In early 2004, Lamont Hawkins aka Golden Arms aka U-God exits the Wu-Tang Clan: the boy believes that he hasn't received the right support and the right exposure in recent years with the supergroup due to the founder RZA, and chooses to found his own group, a gangsta rap crew with kids who would be even excessively generous to call weed carriers. They are not professionals, they are taken from the street (cit.). In the following March, the debut album of the U-God group, Hillside Scramblers, is released: it's composed not only by the eighth member of Wu-Tang, now renamed UGodz-Illa, also by Autumn Rue, Lamar "Black Ice" Manson, Desert Eagle, Frank Banger, Inf-Black, Ja-Mal, Michael "Kawz" Kawse, Adrian "King Just" Angevin, and Orlando "Letha Face" Irizarry. The production is entrusted almost exclusively to Leatha Face aka Letha Face, as well as Que Tracks, Six Mill, DJ Homocide and Mark Alston.
Intro, where Que Tracks is credited as a beatmaker, then comes the first cut of the Lucky Hands supergroup, "Pain Inside": Six Mill simplistic boom bap, heavy and hard, fat and boisterous drum machine, ridiculous samples, the rhythm is poor. The guys provide a meager hook, then UGodz-Illa spits out random bars with a syncopated, slow, and mediocre flow. His friend Black Ice has better text and flow than him, smooth and regular, and Letha Face performs well too, with a less aggressive style than that shown in the debut of the Wu-Tang rapper, more orderly, decent, still metrically amateurish, but even better than that of U-God. The Brooklyn MC reserves to himself a rare solo to track three: decent Letha Face rhythm with poor samples and lean syncopated drum, Golden Arms executes a meager hook and spits slow, monotonous, out of shape.
The next song features Letha Face and Inf-Black on a Letha Face rhythm: skinny and hard drum, weak piano, poor rhythm. The major interpreter of the song, Letha Face, performs a bad sung chorus, in which Autumn Rue also participates singing two words and not being credited, so Letha Face reserves to himself two verses with a slow and syncopated style, in between there is Inf-Black with a regular, slow, decent rap. This four song, "Destiny", samples "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby" by Barry White, isn't a problem, because everyone sampled it before and after in hip-hop. But these guys do it in a disastrous way. Orlando Irizarry continues to do damage even behind the keyboards: his production for "Stick Up" is badly synthesized, boom bap with raw, poor and heavy drum, and bad samples, Inf-Black has a solo track where he spits with a smooth, slow, decent, never memorable flow. "Tell Me" is a Hillside Scramblers posse: the beat is once again by Letha Face and it's worse than usual, still poorly synthesized, weak boom bap, heavy and raw eccentric lively drum, mediocre samples with bad synths. Desert Eagle and Letha Face sound decently, not too good, then Inf-Black delivers an honest attack and spits bars with rough, aggressive, almost good delivery.
After a dozen minutes off, UGodz-Illa returns to the album for a techno track: Letha Face's fat and annoying boom bap, probably his worst, heavy fat drum machine and bad samples, the trio of Baby Huey, Inf-Black and Kawz performs generic lyrics with a poor style and U-God has the great idea of doing two hooks in a row. DJ Homocide produces the lead piece of Letha Face destined to the club, however, the beatmaker remains tied to the simplistic and shoddy sound the other producer has so far made: badly synthesized rhythm, boom bap with gaunt heavy and boisterous drum, hook sung by uncredited Autumn Rue, then Letha Face delivers slowly. "Spit Game" is a posse track of the group: boom bap provided by Letha Face, heavy, raw and rowdy drum, horrible sample. Autumn Rue provides the sung chorus, UGodz-Illa spits with weak style, and the other two guys, Inf-Black and Letha Face himself, sound better than the collective's founder, but are unable to save the piece.
"Ghetto Gutter" is one of the best structurally devised joints by Golden Arms: three short stanzas and a melodic hook from Autumn Rue. The execution is all wrong: on a decent boom bap by Letha Face, with a slow and accessible hard drum and a decent sample, the Wu-Tang's MC decides to somehow lengthen these three verses with a style that is far too slow, almost decent, but not good, and he decides to sing the hook along with Autumn Rue, wasting one of the very few accessible rhythms guessed by Letha Face throughout the record. "Drama" is another Hillside Scramblers posse: simplistic boom bap from Irizarry, heavy, slow, hard and raw drum, decent piano, decent delivery from Letha Face and Inf-Black, bad contribution from Kawz and U-God.
