by John Bear
Daily Lobo
Combine several of Wu-Tang Clan's more lyrically nimble members with the stars of hip-hop's indie underbelly, and you get Think Differently Music: Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture.
I can speak for most hip-hop fans by saying nothing at all, opting to instead emit a low cooing noise accented with a fairly unattractive amount of drool sliding out the corners of my mouth. I probably won't be meeting any future ex-wives today, but I am getting my hip-hop fix, so I will accept the trade-off, for now.
Wu-Tang stormed the rap world with Enter the Wu (36 Chambers) back in the early '90s. The album was the East Coast equivalent of West Coast gangster coupled with RZA's stripped-down grainy beats - a real classic.
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The first wave of solo albums such as Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Method Man's Tical, GZA's Liquid Swords and ODB's Return to the 36 Chambers - all four are undisputed classics - largely stuck with the production ethos of Enter the Wu. The sound was ugly and unrefined, the lyrics largely indecipherable odes to the streets or one's lyrical superiority. ODB even did a love song complete with a one-minute long screaming orgasm.
It worked.
But then things began to slide. Wu-Tang Forever, while a competent effort, lacked the roughness of the earlier efforts. Lyrically, the album was top-notch with some of the MCs, most notably RZA,
delivering standout performances. The beats, however, sounded canned and largely uninspired. It was as if RZA just phoned them in.
The second wave of solo efforts - with the exception of GZA's Beneath the Surface and to a lesser degree Ghostface Killa's Ironman - suffered from this lack of creativity. It appeared that the reign of the Wu was coming to an end. I quit paying attention.
Think Differently Music jump-started my faith in the Wu, however. Some cat named Bronze Nazareth produces most of the instrumentals on the album, and they recapture the essence of the older Wu-Tang recordings. That is not to say that the album mimics classic Wu-Tang joints, not entirely anyway. The tracks for the most part contain the spirit of old, and the sound is somewhat similar but decidedly fresh.
The pairings of Wu-Tang members with hip-hop's lesser-known MCs on the tracks work out well. GZA raps alongside Ras Kass on "Lyrical Swords." To paraphrase Martha Stewart, this is a good thing. The two MCs are among hip-hop's all-time greatest. The beat is minimalist featuring old blues guitar and horn samples and works well enough, though it fails to do justice to such fine lyricists.
"Think Differently" features RZA and MF Doom trading verses over RZA-produced string synths and soul singing samples.
Aesop Rock and Del the Funky Homosapien, definitely an interesting pairing of nonstandard hip-hop voices, show up for a duet on "Preservation," and underground MCs J-Live and RA the Rugged Man kick it on "Give it up."
Overall, the album sounds like older Wu-Tang. Normally, this would make it less than fresh, like they were just trying to get avid fans to shell out a few more dollars. But it works out fantastically. Most of Wu-Tang is absent from the album - I would have liked to hear some Method Man, but apparently he is too busy making deodorant commercials - yet the highly talented MCs who show up to drop verses more than make up for that and the beats, while not exactly forward thinking, are head-nod inducing.
I usually avoid using corny hip-hopper slang, but this album is, for lack of a better word, fresh.
