He has been around since the late eighties, is honored directly by RZA in "Clan in da Front", the song of "Enter the Wu-Tang" and his contribution on Gravediggaz' first LP is crucial, it allows him both to get his first contract and to influence the style of renowned artists such as Big Pun and Nas, among many others. Still, Scientific Shabazz also known as Shabazz the Disciple is a name you may never have heard of. Around the 1992, when "Protect Ya Neck" is coming out on the streets, a turning point comes for him: his cousin Freestyle, rapper of the Arsonists, plays his demo for Prince Rakeem (RZA), and he decides to bring Shabazz to his new album, made with Prince Paul and other guys in a group called Gravediggaz.
The LP is produced for a label and features another Scientific Shabazz acquaintance, his longtime friend Lord Messiah (Killah Priest). Grew up, among the many areas he toured in his teens, also in Brooklyn on the same block as The Genius (GZA), Killah Priest gets to know his brother RZA, whom he also calls as a guest on the Gravediggaz album. For both Shabazz and Priest this is the debut on the rap circuit and they are both present together in two songs. From the collaboration emerge the songs "Diary of a Madman" and "Graveyard Chamber", if you haven't listened to them, they are two of the best moments of "6 Feet Deep", for which Shabazz is sometimes considered among the pioneers of the horrorcore subgenre. Rereading what he wrote, I find it hard to doubt that he's not.
Shabazz and Killah Priest are also a duo, The Disciples of Armageddon (D.O.A.) and have a contract to make a demo with Atlantic, then they choose to make the tracks together with their respective friends Hellrazor (Hell Razah), who grew up with Shabazz, and Prodigal Sunn, a pseudonym found by his childhood friend Killah Priest. I think that the tracks they make could be "Deep in the Water" and "Write & Rhyme With a Liquid Pen" (this last one later known as "Writing Rhymes With a Liquid Pen" and "Elements"), but it doesn't matter, because that's how Sunz of Man was born. The group is made up of Mad Mob, a Red Hook group formed by rappers Scientific Shabazz, Hell Razah, 7th Ambassador and producer Supreme, and Brooklyn rappers Killah Priest and Prodigal Sunn, later joined by 60 Second Assassin, rapper close to Brooklyn Zu. The guys release an independent EP under the name Da Last Future, where most of the songs are only rapped by Hell Razah and 7th Ambassador (aka Zodiac Killah), then change the name to Sunz of Man.
The group is the first to sign with Wu-Tang Records in 1995 and their debut LP "Nothing New Under the Sun" is scheduled to be released the following year, but for some unclear reason, Wu-Tang Records rejects it. Meanwhile, Shabazz is also busy with his solo rapping career, signing a deal with Penalty and releasing the singles "Death Be the Penalty", "Conscious of Sin" and "Crime Saga" in 1995, before leaving the label. Subsequently, he settles with the management agency of GZA and continues to release songs as an independent in anticipation of his solo debut with the GZA label, scheduled for 1998. Nonetheless, after spending a lot of time and money promoting the record, GZA's management agency folded in 1996, leaving Shabazz on the street.
This fact causes a break with the Wu-Tang: the emcee asks to cut ties with the Wu and leaves Sunz of Man shortly before the group's debut with the new album "The Last Shall Be First", and in fact, there's no contribution from him on the record. Together with him, Killah Priest also comes out, because he too has signed with the management agency of GZA, and after missing both the presence in "Enter the Wu-Tang" and the inclusion in the Wu-Tang Clan as the last member, he doesn't even participate in "Wu-Tang Forever" and his presence was taken for granted and in a massive way, after excelling in the albums of Gravediggaz, Ol' Dirty Bastard ("Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version") and GZA ("Liquid Swords"), where he has the honor of his own solo track. He's featured on the Sunz of Man disk, but his contribution is limited to only four tracks out of nineteen.
A complicated period begins for Scientific Shabazz. The boy first attempts the adventure as a duo with Killah Priest with The Disciples (hence his current moniker) releasing "Writing Rhymes With a Liquid Pen", a track made with Sunz of Man, represented by Hell Razah and Prodigal Sunn. The cut is memorable, also because the production is beautiful. The response of the public isn't that expected, the duo dissolves. Shabazz proposes to continue as a duo under another name, Killah Priest proposes to form the Maccabees, a new group with Shabazz and Timbo King, eventually the two go their separate ways. Killah Priest signs with Geffen and records his debut album, while Shabazz attempts to pursue a career in the industry with another duo, Celestial Souljahz, formed with his cousin Freestyle. This attempt is also unsuccessful.
In the summer of 1997, in order to cash in as much as possible from the untimely death of his friend Christopher Wallace aka The Notorious B.I.G., Puff Daddy released his first solo CD: the album is bad, with exceptions, songs saved by Biggie's presence and colored by samples taken from songs by "Rocky" ("Victory"), David Bowie ("Been Around the World") and Oliver Sain ("Young G's"). Among the many, a wonderful production stands out, it has nothing to do with Puff Daddy or the Hitman, it's "I Love You Baby" performed by Black Rob. Prodigy claims that this rhythm was stolen by some of the Hitman production team from Havoc, but the reality is that the beat is exactly the same as that used by Su-Preme for one of the songs of Shabazz, his famous "Breathing for You".
