Verse of the week: Wu-Tang Clan – ‘Watch Your Mouth’

A new Wu-Tang track from the 8 Diagrams album emerged this week, so all other nifty verses will have to “clear the way, make way, yo, open the cage” (here’s looking at you, Percee P).

‘Watch Your Mouth’ features all eight members, each with eight tight lines (except for Raekwon and Masta Killa, whose verses are slower and more disjointed). The beat’s a grower – a bit like Kanye West’s ‘Barry Bonds’, it seemed static and simplistic at first, but with repeated listens sounds deadeningly heavy and malicious. As a full posse cut to lead off the album, it’s not exactly ‘Triumph’, but it’s better and more consistent than I’d expected, given the allegedly parlous state of the recording process: all eight members sound pretty much on the same page. It works as a statement of intent, tersely dismissive of the current rap scene, with a single-minded determination to reclaim the dark, threatening and mysterious elements that used to characterise the Wu. It’s self-mythologising without being self-aggrandising.

Of the eight MCs, GMS gives the ‘verse of the week’ award to Inspectah Deck – his precise, focused battle-rhyming, enlivening posse cuts like this, is his greatest strength. Plus he’s been under the radar for the past few years, as I tend to avoid his solo stuff. Like most Deck verses, it’s not about anything, beyond inventive boasting and polysyllabic rhymes, but it fits nicely with the song’s self-reliance and hostility to “frauds”:

This is boulevard hard, larger than your black car
Camouflage rap guard, I stomp the yard
I.N.S. spit monster bars, split long cigars
My clique dodge, bitch y’all are frauds
I get it in like Tim off the glass, spreading my name
I’m like the Pres sending men off to blast
What I spit make ‘em spend all they cash,
I’m so Wu, so new, that I ain’t rip off the tags

Of the others:

Raekwon slows his flow, which initially sounds half-assed, but ends up entirely unsettling, sort of like on ‘Heaterz’ off Wu-Tang Forever. Best lines: “I’m from a boulevard where n****s get jabbed and peed on”, “You know we hungry and talk funny.”

Masta Killa does his usual abstract, disjointed stream-of-consciousness. Probably the song’s weakest verse, but I like the line “We keep it ninja, take money, stay ninja.” Good attitude, Masta Killa.

Method Man’s verse is straightforward corner-boy drug-pushing stuff. Maybe he thinks appearing in The Wire means he can bridge the gap between the Wu and the Clipse. I prefer more stoner / comic book geek nonsense from Meth, but he sounds lively and reinvigorated. Plus he follows Masta Killa with the line “Garbage, ya time’s up, go finish them rhymes up”, sort of like how Ghostface followed Masta Killa on ‘Triumph’ with “Ayo fuck that!”

Ghostface is good at rapping. Best line: “Got a bathtub full of white, lay in it like sand”, making a claim to be the Brian Wilson of the Wu.

U-God gets a lot of stick for not being as stellar as the rest of the Clan, but like Deck, he’s a strong team-player and I’ve got a lot of time for his rich, deep voice and his unusual rap vocabulary. Especially when he’s saying things like “I’m like the Grouch, my mouth’s a circus”, and “I’m a good learner”.

RZA packs a lot into his verse: killer bees, numerology, a nod to the Gravediggaz, and money-under-the-table record deals, before taking it back to the, er, essence, with references to Wu clothing and Raekwon’s ‘Ice Cream’.

GZA finishes off with typical authority, composure and economy, again referencing old songs, talking about hunting for 45rpms in attics with RZA, acting as usual both as a member and an observer of the Clan, and delivering one knock-out line: “You can roll as a whole, they’ll send you back in fractions”.

