No pop artist has been more consistently disappointing in the past few years than the RZA. Granted, as the evil genius behind some of the most inventive and unsettling hip-hop ever made, he's set the bar for rap producers to stratospheric heights-- it's a lot to live up to. But when he followed his early masterpieces with a long torrent of trifling, sluggish and insufferably narcissistic material, the fans started wondering: What the hell happened? The clearest explanation I've heard so far is that the RZA quite possibly went insane sometime around late '98, the year his superhero alter-ego Bobby Digital first appeared as the basis for a poorly conceptualized solo project. The decline since then has been painful to witness, like a careening school bus plummeting over a precipice with screaming children inside.
When Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers appeared in '93, I was an instant, fanatical devotee. I felt like I'd found in the RZA a kindred spirit who shared my love of dark, angry beats, Kung-Fu films, 40s, and hos with equal zest and abandon. That I was a funny-looking white kid from the midwest made no difference. GZA's Liquid Swords, Raekwon's Only Built for Cuban Links, ODB's Return to the 36 Chambers; for a couple of years the RZA could do no wrong. But inevitably, he started slipping. Though still a strong release, Wu-Tang Forever had its share of question marks ("Black Shampoo"?), and The Swarm, a collection of songs featuring rappers mostly outside of the original Enter nucleus, was mostly a disaster with a few bright spots. That, of course, was five years ago now, and by my count, seven albums. And though there have been glimpses of his early genius and visionary lyrical style since (particularly songs like "Lab Drunk" and "Brooklyn Babies" on the otherwise dire Bobby Digital albums), they've always seemed like the last dying gasps of a wounded giant.
As if teasing us with the possibility of a dramatic rebirth, Birth of a Prince opens with a quiet, soulful sample of a woman singing, "It's a new dawn/ It's a new day/ It's a new life for me." If only this were an appropriate precursor to the album and not just wishful thinking. Still mired in the tired blaxploitation-era pathos of his most previous work, RZA adopts any number of interchangeable personas on the album-- from gun-toting revolutionary thug, to erudite religious humanist, to champion satisfier of female loins-- and sorting them all out quickly becomes tedious. In direct contrast to these workalike personalities, the music is schizophrenically uneven. Isaac Hayes-laden soul and funk riffs collide with 80s hip-hop minimalism and 60s R&B; crooning to create a fragmented, disorienting landscape of sound. Add to that the RZA's dated off-tempo drums, deranged keyboards and slurred rhymes, and you come up just short of a muddled catastrophe.
"Fast Cars" offers a taste of the mind-numbing narcissism and affected gangsta banality to which the RZA has succumbed. Over a dull, relentless beat, scattershot horns and what sounds like a squeaky toy piano, he warns, "Gats burst off, thugs take their shirts off/ Five niggaz drop off before I got the verse off/ Pop go the glock, wipe the fucking smirk off." As the chorus demonstrates, this is also the most inane homage ever recorded: "We be ridin' fast cars/ Weed all in the glass jar/ Chrome on my crash bar." Even Ghostface can't help, as he recycles the same tired lines about Clark Wallabies, ice jewelry and brand new jeans we've heard since day one.
Ol' Dirty Bastard appears on "We Pop", yet another song about shooting glocks (the RZA's last solo album, Digital Bullit, featured an almost identical one called "Glocko Pop"), but only sparingly on the chorus. It has the same bass-laden beats and floating electronic strings of a 50 Cent song, but with none of the playful wit on its sing-songy chorus, "We pop/ We brawl/ Get money to the day we fall/ My glock/ My four/ Go shot through your bedroom door." And it goes on like that. The 80s-infected "Bob 'N I" recalls the minimal old-school production of Audio Two and early Marley Marl, but serves mainly as a forum for the RZA's nifty rhyme couplings, like "cannon" and "Michael Landon," or "defrost 'em" and "proceed with caution/ You'll get your beans baked in Boston." Which means nothing.
"A Day to God Is 1000 Years" is the RZA's obligatory per-album summing up of his confusing hodgepodge of pseudo-religious philosophies and political views. Over a deep soul sample, he raps, "Time couldn't end me/ Even the great devil Satan that tried to befriend me.../ I face my worldly challenge/ In the scale of justice and my heart remains balanced and neutral/ My respect for all men is mutual." Sometimes when I'm listening to the RZA's lyrics a line from Spinal Tap pops into my head: "It's a thin line between clever and stupid." I wonder whether he could actually explain in non-illusory terms what, exactly, he believes in.
The RZA, with so much experience under his belt and insane expectations from his audience, carries the hulking burden of his past awkwardly. But if nothing else-- and maybe this is denial, but-- Birth of a Prince, while a career low, doesn't feel like the last word. RZA has yet to bounce back from his post-Wu slump, but I have the distinct feeling that, sooner or later, he will. I just hope that when that time comes, I haven't completely lost interest.
