The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will have many great minds gracing its lecture halls in 2012, but 45-year old rapper Gary Grice, aka GZA, will almost certainly be the only one who actually claims "Genius" as his job title. Yeah, the accomplishments of MIT alumni in the fields of genetics, engineering, and computer technology are certainly impressive, but are any of those fuckin' with Liquid Swords? When I read literature on the aforementioned topics, I seem to recognize only the proper nouns and maybe the prepositions, so in the interest of confirming the greatness of Liquid Swords, I'll defer to someone who had a lot more experience with genius than I do: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." And really, there's hardly a hip-hop record, Wu-Tang or otherwise, that demonstrates how knowledge is power in more easily understandable terms than Liquid Swords: You're certainly not on GZA's level, but he rarely goes over your head.
There's never been a shortage of "real hip-hop" acolytes ready to explain why Liquid Swords sent MCs into hiding in 1995. But the question with a reissue like this one is, "Why has it endured?" Because while the deluxe packaging certainly makes it a worthwhile purchase, it's far short of revelatory: In addition to a long interview with GZA in the liner notes, you get something described as a "working" chess set and a bonus disc of instrumentals in case you're the type who likes to spend a night with friends arguing about who gets to be RZA during "4th Chamber" karaoke. As to why it needs to come out in 2012, it's simultaneously welcome and wholly unnecessary in the same sense a Beatles, Velvet Underground, or Led Zeppelin reissue is: It'll never again be the sound of contemporary pop music, but it's equally impossible to imagine a time when it fails to be a rite of passage for the discerning, a "phase" of intense immersion and compulsive consumption almost inevitable after first contact. It's more informative and worthwhile to view its impact on listeners than other artists, and Liquid Swords is the easiest entry point once people start going beyond the Wu-Tang group LPs.
The reason? It's the most potent distillation of the Wu aesthetic as laid out on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Whereas Tical, Ironman, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, and Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version extrapolated upon themes and personalities that necessarily had to be curtailed in the interest of cohesion, GZA as a solo artist was essentially everything that distinguished Wu-Tang from other crews: strictly chess, kung-fu, battle raps, investigative reports, Five Percenter Islam. Most crucially, out of everyone in Wu-Tang's original formation, GZA is the only one who didn't seem to have much interest in being a star. Nor was he promoted as one, even if he did end up stealing the Wu's "Chappelle's Show" skits. Which still worked out: You didn't need to be a star or get much airplay to go gold back in 1996, and do you even know which track here was the first single? Do you recall ever seeing any videos from Liquid Swords? The album's lack of commercial ambition is also reflected in its status as one of the least sexual hip-hop records ever made. Off the top of my head, there are probably two total lines which acknowledge women as physical beings.
That asceticism was to expected, since on Wu-Tang's introductory posse cut "Protect Ya Neck", GZA was everything he would be for the duration of his career. In a single line, "First of all, who's your A&R?/ A mountain climber that plays an electric guitar," he conveys a righteous, hard-earned wisdom of someone who'd seen and experienced more things as an artist and a human being than everyone else in the Clan. Which was true. He's the oldest member of the crew, and like RZA, he had a formative and demoralizing crash course in industry rule #4080 that led to a long-forgotten curiosity of a debut in Words From the Genius. Those lessons inform GZA's lyrics to a great extent, whether it's a casual but fatal dismissal during "Shadowboxin'" ("Check these non-visual niggas with tapes and a portrait/ Flood the seminar trying to orbit this corporate industry") and especially on "Labels", the track here that might lose new listeners most quickly because something like 85% of the companies GZA puns upon no longer exist.
And so then, Liquid Swords is a consummate MC's album, and finding a weak line on it is nearly impossible. What makes it all the more impressive is that he's rarely, as the similarly stentorian Chuck D once put it, rhyming "for the sake of riddlin'." He's not beyond a well-timed "motherfuckin'" to pad out his cadences, though, and it's most likely the record with the most consistently astounding use of simile, that easily and frequently abused stepbrother of metaphor. "Lyrics are weak like clock radio speakers," "I bang like vehicular homicide and July 4th in Bed Stuy," "that's minimum and feminine like sandals." Outside of RZA's phenomenal third-eye verse from "4th Chamber” (yell "lynched the prominent dominant Islamic, Asiatic black Hebrew" on the subway, it's fun), there is almost nothing here that can't be easily understood by a teenager.