More fun:

Status Ain't Hood heard more of 8 Diagrams

Sit Down Stand Up spoke to Masta Killa

Floodwatch talks about 'Watch Your Mouth' and has an mp3

Buy Wu

Verse of the week – Aesop Rock ‘None Shall Pass’

Hairy-chinned nerd-rap figurehead Aesop Rock has an interview over at the Smoking Section on account of his new album None Shall Pass. It’s not tremendously revealing or diverting, but mister Rock does address critics who lazily refer to his dense, often-baffling lyrics as “stream of consciousness”. Quite right – his artfully-constructed verses have nothing of the unhinged imaginative mania of, say, Ghostface or the self-absorbed free-association of Lil’ Wayne. What he is aiming at is harder to define: are these elaborate puzzle-poems intended to reward repeated close listenings (and readings)? Or are they an elaborate formal exercise in disrupting meanings and statements, playfully inverting an art-form usually based around self-assertion and bragging? Or is it just “art college drop-out nonsense” as one commenter on TSS suggested? GMS is undecided: for my money his label-boss and collaborator El-P, while a technically inferior rapper, does this sort of thing in a more satisfying manner – his use of unexpected words and images works as a means of expressing complex emotional and political feelings in a manner that’s adequate, personal, and free of cliché. On the whole Aesop seems more interested in frustrating interpretation than in communicating, which makes it rather difficult to get through a whole album. That said, None Shall Pass has plenty of highlights – in particular the John Darnielle-assisted ‘Coffee’ and the title track, which sees to be something of a statement of intent by Aesop’s standards talking about fame, war, fake rap feuds and “rouge vocoder bliss”. Watch out T-Pain. It also has a bloody cracking video. Aesop Rock ‘None Shall Pass’ Flash that buttery gold, jittery zeitgeist
Wither by the watering hole, water patrol
What are we, a heart huckabee, art fuckery suddenly?
Not enough young in his lung for the water wings?
Colorfully vulgar poacher at a mulch like
“I’m-a pull the pulse out a soldier and bolt” (fine)
Sign of the time we elapsed
When a primate climb up the spine and attach
Eye for an eye, by the bog’s life swamps and vines
They get a rise out of frogs and flies
So when a dog fights hog-tied prize sort-a costs a life
The mouth’s water on a fork and knife
And the allure isn’t right
It’s gore on a war-torn beach
Where the cash cows actually beef
Blood turns wine when I leak for police
Like “That's not a riot, it's a feast, let’s eat.'”

And I will remember your name and face
On the day you were judged by the funhouse cast
And I will rejoice in your fall from grace
With a cane to the sky like “None shall pass.”
None shall pass, none shall pass

Now if he never had a day a snow cone couldn't fix
he wouldn’t relate to the rouge vocoder bliss
How he spoke through a no-doz, motor on the fritz
’Cause he wouldn’t play roll over, fetch, like a bitch
And express no regrets though he isn’t worth the homeowners piss
To the jokers who pose by the glitz (Fine)
Sign of the swine and the swarm
When a king is a whore who comply and conform
Miles outside of the eye of the storm
With a siphon to lure and a prize and award
While avoiding the vile and bizarre that is violence and war
True blue triumph is more
Like wait, let it snake up outta the centerfold
Let it break the walls of Jericho. ready? go.
Sat where the old cardboard city folks
Swap tails with heads like every other penny throw

Okay, woke to a grocery list
Goes like this: duty and death
Anyone object, come stand in the way
You can be my little Snake River Canyon today
And I ran with a chain of commands
And a jetpack strap where the backstab lands if it can. (Fine)
Sign of the vibe in the crowd
When I cut a belly open to find what climb out
What a bit of gusto he muster up
Make a dark horse rush like enough's enough
It must-a struck a nerve so they huff and puff
Till all the king’s men fluster and clusterfuck
And it’s a beautiful thing
To my people who keep an impressive wing span
Even when the cubicle shrink
You gotta pull up the intruder by the root of the weed
NY chew through the machine

Verse of the week – Killah Priest and Canibus, ‘Inner G’

"I kick arse for the Lord"

