Forgotten record of one of the many Wu affiliates. In 1998, the group Gladiator Posse Wu aka GP Wu released an LP with MCA, major distribution through Universal. Two years later, this boy manages to make his solo debut with the same label, still distributed by Universal. Being on a major label is always an event for a Killa Bee, and he certainly is. Grew up in Stapleton, Staten Island cousin of Ghostface Killah, Robert "Pop da Brown Hornet" Briggs is an early Wu-Tang Clan affiliate, directly honored by RZA in "Clan in da Front" in 1993.
In this project, the author doesn't make big lyrical efforts, affirming for three quarters of an hour how much he's a better emcee than the others and continuing to brag all the time, leaving room for issues closer to socio-conscious themes in the last minutes, with the choices "Stand Up" and "Black on Black Crime", the latter taken directly from the GP Wu album. His rapping doesn't mean anything to me and the Brown Hornet just spits braggadocio with no variation, with some random thug lines and several vicious lines, this thematic limit forces him to come up with lots of bars that are ambiguous or make you turn up your nose. The guests don't add too much with their flexes, including Down Low Recka, the only member of GP Wu present, and two of the three guys who make up the Staten Island TMF group, also affiliated with the Wu-Tang Clan, under the names No Smiles & Tariff, later known as Tommy Whispers & Trife da God. No Smiles is also sometimes credited as a guest on the track "Hold Ground", but that's another rapper I can't identify. Also there are Taneese, Smoke, Chauncey Hannibal and DeLouie.
The production should therefore push this album towards the charts, the drum bangs hard, the bass rumbles, there are correct samples (often from jazz songs), there's a good underground atmosphere which, however, isn't enough to make the album stand out from the average of the period and while it sounds different than typical Wu-universe releases, the effort feels out of its time. The set often fails due to a mix that decides to reward the rapping rather than the beats. Behind the keyboards alternate names that may not even tell you anything, but who have always been close to the Wu-Tang Clan like RNS and Hassan: the former produced Shyheim's first two LPs and a track on the Gravediggaz record — "Diary of a Madman", not a random track —, while the latter is one of the monikers of Phantom of the Beats, one of the two halves of The UMC's, among the first groups to come out of Staten Island, to release a studio album with a major label (EMI) and to hit #1 on the Hot Rap Singles Chart.
Phantom worked in New York with some guys who will later be part of the Wu-Tang Clan, including Inspectah Deck, for which he produces later the hit "City High", as well as several notable songs for Ghostface, among which he certainly stands out "Apollo Kids" in "Supreme Clientele". The other two names are those of Phat Ron, author of the scratches on Shyheim's first album, and Marley Marl, which remixes a 1998 song by Brown Hornet produced by RNS also present on this album.
On paper, the disc has the potential to rock, leaving out the absence of a non-explosive guest cast and filled with young emerging friends, nevertheless when you go to listen to it, you're disappointed because something isn't quite right in both the beats and rapping department. Pop da Brown Hornet has the slow stuff ("Hold Ground", it's a half rnb joint), the fast stuff ("Wantz & Needs"), it has the potential banger ("Follow Me Up"; should also be the single off the record, a music video was shot for it), the posse cut ("One Shot Deal"), the dark slice ("Endangered Species"), the tight boom bap ("I'm Soooo...."), and so on, no one has the strength to stand alone above the rest of the album nor has the personality to drive the whole record. The album is quite cohesive and coherent throughout the fifty minutes, to me it sounds similar to GP Wu's LP released a few seasons earlier, so I don't deem it a necessary disk for casual listeners.
No comments:
Post a Comment