GZA's rhymes here are incredible, but Liquid Swords isn't just GZA's only great album, it might just be his only good one (though fine arguments have certainly been made on the behalf of Legend Of The Liquid Sword). It's hardly surprising that the man who told his peers during the height of hip-pop commercial fusion "make it brief son, half short and twice strong" didn't have much patience for rap derived from classic verse-chorus songwriting. But nonetheless, his later albums would make it abundantly clear how everything went right for him on Liquid Swords in terms of hooks and beats and song structure. (Listen to the chorus of "Did Ya Say That?" from Legend of the Liquid Sword or pretty much any track produced by someone not named RZA to get what I mean.) Really, 17 years after the fact, I'm still struck by how a record of such grim subject matter and "opium scented, dark tinted" music could actually be kinda fun. It's a crucial balance and even the most unhinged of the Wu are willing to exchange a bit of their own levity for GZA's gravitas. Ol' Dirty Bastard shows up in the only way that makes sense, refereeing a match between GZA and Inspectah Deck by yelling "duel of the iron mic! It's that 52 fatal strike! NUH!" Which is meant to convey absolutely nothing other than "this is the illest rap battle ever." Ghostface Killah sips rum out of the Stanley Cup while asking the toughest metaphysical questions on "4th Chamber". "Shadowboxin'" has no hook, but the interplay between Method Man and GZA made it a surprising interloper during frat parties in the late 90s. Catchy hooks abound, as with the playful reminiscence of the title track, the insatiable yet calm list of demands on "Gold", the impossibly bugged-out synth hook from "4th Chamber" tracing the flight of a mosquito.
One of the many great things about Liquid Swords is that while it's an unimpeachable work of lyrical mastery, of fierce intellect and sound morals, it's in no way a record for prudes. Yes, there are plenty of high-minded theological dissertations, particularly the Killah Priest solo curiosity "B.I.B.L.E.". But the criminology element is every bit as present as on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. While Raekwon and Ghostface sounded high off their own supply, embodying Mafioso and druglords dealing with the extreme emotions, rewards and larger than life personalities, GZA is far more objective about the situation. After a classic skit ("I think you do know him"), he announces the start of "Killah Hills 10304" by yelling "LIFE OF A DRUG DEALER" in case you're unaware of the subject at hand. But even with that kind of straight talk, GZA still hovers slightly above the situation and his associates are indeed like chess pieces, functional pawns and slightly higher ranking associates who are still ultimately disposable-- the surgically-altered drug mules, solemn terrorists, low-level dealers and anonymous fiends.
The more important contrast to Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, RZA's self-described "summer album," Liquid Swords was clearly meant for winter warz. During the first round of solo releases, RZA created a sonic template that masterfully mirrored the personality of every MC, and this is his most cohesive and visionary work largely because GZA was already so fully formed. Even the kung-fu samples are the most seamlessly integrated, from the unnerving retelling of a failed assassination which begins the LP to the slain warrior who ends it, befallen by a decapitation replete he always assumed he'd inflict on another-- it's impossible to shake the grotesque sounds of his final breaths, where his slit neck emits a wailing winter wind. It's the most horrific effect on Liquid Swords, but not by much: the soul and funk guitars were originally pressed to vinyl and hot wax, whereas here, they sound like they were brought out of storage from particularly forbidding meat lockers. The lo-fi digital hiss of Alesis cymbals and snares evoke dirty, crushed snow and black ice. The slightly off-key hook from "Cold World" would later be sung by D'Angelo, but it's the bundled-up, shearling and Timberland's rocking dude on the cover of Brown Sugar, not the simmering lothario on Voodoo. And yet, there are still strange pockets of warmth: the minimalist patches during "Cold World" that evoke the eerie, disorienting calm of city streets abandoned during a snowstorm, that guitar bump in "I Gotcha Back" flickering like a trashcan fire, the juking Willie Mitchell riff in the title track that RZA admits was a rare straight rip, but a very inspired one all the same.
I won't begrudge any purist who wants to hear the crackle of "Duel of the Iron Mic" or the dense murk of "I Gotcha Back" enhanced by vinyl. But to these ears, Liquid Swords is a winter album meant to be heard in winter which is why most of us grew enamored with it as a portable experience, lodged into CD players or Walkmen, and stuffed between layers of puffy coats on subways, school buses. Even a solo listen in a car feels fairly inadequate, you almost have to ice grill a neighboring passenger while you're listening to it, knowing that they're plotting on the same gold. It's a record to make your surroundings as cartoonishly violent as Liquid Swords' chessboard cover, when you recognize that you're, as GZA memorably puts it, "trapped in a deadly video game with just one man." I've lived in Los Angeles for the past six years and really haven't found a lot of times appropriate to listen to Liquid Swords. That's not an indictment of its quality; it's a confirmation of its monomaniacal genius.
