When the tape comes out, in the early days of 2005, everyone is waiting for "A Son Unique", the one with Roc-A-Fella that was shelved sine die. This seems to have come out just to keep the hype or something. "Osirus" is just one of hundreds of aliases of him. It comes less than two months after Ol' Dirty's death: it's put together by the artist's mother and by the artist's manager, who release it through their fledgling label, JC Records. Of the Wu-Tang, there are no traces. There's Cappadonna, still an affiliate at the time. There's Ghostface Killah, uncredited on the same track hook with Cappachino. End.
The production is created by Ill Will Fulton, Chops, Mark Ronson, K-Def, DJ Premier, Clinton Sparks and Dame Grease. Guests are Rhymefest, Blah of Blahzay Blahzay, Black Rob, Royal Flush, Baby Sham, Drag-On, Jae Mills, Cardan, The Lenox Ave. Boys, Terra Blacks, Killa Kela, Rahzel. They're all dudes you may have genuinely never heard of. None of these guys put so much meat on the fire that you say or think "this tape is worth it", "this track is worth it", "this minute is worth it", indeed, they make you ask a couple of forced questions: why are these guys here? What's a bunch of amateurs and strangers doing on a Wu-Tang album? Except the two guys from the supergroup and Black Rob (remember: the second best rapper on the first Puff Daddy LP), the others are out of place.
The production is messy and cheap, mixing club music, rough East Coast beats for street tracks and bouncy choices that are far from the typical of ODB. On this shaky sound, the lead rapper never spits well. He has never spat well in his life for various reasons and above all in order to create his own distinctive style — in retrospect: he has succeeded — but here he shows numerous other signs of letting up. He sings, again, no longer interesting as in the past. Removed a couple of bars against Puff Daddy in DJ Premier's "Pop Shots", the tape, which comes under various titles including "Osirus", "Osirus mixtape", "Osirus the Official Mixtape" and so on, is not good. Do not buy.
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