Thank God for Killah Priest: firstly, he made me thinking of posting the above video; secondly, if I’m going to keep this half-arsed feature running, his new album, The Offering, has enough quality verses to do the business for the next couple of months. Standouts include ‘Salvation’, in which Priest addresses troops in Iraq over a sample from Ennio Morricone’s Once Upon A Time In The West; ‘Gun For Gun’, where he and Nas trade verses pondering Malcolm X’s final thoughts; ‘Essential’, which provides a Wire-style overview of a city’s criminal underworld, the narrative running from the maternity ward to the cemetery in the course of a night; or the apocalyptic closing posse cut ‘Till Thee Angles Come’.

I’ve gone for the album’s centrepiece, ‘Inner G’, featuring the Four Horsemen, a supergroup of Priest, Canibus, Rass Kass and Kurupt. Kass’ verse is alright, if slightly flippant, while Kurupt sounds like he’s freestyling drunk, which is no way to follow Canibus. Having Priest and Canibus share the credit works for me: I bought both rapper’s debut albums in the late 90s, then stopped following them after they severed ties with their more famous patrons (the Wu in Priest’s case, Wyclef for Canibus), and started putting out low-budget albums with hideous cover-art. So I couldn’t say whether The Offering marks a return to form for KP, but it does mark a reunion of sorts with the Wu (he’s appeared live with them, and 4^th Disciple provides a beat), and it's one of the best rap records I’ve heard all year.

Still with the ugly cover-art, mind you

The verses here are more battle-rap than is the norm for most of the album, but as it’s Priest and Canibus, you still get references to John Merrick, the first African Pope, a couple of hypothetical planets, and a US army tactical field manual. Enjoy.

[Verse 1: Killah Priest]

I hide my face like the elephant man
Follow you, reach out of long black sleeves with skeleton hands
Touch rappers, watch them rot, their skin falls off
Boils in the pavement or on the cold boardwalk
Laugh like the jungle while pissing on ‘em
Then I put all my hood weight on the next corner
The next victim
Look in his face with tears in my eyes that crystallize
And turn to stone before they fall from my dome
Like an avalanche
The way I spit sound like an African chant
Priest run through MCs like I’m travelling ants
Peep the form: it’s a Vatican Stance
The Pope Victor the First
The flow spit with the curse
The sicker the verse
The more bodies you stick in the dirt
Wait around I’ma pick you a hearse
I like the long black ones
Drive around while spinning on two wheels
Whatever you feel
It’s blue steel
On black days, silver clouds when the mac spray
Turn rappers into clay
My mind’s a museum filled with microphone exhibits
Of rhymes that I write look like pictures

John Donne up in this motherf***er

[Verse 3: Canibus]

Canibus,

The only MC on earth that did geo-physical research about the new rebirth,
The sun turned the earth to rotisserie dirt,
Listen ‘fore you start dissin me first, this'll be worse,
Twelve degree pole shift displace the ocean,
They send space probes in and come back broken,
Armageddon omen,
Planet X inbound they’re rapidly approaching,
None of us are chosen,
Field manual 20 dash 46 your life’s getting away, you better run for it,
Population reduction, mass destruction
The reset button is coming and some of us love it,
The return of Nibiru, we will prepare you,
Stay away from the media, they will scare you,
Rappers respect beef, tactics and technique,
I’ma show you how the best compete, let’s peep,
My verse on the mic is a surgical strike,
Of herb with the light with no personal life,
Live Saturday night, sacrifice, batter the mic,
Jab to the left, jab to the right.

Killah Priest (feat. Rass Kass, Canibus & Kurupt) – ‘Inner G’ (from The Offering)

More fun:

Iraq-themed fan video for ‘Salvation’

Buy The Offering
Buy For Whom The Beat Tolls

Verse of the week – N.O.R.E. ‘Drink Champ’

Verse of the week – 2007 week 26 – N.O.R.E. ‘Drink Champ’

Hang in there, N.O.R.E.