On this same Shabazz first album, he claims it was stolen from him by Jay "Waxx" Garfield and brought to Puff Daddy. That rhythm comes from a song featured in an EP that Shabazz the Disciple is expected to release in collaboration with Su-Preme Kourt aka Su-Preme the Mechanic, the historic Sunz of Man producer and friend for many years. Also on this occasion something goes wrong: the tape has to come out on the Su-Preme label, Red Hook Records, Shabazz demands that the profits be divided more evenly instead of going mostly to the producer, the latter refuses and publishes the EP without authorization or title (you can also find it as "Take Your Time EP"). Shabazz will never make use of his production again (even if today they seem to be on good terms), and that's a shame, because that EP is full of very strong tracks and sees the two at their best.
In 1999, Sunz of Man prepares the release of a new album that has pre-1997 recordings, so there would still be Killah Priest and Shabazz, however, "The First Testament" is bootlegged. Four years later, Shabazz returns to record material with Sunz of Man, he rejoins the group and finally releases his first solo album. The cover is revealed in its simplicity: dark background, name of the author at the top in gold, image of the author in the center surrounded by a reddish veil, title and subtitle at the bottom, the author's logo at the bottom center, symbol of the Battle Axe Records label with which he signed at the bottom right. The logo is similar to that of the Wu-Tang, with which relations will improve in the following years, with Shabazz participating in a track with RZA on the Cilvaringz album, publishing a disk with Chambermusik and, while deciding never to put the Wu logo on his own record, he makes the Wu-Tang symbol with his hands on his 2011 LP, again released by Chambermusik.
Behind the keyboards appears the name of Carlos Bess, a historic engineer of the Staten Island supergroup who's credited for the beat he made in cohabitation with DJ Coco for "Crime Saga" in 1995. With the exception of Bess, the production draws a roster away from the W: Lord Jamar, credited in two of the singles released in the nineties, Baby J, Dams & Sla, Mista Jam, DJ Skinny, DJ Irfane, DJ Choko, DJ Friction, C12, Ze Gonzales, The Prunes, Q-Unique and Shabazz himself. The guests are Killah Priest of Sunz of Man, the only one to raise the Killa Beez flag in the project, Lord Jamar of Brand Nubian, Lil' Dap of Group Home, Q-Unique & Freestyle of Arsonists, Poetic of Gravediggaz (along with Shabazz and Killah Priest is featured in "Graveyard Chamber" on the first LP), and R.H. Bless, his cousin.
"Hidden Scrollz" is the subtitle of this album and indeed, the content is quite messy. You have to understand what happened in the ten years that preceded the release of this project, from the time RZA pulled him off the streets to the moment all the doors he found himself were slammed in his face. You can read that the artist "didn't strike the iron while it was hot", "didn't know how to seize the moment", "didn't want to go to the studio to complete his album", but it didn't exactly go like this. There's so much anger and frustration that are expressed over these long 71 minutes of material. There are three skits in the first four tracks, in the last one, Shabazz accuses those who have hindered and compromised his recording career.
The tracklist is made up almost entirely of songs already released in the past between 1995 and 2000, joined by five skits and some original tracks. In addition to the trilogy of songs made as Celestial Souljahz together with Freestyle on the Baby J album, there are several remarkable singles released by Shabazz in the nineties, such as "Crime Saga", "Street Parables", "Organized Rime Pt. 2", "Ghetto Apostles" and "The Lamb's Blood". They all have in common that they're not produced by Su-Preme, unlike the other three heavier songs in the emcee catalog, "Death Be the Penalty", "Party wit a Tec" and "Breathing for You". Not part of the album is "Conscious of Sin", produced by Dropsect, another great song. Shabazz deviates from the horrorcore legacy that he had tried to build even in the late nineties following his participation in the Gravediggaz records, and tackles themes close to thug rap and the street, such as robberies, thefts, shootings, gangsterism, drugs and crime, combined with stanzas full of religious references written without much inspiration ("Street Parables", "Blasphemy", "The Lamb's Blood"), various battle raps, solid criminal narratives ("Crime Saga"), ghetto life ("Son Rise"), childhood memories ("Oasis"), complaints against fake rappers and the mainstream side of the game ("Hip Pop") and thanks to his inspirations ("Red Hook Day").
The music comes from unknown dudes and these guys succeed in the difficult task of creating cohesive, coherent and strong rhythms rooted in the Wu-Tang sound. The set consists of dirty and dusty underground beats, not totally rough and above all pleasant and accessible. Clearly, the emcee isn't at its peak on this CD, although several tracks represent his best moment and his rapping for most of the time is convinced, motivated and confident, sometimes urgent, shouted and hasty, sometimes calm and subdued. Among the original songs, there are the singles "Thieves in da Nite (Heist)" and "Red Hook Day": in the second, Mista Jam sharpens a chipmunk soul sample in a way that could easily come from Just Blaze or Prime Kanye, creating a fantastic sound carpet for the bars of Shabazz, which narrates how he represented East Red Hook, recalls the beginnings, the past and pays homage to his inspirations.
In summary, it's a solid album even if it doesn't excel, it represents part of the best period of the artist, despite Shabazz himself doesn't consider it as a real debut, given the high amount of material already published. 7.5/10.
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