worst rhythms of this edition and the guy sounds mediocre here.
A personal track follows with confident rapping on an imperceptible drum and chipmunk soul sample which, if I'm not mistaken, should come from Barry Manilow's "Sweet Life". This Cappadonna choice is therefore a reissue of (or homage to) the song of the same name that Solomon Childs performed for the Theodore Unit album in 2005, using the same sample. "Where Was You At?" presents one of the few questionable productions on the whole disc: rapid drum and extravagant sample, the rap of Amar Divine, Cappa and Crime Life don't impress. It closes a remix of "Let You Go": rhythm and execution are the same as the original cut, hook sung with autotune included, only the drum changes, now heavier.
Distributed by Cappadonna's God Love Family Entertainment, the album consists of 14 songs for a total of almost 47 minutes: with a few tracks less, especially at the end, it would have been a discreet disc composed of about ten songs and half an hour of listening. In any case, it's easily Cappadonna's third best record after "The Pillage" and "The Pilgrimage": the production is superior to most of the records he has released in his career, and this is enough to make it one of his finest works. Unlike the production, the lyricism is typical of his albums: my brain completely pulls the plug when it comes to the Cappadonna lyrics, so, I'm not sure what exactly he did on this record, however, it should be related to braggadocio, women, thug, battle rap, all quite generic, with personal extracts and if something even remotely quotable comes along, it's thanks to the guests.
Rapping seems to be better than its previous attempts, but I'm not totally convinced it is: he definitely sounds better, he's more confident and more convinced, maintaining a slow but aggressive, energetic, hardcore style. Throughout the album, he mimics Tarzan at the beginning and end of tracks and leaves animal sounds scattered everywhere: he seems to be at ease with a guest alongside rapping, as he struggles with himself in solo tracks, even when the rhythm smiles at him, and here it happens often. It's one of his most accessible albums ever, but from here to say that I recommend it, will still have to pass a lot of water under the bridge.
Having said all this, what will go down in history on this record, more than the 47 minutes of hardcore bars spitted and better production than usual, is the cover. I keep it for last because I think it deserves its space, it's one of the most controversial of the year: since its announcement, in the first days of January 2021, it has sparked an infinite number of controversies and laughters that have completely overwhelmed the rapper. Maybe, and just maybe, we're not at the legendary levels of Big Bear's "Doin Thangs", but we're not too far away: photos of Cappadonna crouched in a park, in front of a tree. So far, nothing wrong with that. Then a black band cuts the cover in two horizontally right in the middle of the rapper's body and shows the title, "Tarr" on the left, "Zann" on the right. The colors should be reminiscent of the 2013 movie "Tarzan 3D", I don't know, but the "r" and "n" of "Tarzan" have doubled, for no logical reason. There's the writing "Black" diagonally to rise above "Tarr" and then one of the many pearls of the cover itself: four different animals at the corners of the disc, clockwise, we've an eagle, a lion, a deer and a brown bear.
Ok. Ok, ok, ok. Now you might be thinking, "Is that so? Tarzan! That's the title of the album, they're jungle animals! It's that easy! Right?" Wrong: the eagle lives in the mountains, the lion in the savannah, the deer in the forest and the brown bear in the forest. They are all different habitats from the jungle, none of these animals live in the jungle. Then why? They look like four images of animals taken at random more than a reference / homage to something, but that doesn't matter. It does not matter. The real pearl is yet another: at the center of the cover is Cappadonna. But his face is not his face. I mean, his face is... the author of this cover superimposed half of a lion's face on half of the rapper's face. Great, it would have been interesting, had it been done right, I don't know how many extra dollars it would take, but the end result, as the great Cappadonna said, «is not for everyone».
Rating: 6/10.
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