I tend to want to give NORE credit for the dumb-ass ignorant shit he raps, feeling he’s playing a cannier role than his peers, laughing with us, at himself. Certainly, his lowbrow concerns make a good match for his heavy-handed, slightly-clumsy vocal style. ‘Drink Champ’ is that dumb shit, no doubt. It’s off his new Green Lantern mixtape, the eye-rollingly-titled Cocaine on Steroids, which marks a return to gully club-rap after a commercially unsuccessful flirtation with reggaeton. And why not? NORE was mixing aggression, drug talk, futuristic beats and straight-up foolishness years before it became the industry standard. Nothing in the past few years has topped, erm, ‘Nothin’ in that respect. This tape isn’t spectacular, but it’s decent fun. ‘Drink Champ’ isn’t the dumbest moment: that comes in ‘Shame On You’ when NORE rhymes “rich thug” with “keep it gutter – take a shit in the strip club”. But it’s pretty stupid.

It’s not a great verse or a particularly memorable track, though the Alchemist’s Axel Foley-esque beat is nice enough. It’s partly reflective of a new penchant for storytelling which doesn’t really suit NORE’s style: he has a childish sort of “and then … and then … and then” approach to narrative on several tracks on this tape, and ‘Drink Champ’ has that list-song feel. NORE managed one great story-song, ‘Body In The Trunk’, which worked because his panicky, disjointed response to the dramatic situation contrasted nicely with Nas’ controlled, seamless flow.

But ‘Drink Champ’ is remarkable in being one of very few hip hop tracks that extol the many virtues of heavy drinking (and, in this case, the more frattish sub-genre of competitive drinking). Aside from the Alkaholiks’ career, and the odd contribution from the likes of ODB and Lil’ Jon, alcohol seems only to appear in rap when MCs pour out a little to the memory of their dead homies, or when they’ve inked promotional deals (in which case, understandably, the social status of their chosen liquor is prioritised over its paralytic potential).

It’s also interesting as a new sort of diss track. NORE foregoes gunplay (and the pretence that beef really ought to mean anything), calling out a whole host of rappers whom, he claims, he could drink under the table (or has done). I, for one, am pleased to know that NORE has hit the laughing water with E-40, Prodigy, Archbishop Don Magic Juan and the Pope (apparently), that keeps Pinot Grigio in his studio (classy!), and that the Hot Boy$ once threw him off his game through the presentation of a pork-laden pizza. If all rap beef was settled by rounds of ladyboy chasers, the world would be a more entertaining place.

N.O.R.E. – ‘Drink Champ’

Ayo tequila ain’t nothing to the iron livered dude
Drink on an empty stomach I don’t need food
We could go shot for shot, it don’t matter kid
You can pick the liquor, n***a, shit don’t matter kid
But I don’t drink that hypnotic bullshit
That ain’t a man’s drink, the alize is bullshit
Ask my n***a Prodigy how I go out
He was drinking at my studio and nearly fell out
And E-40 man I had ill nights with
Gallons of carterazzi burning down light shit
Drink stop? Nope. Smoke stop? Nope.
I’m an ill n***a drink red wine with the Pope
Do the drunk-man dance, yeah I’m on that same shit
I been drinking Henny since Cam was Untertainment
So we can drink up, take your mink up
Guaranteed throwing it up and hit your sink up

Ayo I drunk it up with Beans, now Siegel drink well
Sonar studios hard bodied the ???? ­­­­­­
Now BIG’s Hoffa, he’s the one to beat
Remember this a drinking game ain’t no way to cheat
And I can drink different kinds, whatever’s the shit
In the session with Lil’ Jon I think I made him quit
And Bishop Don Juan said “NORE, no more!”
In his LA apartment – Snoop was there – he can vouch for me
And I had the weed lady leave the house with me
Mariah Carey know: NORE go-go
In my studio bottles of Pinot Grigio
See my liver half-Spanish, the other half black
Drinking with Kevin Hart, he almost caught a heart attack
These New York streets that I’m always on
Drunk – I gots to battle with Shyne and Mike Zorn
So any night out, we can play the strike-out.

