Sadness. This is what surrounds and envelops the entire project. Gary "GZA / Genius" Grice is tired. Very tired. Not only in his delivery, you feel that he's no longer able to spit one word after another, it's a mental condition, more than a physical one. He changes labels for the fifth time in six albums, after Cold Chillin', Geffen, Wu-Tang Productions, MCA and Angeles, he releases the record under the independent Babygrande Records.
When asked by the label to have a title for this thing, the rapper replies with the random "Pro Tools", a production software program that does not seem to have logical connections with the lyrics. Originally, the project is supposed to be a collaborative album, something similar to Dreddy Kruger's "Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture", probably: efforts of this kind should be something minimally thoughtful, while here GZA seems to have wanted to drop a random product as quickly as possible to please Babygrande, recording verses in the spare time amid his tours with the Wu-Tang and recycling discarded pieces from previous years.
However, when he calls to record a Wu-song, only RZA and Masta Killa respond. Practically the boys of the supergroup not related with him don't show up: the result is that in this album there are slots for Clan members that remain empty or are filled by other guests. In addition to the aforementioned, there are Dreddy Kruger of Royal Fam, True Master, the son of GZA Justice Kareem, Rock Marcy, Ka, Ifrane and FYRE Department. Roc Marciano aka Rock Marcy is in one of his first guest appearances on an official album and doesn't impress, while Ka is on his debut and offers the best performance of the disc, flowing easily on a musical carpet provided by Roc Marciano himself.
The production is made by RZA, True Master, Dreddy Kruger, Mathematics, Bronze Nazareth, The Arabian Knight, Jose Reynoso, Black Milk, Rock Marcy, Preservation and Jay Waxx Garfield: the beats provided by these dudes are bad, dull and unbearable, rarely decent, and provide a forgettable backdrop for the rhymes of GZA, at his worst performance ever. The boy sounds completely devoid of energy, reluctantly and effortlessly, subdued and resigned, with a bland, lazy, soporific flow. There is also a 50 Cent dissing on this record, "Paper Plate": it's not immediately understandable that it's a dissing, because not even in dissing the boy put a minimum of energy to express his own contents, wasting one of the less-ugly beats of RZA in his decline phase. I had no idea that GZA had diss with 50 Cent, and the Queens rapper doesn't even replicate this track, ignoring Wu-Tang's MC as if he were a seventh-grade guy desperate for attention.
In his album number six, released three years after the last and six years after the last solo, GZA disappoints enormously and creates a work that joins the worst records in the Wu discography. The tape reaches the second place among the independent works and the top ten in the rap chart, but it's above all a critical success, being praised by almost all the specialized critics: once again, the alternative magazine "Spin" stands out, which rightly suppressed the record, 3.5/10.
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