Soundbite: Wu-Tang Clan

How can hip-hop be dead if Wu-Tang is forever?

It’s a good question, and “8 Diagrams” answers it, if not as affirmatively as it could have.

After a six year hiatus, the now eight strong Wu-Tang Clan, straight out of the slums of Shaolin, returns with their fifth album, their first since the death of founding member Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Clan members Raekwon and Ghostface Killah have gone on record to say they were unsatisfied with what they thought were the bloated orchestral beats of the finished album, blaming it mainly on the de facto leader and executive producer, the RZA. Thankfully, the songs on the album pretty much refute Rae and Ghost’s claims.

Raekwon’s allegation that RZA has become a “hip-hop hippie” is pretty much baseless. The beats do tend less towards booming bass and more towards funky samples and the occasional guitar, but they are not too far removed from anything the Clan has produced previously. And what’s the RZA sound without strings anyway?

The opening track, “Campfire,” gets things started off right. Dialogue from a kung-fu movie plays over a haunting sample, and then a single booming distorted bass note cuts through as a sample of chanting men chugs underneath. The drums boom in and Method Man tears it up with his signature singsong wordplay: “Cruisin’ down the interstate / Just follow while I innovate / Too many try and imitate / Medallion like a dinner plate.”

“Rushing Elephants” is the closest thing to a certified banger the album has. A killer orchestral sample with flutes and chimes is looped over a simple, pounding beat, while Raekwon, GZA, RZA and Masta Killa all drop impeccable verses.

However, sometimes Rae and Ghost’s pre-release complaints start to make sense. “Unpredictable” starts out as yet another potential banger, with Bernard Herrmann-like string stabs jabbing over a jittery beat, but derails into a bizarre vocoded acid nightmare halfway through. Similarly, RZA’s obvious vanity project “Sunshine” is a molasses-slow solo track where he prattles on incomprehensibly. The much hyped “The Heart Gently Weeps” also doesn’t meet up to expectations, mainly because everyone sounds bored. But, you do get to hear Ghostface sing, which is priceless.

“8 Diagrams” is a frustrating album in that its overall strength and its forward-thinking beats clearly render most of the intra-Clan complaints null and void, but it also isn’t the furious declaration of rap superiority that it could have been. The age of Soulja Boy and “A Bay Bay” seems like the perfect time for the Clan to retake the throne and relive the glory days when a Wu-Tang album could go platinum.

Ultimately, this album falls short of that because of its experimental nature, but no other album will have wordplay like “From darkness to DNA / I move with my brother / And we resonate / Energy that shifts in colors.” What? Awesome.

““ Jake Ayres

E-mail Ayres at jayres@media.ucla.edu.

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