In a crew filled with acrobatic swordsmen, drunken boxers, and masters of the flying guillotine, GZA always struck me as the type of dude who kills opponents with carefully placed acupuncture needles: not quite as flashy, but just as impressive considering the pinpoint precision it requires. GZA possesses a well-worn, refined delivery that packs a lot of calculating wordplay behind a relaxed, almost deadpan façade. It's a smooth presence that makes workmanlike beats sound like taut head-nodders and meticulously crafted production like pure cinema. His new album, Pro Tools, is another in a line of notoriously delayed Wu-Tang-affiliated records; as a result, instead of being greeted with excitement it's being considered the work of a guy with something to prove.
What Pro Tools does prove is that the Genius is still lyrically sharp. The conceptual rhymes he's known for work well without getting too overbearing, and GZA still has a knack for building metaphors without stretching them thin. Sometimes it's simple, like the chorus to "Alphabets", which fuses Five Percenter linguistic mysticism and show-off vocab in a divine trip through the ABCs ("Universe, Victory, Wisdom, unknown/(why/Y), zig zag zig, and now back home"). Other times he runs through every possible twist of phraseology, as in "0% Finance", which runs with the girl-as-car metaphor and throws in enough make and model name references to fill an issue of Road & Track. And the title of "Columbian Ties" looks like a typo until it becomes clear that he's switched the rise-and-fall-of-a-hustler references from victims of Bogota cartels to people killed from D.C.'s foreign policy, and it's a cutting joke that he didn't have to change the scenario too much ("A place where the majority is goin' for self/ With the agenda not far beyond personal wealth").
Like most upper-tier MCs, GZA can still sound compelling big-upping his own skills ("Pencil") or taunting his foes, as he does in G-Unit dis track "Paper Plates"-- which is actually pretty damn funny. But aside from his lyrics, his biggest asset is the pull of his voice and how it bolsters even the most perfunctory, cheap-ass-sounding production-- which is fortunate, because there's not much here that you'll remember for the beats. Most of them are passable enough, even if they consist largely of textbook digital-era RZA mannerisms and the occasional derivative knockoff (particularly Jose "Choco" Reynoso's beat for "0% Financing", which sounds like a Xerox of Arabian Knight's beat for Legend of the Liquid Sword cut "Stay in Line"). And they compare semi-favorably to the two tracks that the RZA himself contributes-- the tinny but sinister "Paper Plate" and "Life Is a Movie", which liberally incorporates Gary Numan's "Films" to compellingly weird effect. But it's hard to overlook how ordinary they sound when the voice connected to them is the same one that spit over some of the most immaculate beats ever put together by the RZA (Liquid Swords) or DJ Muggs (Grandmasters), and even production-by-committee records like Beneath the Surface and Legend of the Liquid Sword had more stylistic cohesion to them.
As a pure lyrical record goes, Pro Tools doesn't disappoint, but fans who want everything to be a banger will be let down to find that there's not a lot of headknock here. The buzz around Pro Tools is that GZA just sounds too tired to get people amped, and while that's a more negative assessment than he deserves, this still doesn't really sound like the kind of album you'd call on to fill anyone's late-summer barbeque party soundtracking duties. But high-energy anthems aren't what made GZA great in the first place, and if you're into his most characteristic attributes-- high-concept extended-metaphor lyrics, hard-boiled storytelling, that calmly authoritative voice-- Pro Tools is still sharp enough to draw blood.
