My Words Are Weapons – my weapons are words
Amongst all those newbies und young guns in the rap game, there are couple of elders who just never vanish. They most terrific thing about those guys is the fact that they don’t need to release five albums a month – they release an album in about two or three years, they don’t need the high end producers, and they don’t need the featurings with the fame of the name. One of those living legends is the Wu-Tang Clan’s Genius aka GZA. He released his fourth album “Legend of the Liquid Sword”.

There’s just one word to describe the whole record: Solid. It’s a back to the roots album, not too jiggy and not clubbish at all. But it does not go back to the real old school at all, it just stops itself somewhere between ’92 and ’98. The beats are down-to-earth, heavy and, well, solid. It’s not a “Girls move your asses” record, it’s a “Fly girls and homeboys, bop yo heads” record. Throughout the whole album, GZA stays true to this line. Listen to “Knock, Knock”, where he takes a shot at current mainstream MCs and compares them to his style and the Clan’s back when they hit the scene. Check out “Animal Planet” to hear Tyquan Walker use samples as if it was back in the days and GZA profiting from a clever jungle metaphore. Give “Fam (Members Only)” with RZA & Masta Killa a shot and find out how it’s still the ninja flick sounds in the background. Do you know what I mean with the term solid? But the best track o n the album has to be “Fame”: This joint continues the series of tracks that started with “Labels” two albums ago that was followed by “Publicity” on the last album. GZA hits three verses where he just uses names of famous persons to tell a whole story: That’s lyricism, that’s word wit, that’s great ideas.

On the whole, we just lack of one thing: The big, big, big burner. There are a lot of great tracks I really like, but there’s not the ONE track that kills you. Well, maybe it’s “Fame”, ‘cause this one’s really great. But I found one or two tracks that are not as great as the others.
But still, this album is definitely worth any money, not even for the fans of the Wu member or the Clan itself. And Inspectah Deck is still hot as hell.

***** out of SIX SHOTS.