After the collaborative records made with Marley Marl ("Hip Hop Lives", 2007), Buckshot ("Survival Skills", 2009) and Just-Ice ("The EP Vol. 1", 2010), KRS-One joins the producer and rapper True Master, an affiliate of the Wu-Tang Clan. RZA and Cappadonna are some of the guests, along with Dr. Oyibo and Jersey, True Master contributes a couple of times to rapping. It's the first LP to credit Wu-Element as a co-writer and boasts one of the most compact productions of the past decade in a project by the Bronx rapper.
The music embodies the Wu spirit and sound of the late nineties, it's coherent and plays it safe, depriving itself of both exaggeration and slips as well as brilliant moments: is composed of an essential, dry and rough boom bap, which manages to hold the album upright by itself, while KRS-One turns out to be out of shape, without imagination and completely lacking the right inspiration, he spits out bars that revolve around the same themes as his previous albums.
It's one of the few moments where The Teacha and the Wu-Tang meet, yet neither Bobby Digital's casual contribution nor Cappadonna's composed appearance is noteworthy. Released by Fat Beats, the record shows some structural cracks, being stretched up to 20 tracks with 9 skits, one for each song: the top moments are the six minutes between the ninth and tenth tracks, when True Master signs some of his most solid beats and The Blastmaster raps well without being interrupted by one of those skits.
Rating: 6/10.
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