It follows "Take It to the Top", new posse track of the newborn crew: the production is entrusted to Letha Face, which has all the same rhythms, this beat features a boom bap with fast and hard drum, raw and poor, and shoddy samples. On this indecent musical carpet, Desert Eagle delivers hardcore, decently; Golden Arms seems to have regained some energy and is almost decent, perpetually slow, there's a hook, then Inf-Black provides generic bars with slow and mediocre style. When the fourth performer arrives, you understand that he has nothing to do with all the other guys who have participated in this LP so far: it's King Just, dark and hidden Wu-Tang affiliate. He comes with more energy than everyone else in the previous eleven songs combined and he kills the cut with hardcore, smooth, good flow. The song is closed by a clearly inspired, hardcore, regular Letha Face, but not at the level of the previous MC.
King Just himself has a solo in "KJ Rhyme", and is probably the only choice worth hearing in this entire project: Letha Face's honest boom bap, finally good, quick essential and hard drum, good samples, King Just provides rap with a hardcore and smooth flow, confident and inspired, dropping three stanzas and short hooks. After his solo, the album returns to the deepest mediocrity. There's the greatest posse of the Hillside Scramblers and it's one of the least successful songs of the edition: skeletal production of Letha Face, poor boom bap, essential midtempo drum, poor samples, decent regular delivery of Black Ice after its hook, decent slow regular flow of Desert Eagle. Inf-Black has a similar style, as does Frank Banger, pretty average, regular. U-God is clearly without inspiration, without energy, without desire, his flow is soporific, scarce. Letha Face continues the track with more energy than the others, slow, decent, then it closes Ja-Mal, a kid with a style of rap rightly as an amateur. The song lasts up to seven minutes and is exhausting and soporific, it competes with other Wu-posse tracks on which is the poorest and weakest. The rest of the record is dominated by the presence of UGodz-Illa.
"Put It on Me" has a simplistic production by Mark Alston, poor boom bap with tight skeletal drum and fourth-rate samples, there's a hook sung by Autumn Rue and a slow rap by Golden Arms for four minutes. The next one is a solo song by the rapper on a bad production by DJ Homocide: his rhythm is as simplistic as the previous ones, bad boom bap with poor raw drum and horrible sample that does everything to not help the slow delivery of the interpreter, a song completely to skip. Letha Face is a torture behind keyboards: shoddy boom bap for "Here We Come", low raw drum, slow and tight, casual samples, U-God still sounds slow despite he tries to accelerate from his usual style, Inf-Black and Letha Face are just average. Finally, "Prayer": Lucky Hands spits two verses on a cheap Letha Face rhythm, with heavy, raw skinny drum and weak samples. There's an Autumn Rue hook that sounds better than UGodz-Illa's low, slow, poor flow.
U-God decides to do something even bigger than the Wu-Tang Clan and brings ten members into its group, one more than those of the famous collective. Golden Arms cuts off relations with Wu and also has a tough confrontation with RZA a few days before the release of this record, with the two making peace later. The record comes out during the fourth wave of Wu-Tang releases and is one of the rare projects of an official Wu member with no collaborators who are part of the group or who are affiliated: there are no external guest and the production is almost entirely provided by Letha Face, aided by Que Tracks, Six Mill, DJ Homocide and Mark Alston.
This album, one of the worst ever released from Shaolin, clearly documents the fact that at the time, the Wu had definitely lost its way. You might think that this act is illegitimate from the beginning, how can U-God think about starting his own group? In fact, basically everyone in the Wu-Tang Clan did. In the beginning it was RZA, with Gravediggaz, in 1994, before also promoting North Star and Black Knights in the following decades. Ol' Dirty Bastard planned to get his friends and cousins out of the ghetto with Brooklyn Zu immediately following the release of his solo album, but several problems hindered him from that moment on, not to mention that some of the members of his group had trouble with the law that kept them away from the recording studios for a long time. Raekwon promoted first the American Cream Team, then Ice Water, and Ghostface Killah built the Theodore Unit and launched his crew into the game. Inspectah Deck hasn't had much luck with his group Housegang, and over the years Cappadonna and Method Man have also given space to their protégés. U-God's attempt to go out in the circuit as soloist, completely detached from the Wu aura, is also admirable in some respects, unfortunately, it's very cheap and poorly executed.
The production of Letha Face is one of the worst of the years in hip-hop, is that bad: the guy seems to be improvising behind the keyboards, he's not a professional, and this document clearly highlights that. He builds simplistic and cheap, shoddy and synthesized, pseudo-electronic rhythms, which all sound very similar for nearly 75 minutes, some sound like faded copies of the West Coast post-g-funk sound: he chooses some of the worst drums of the period, and the samples that should be in a normal boom bap album are replaced by sounds as random and annoying as the drums. The other beatmakers add nothing to Letha Face's sound and do nothing to stand out, if you don't look at the tracklist you might think that the production was made by one person: Orlando Irizarry misses almost everything and guesses a few accessible beats ("Destiny", "Drama", "Take It to the Top"), never exploited adequately due to the technical scarcity of the performers, reaching his best with the rhythm of "KJ Rhyme", with King Just providing the highlight of the edition. For the rest, it's one of the worst productions in a Wu album.
