Album review: Wu Tang Clan's 'Chamber Music'

At this point, it's not much to say that the Wu Tang Clan have left a huge mark on the landscape of music. With an abundance of grit, sharp lyricism, a zeal for kung fu folklore, and a willingness to experiment, the Wu have crafted countless classic songs and a number of classic albums that have already been canonized in pop music history. The ODB was right when he declared, "Wu-Tang is here forever!" So with legacy firmly intact, Wu-Tang's latest release, Chamber Music, seems very much like a parting gift from the Wu-Tang to the hip-hop world. With RZA hinting strongly at retirement on the album's many interludes, the album serves as comfort food for Wu fans as well as a (last?) display of hardcore hip-hop for artists to take after. Call it "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Rap."

Chamber Music is a side project pairing about half of the Wu Tang Clansmen with some of the best of their mid-'90s lyrical peers while being backed by Brooklyn soul band, Tre Williams and The Revelations. The live band translates the gritty Wu sound surprisingly well, so much so that you wouldn't know they were playing unless someone had told you. The songs have all the characteristics of the typical Wu sound: lo-fi breakbeats, minor chords, eerie flourishes, and kung fu movie samples. The production seems like an apology to fans for their last official group effort, 8 Diagrams, which was ill-received for experimenting with more folksy music (even Chamber Music's intro, "Redemption," hints at this desire to make amends). Basically, it gets back to the type of stuff that makes you want to punch someone in the face. Not exactly musically progressive but great for fans.

Lyrically, the album is as dope as you'd expect from such a cast of emcees. RZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, and U-God all represent for the Wu, spitting their brand of street raps, Wu mysticism, and novellistic detail. They're joined by a who's who of '90s NY underground legends including: Masta Ace, AZ, Cormega, Sean Price, Havoc, M.O.P., Kool G. Rap, and Sadat X. All the guests deliver great verses but Cormega and Sadat X stand out above the pack with killer raps we haven't heard from them in too long.

The numerous interludes on the album are almost as entertaining as the music. The interludes feature clips from an interview conducted with the RZA offering little nuggets of Wu wisdom. The interludes win because RZA's sorta-nonsense sets this half-blunted, mystical mood for the album. But if you decipher his Wu Tang speech, you can hear him hinting at retirement--on "The Abbot," which talks about passing the torch, and even on "Free Like ODB," which involves the issue of death and ending just by mentioning ODB. When RZA speaks on "Wise Men," you see that he is very concerned about hip-hop and hopes that artists take after the example set by the Wu-Tang Clan and their '90s brethren. He even takes a little jab at the vapid rap landscape on "Enlightened Statues," where he acknowledges that "you can drink yourself into enlightenment, but the side effects of whatever you're doing is gonna determine how long you enjoy that enlightenment." It's a statement that manages to both accept and criticize that type of insubstantial music. He basically says what Nas said years ago--that hip-hop is dead--but in a much more complicated, more entertaining, more RZA way of saying it.

The greatest shortcoming with this album is purely quantitative. Chamber Music features 17 tracks but only eight of those are songs, clocking in at a pithy 26 minutes total, about half of which is not Wu rapping. At $15, the release reeks of "cash-in gimmick." Still, any fans that felt lukewarmly about 8 Diagrams will relish this experience. Chamber Music offers old-fashioned Wu-Tang gutter music with a peak inside the genius mind of RZA as an added bonus. Hopefully, hip-hop artists take note and carry the torch well after the Wu Tang Clan ducks into the shadows.