Buddha Monk and Popa Wu join forces for the fifth installment of Zu-Chronicles, rapper Buddha Monk's prolific series of albums. Brooklyn Zu leader is the main rapper of this edition as well as being the only credited producer of the whole project. The guests are Da Manchuz (Buddha Monk, Born U Majesty, Professor King Bean, Babyface Fensta, Spiritual Assassin, Drunken Dragon and Redz), Prodigal Sunn of Sunz of Man, Daddy Rose and Baracus (aka Allah Sun) of Black Rose Cartel, C.C.F Division (that is Popa Wu sons Shacronz & Freemurder, and their cousin Terra Tory), Suga Bang Bang, Allah Real, Q-Plex, Bash, Sleep Murda, Mozart of Tai Chi Mastas, I-Born, Black Venom, Ty-Jigs, Pyzone, Nesto, Polladon, Crave, Main Event, Che Logan, Preacher Man, Bash and Fast Life.
The busiest are I-Born (6), Buddha Monk (5), Shacronz (5), Babyface Fensta (5), Freemurda (4), Daddy Rose (3) and Q-Plex (3). Although there are over twenty different rappers, it's notable the absence of Dungeon Masta, who up to this moment was the only other rapper to appear in all chapters of the series, in addition to Buddha Monk. There really isn't much to investigate, Zu Five is an all-battle rap style exercise from the first to the sixteenth track, meaningless and with little style, little personality, poor lyricism and poor beats. As in the previous chapter, I'll go to look for the hardest/funniest/weakest bar for each track.
1. Buddha Monk: "My evil forces within would tell me to kill again”; “You're savage, below average, non-solidated liquid cabbage”.
1. Babyface Fensta: “Gotta feed and educate the babies, so I run rabid like rabies / niggas can’t fuck with my grammer”.
2. Babyface Fensta: “You got a problem? I solve it”; “She about twenty-two or twenty-five / Look out for Mr. forty-four, he down with the law”.
2. Mozart: "I got a lazy eye watching you / So you don't think I'm looking when I'm watching ya moves”; “I leave you dead right here, fuck the cemetary”.
3. Nesto: “Keep it hot like a radiator”.
3. Prodigal Sunn: “My holy aura generates the blood of the Tora”.
4. Buddha Monk “The surprise is, poverty nigga, you just got hot whipped”.
5. Freemurda: “Play the crib all day, with me chicks do foreplay”; “You caused problems, now you can't solve 'em / Y'all niggas is like bugs, I squash 'em / My style is awesome”.
6. Daddy Rose: “Disappear from the world, hide beneath the sands of Iran”.
6. Baracus: “We hold it down like Al Pacino and Billy Blanco”.
7. Polladon: “But the ink leaking from my pen / Draw up vivid pictures to make a thug cry”.
8. Buddha Monk: “We moving darts, so don't move too close / Cuz the darts we throw might turn ya ghost”.
8. Crave: “I leave ya man in a casket”.
9. Shacronz: “I watch the poor in pain”.
10. Shacronz: “Never trick, sold cracks for cream, hold stacks of sick teens”.
11. Shacronz: “Leave 'em on the back of milk cartons”; “lyrics sick like infermeries”.
12. Babyface Fensta: “Poke ya with a hot poker”.
13. Bash: “I need a normal chick, not a psycho hoe”.
14. I-Born: “King of these streets, fiend to these beats”.
15. Q-Plex: “Multi personalities, I'm starting, talking to myself / Stay clear, when I'm walking with myself”.
15. Sleep Murda: “Paint my face red with ya blood like a crazed Indian”.
16. Lecture: “Text's better / Recognize me on ya royal texts, ya heard?”.
Some of these guys are to be appreciated, this tape is a trip. Babyface Fensta for example, oh well, he's a certainty in the whole series. Mozart aka Moz Art is more of a revelation here than in other editions of the Chronicles. P Sunn is totally on another level than anything you hear in the entire Buddha Monk series, he's kind of an intruder here.
Hear these guys spit hardcore, fathom their own minds, flex their muscles, follow them to their stinging bars and as they try to escape the most banal boast or misquote "Carlito's Way" (Billy Blanco instead of Benny Blanco?), watch United Kingdom walk away with their spearheads, the style of Freemurda, the technique of ShaCronz that takes the liberty of taking away three tracks in a row that aren't his, doing a back to back with a lot of bars "sick like infermeries" (if I may quote the man himself).
It's a fantastic record in the sense that it's one that's so bad it's good, in the end. As a Wu-Tang aficionado, it's impossible not to admire and appreciate it, and at the same time, it's impossible not to see how it luckily escaped thorough quality control. In case you stumble upon this CD, remember that here are the cousins of RZA and ODB. There are people who grew up with GZA. They are all here, but they won't make you miss their more famous relatives.
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