More fun:

NORE (feat. 3-6 Mafia) – ‘That Club Shit’

Cocaine Blunts has an offensively stupid NORE interview from back in the day.

Buy NORE

Alan gets his ladyboy on.

Verse of the week

a new series. once a week, meaning one less original idea per week. will it last? will it provoke debate and stimulate rap-fuelled fun? who knows - a galactic mystery.

all hail the inaugural GMS Verse Of The Week - 2007 week 25

R.A. The Rugged Man on 'Renaissance' by Hell Razah

For our first venture, everybody's favourite husky-voiced beard-tugging tramp-rapper and Wu-Tang bbq-chef R.A. The Rugged Man obliterates a loping soul sample with a Kool G Rap-style polysyllabic onslaught. This looks to be a single taken off Hell Razah's Renaissance Child - the most underrated album of 2007, in GMS' non-existent half-year round-up. At any rate, they've paid for a video using loose change found down the back of a sofa, and featuring a nice fuzzy hat that Hell Razah's mum was planning to throw out.



"On the real", Hell Razah and his other guest, Tragedy Khadafi, both put in verse-of-the-week level rhymes in what amounts to a Black Market Militia posse cut, with a nicely urgent hook from Timbo King. But, having spent the first half of the video fending off invisible bees while various sub-Wu henchmen stay well clear and inspect each other's winter-wear, Rugged Man owns the song, claiming his status as rap incarnate by invoking a head-spinning succession of genre greats.

It's enough to make GMS get its Pitchfork on: "This makes R.A. the anti-Mims - promulgating an organicist-historicist relationship to hip hop culture and the artistic muse that rebuts the self-actualising natural-rights rhetoric of 'This is Why I'm Hot'." Word to Michel Foucault. Anyway, it makes KRS One's perfectly good Hip Hop Lives sound real hokey by comparison.

R.A. The Rugged Man - 'Renaissance'

Yes oh yes, I guess, suggest the rest you fess
I'm Tribe Quest, I'm Moe Dee Wild West
Treach, 40, Jazz Jeff, Slick Rick, I'm Doug Fresh
I'm def, I'm Canibus before he met Wyclef
Original, I don't bite
I don't need nobody to ghostwrite
Kool G Rap strike the mic
I recite the type of hype
That you like, I'm Sweetback
I'm Uptown Saturday Night
I'm Black Ceasar, I'm Rudy Ray Moore, Dolemite
I'm an assassin rappin'
I'm Grand Wizard Theodore when he invented scratchin'
I'm Wu-Tang Killa Bee, epitome of Public Enemy
Gamblin', hustlin', like Smooth and Trigger be bitter, b
Bums diggety-diggety,
Das literally, I'm Pun in the middle of Little Italy
Didn't do diddly, gettin' me
Listen to me
I'm all good, I'm hood
I'm Ice Cube before he turned soft and went Hollywood
I'm Poetic from Gravediggaz
I'm ODB, I'm Headquarters
I'm Ted Demme, I'm Paul C
If I ain't better than B.I.G., I'm the closest
I'm Richard Pryor before multiple sclerosis
I'm beef, I'm gold teeth, peace
Mantronix, Stetasonic, Symbolic, Bambaata, Soul Sonic
I'm Dre, The Chronic
Melodic with logic Islamic
A poverty prophet
Economy robbery, cock it
I probably properly droppin'
It gotta be honesty
Opposite of novelty, rock it
I Herbie Hancock-it
I'm Onyx Throwin' Ya Gun
I'm Funky 4 + 1

Buy Hell Razah's Renaissance Child
Buy R.A. The Rugged Man's Die, Rugged Man, Die