As for the performance, it's among the worst records in the supergroup discography. U-God, already the worst official member of the Wu-Tang Clan at the time, and by a large margin, chooses ten guys who are technically worse than him, and his friends don't disappoint him in this respect. The lyricism provided by the rappers plays on the biggest clichés in the history of the genre: the tracks are a kind of battle rap in which street lyrics, violence, crime, bravado, girls and gangsta-thug bars are randomly mixed. In an attempt to copy, among other things and acts, especially the Wu-Tang Clan itself, Baby U forms a kind of gangsta crew with ten unknown dudes: he's present in 12 tracks out of 17, followed by the other two big protagonists of the project, Inf-Black (9) and Letha Face (8; he's not credited as rapper in "Take it to the Top"), then Autumn Rue (7; 3 times uncredited), Desert Eagle (3), King Just (2), Kawz (2), Black Ice (2), Frank Banger (1), and Ja-Mal (1).
Except King Just, they are all generic and amateur performers, average at their best. Desert Eagle, Kawz, Frank Banger and the young Ja-Mal leave no impression, they blend in with the rest of the crew, Black Ice's contribution is limited for some reason, although two months later he will have one of the best spots on Method Man's album "Tical 0: The Prequel". Autumn Rue has a similar role to that played by several rnb singers on the Wu-Tang albums, but her contribution is also limited for some strange reason and her hooks are often accompanied by someone else's singing or rapping or she's performed on completely poor rhythms and don't allow her to emerge. Letha Face certainly proves to be better as a rapper than a producer and as a performer, he's below average: in the debut of Golden Arms he had an aggressive, hardcore and energetic flow, here instead he seems to have calmed down and flows with a lighter, regular style, always out of time, but not with the same energy as in the past. Inf-Black is featured on over half an album, but hardly ever impresses, still managing to sound better than the collective's founder on several tracks.
Finally, Lamont "UGodz-Illa" Hawkins. U-God. The main man. The collective, the Hillside Scramblers (he steals the name by the Hillside Stranglers), this album, titled "UGodz-Illa Presents: The Hillside Scramblers", all of this, is to prove that he's not the weakest MC in the Wu-Tang. Period. He lives up to the best rappers in the group [so, of the nineties, e.n.] and he's at that level, maybe he's better than them, almost certainly he is. If he hadn't gone to jail several times in the run-up to "36 Chambers" and his solo debuts, everyone would have noticed. It's not a very different speech than what Cappadonna faced. Fans are wrong. Critics are wrong. Casual listeners are wrong. RZA is wrong. Sadly, U-God fails to prove all of these people wrong and ends up delivering further very convincing evidence to his detractors, an indelible and undeniable proof.
Golden Arms finds himself in a very bad shape, supported by ten unknown dudes who can't adequately support him: the MC is completely unfocused, lacking in confidence, never inspired, slow, poor, syncopated, more raw than usual. Not «raw like cocaine straight from Bolivia» that gave him the glory and on whose bar he rests all his ambitions in this album and in his future career strictly as an independent soloist, he's raw in the wrong way, dull, untidy, careless. Lucky Hands shows all his limits here, more than in the debut, and they're seen from the very first minute when, in "Pain Inside", he's completely obscured by his amateur friends Black Ice and Letha Face. He struggles harder than before to bring out a flow that's at the same time regular, velvety, melodic and compelling, and he practically never succeeds in over 70 minutes, and in the very rare instants in which he seems to be able to do so by forcing his execution, the horrible and lifeless production provided by Letha Face never helps him.
After about two, maybe three hours, I see the cover just now: it's beautiful. It's something on the level of Don Cappachino, but better. Or worse. It depends on how you see it. Ok, I'll try: there's U-God face on the left, with cap, sunglasses and sweatshirt (it's a street gangsta!), and on the right there are nine guys whose faces don't appear, there are nine figures that look like nine cardboard (they're nine unknowns!). Yes, it seems to be done on purpose to demonstrate the importance of Baby U to the rest of the members, but it's also a tribute to the cover of "36 Chambers", probably. Oh, I hope so, man. At the top, there's the name of the main author with a half white half black writing, "UGodz-Illa", below on the right in red the writing "the Hillside Scramblers", with a pseudo-gothic / pseudo-zombie font that should be illegal in 52 countries. Between the two writings, there should be "presents" (when I try to read this writing, I feel sick), still half white and half black, marking UGodz-Illa technical gap with others.
Released by independent labels Synergy Music, INDIEgo and Lucky Hands Inc., the album is a total musical and lyrical failure. It passes completely ignored by both the public and critics — AllMusic's 3.5/5 is funny, which they think it's better than his debut and much better than "Dopium", incredible; those guys are always fantastic! — and is considered one of the worst albums in Wu-Tang history. It looks like a fourth-tier Wu-Tang album. Fully skippable. Never recommended, 2.5/10.
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