If you squint hard enough, a collaboration between RZA and Interpol’s Paul Banks makes a certain kind of sense. There’s a complementary starkness between Interpol’s icicled post-punk and the hip-hop RZA perfected with Wu-Tang Clan. It’s even possible to imagine Banks’ aura of gloom re-sparking some of the wilder, more macabre impulses of RZA’s Gravediggaz days. At their respective peaks, these two might have created a gnarly, gothic spectacle of a rap record together.
That’s not the record they made because they aren’t those artists anymore. Rather than carry on as the same shadowy figure of those first two Interpol records, Banks has revealed himself to be a pretty normal guy who likes normal guy things: hip-hop, clubs, and the good life in general. He’s covered J Dilla and released a rap mixtape titled Everybody on My Dick Like They Supposed to Be. RZA, meanwhile, has spent much of the last decade softening his image and broadening his horizons beyond rap. He's starring in a biopic about a porn star Venessa Del Rio and did a track with James Blake. Both artists have proven themselves to be richer, more complex figures than they introduced themselves as—and yet, paradoxically, less interesting figures. Each fought to escape the very box in which they did their best work.
Maybe that restlessness is what drew them together. There’s no great story behind their partnership, no unlikely shared acquaintance or serendipitous meet-cute at the backstage of a festival. RZA’s manager suggested the two get together, so they did, and after bonding over noodles and chess they set about recording this extremely workmanlike album as Banks & Steelz (Julian Plenti & Bobby Digital didn’t have the same ring to it, apparently). Banks had been a longtime Wu-Tang fan, of course, while RZA only began to explore Banks’ work after their initial meeting. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he cited not Turn on the Bright Lights or Antics, but rather 2007’s Our Love To Admire as the Interpol album he connected with the most. That’s hardly the consensus pick, but it checks out because it’s the album that mostly closely mirrors the transitional one Wu-Tang put out that year, 8 Diagrams. Both works expanded the group’s templates in ways that, in general, their architects found a lot more rewarding than their fans did. And so with Anything But Words, both jump on the opportunity to branch out. These sort of rocker/rapper collaborations tend to be lopsided, with one party, usually the rocker, carrying the work load while the other phones it in (anybody interested in seeing this dynamic in action should watch the strangely fascinating making-of documentary for Linkin Park’s Collision Course, which features more footage of the band in the studio waiting for Jay Z to arrive than it does of Jay Z actually in the studio). To their credit, though, Banks and RZA are each so engaged that their project always feels like a true partnership. Banks’ guitars and synths amicably share space with RZA’s tidy beats, and every track judiciously reserves equal space for both voices.
Run The Jewels, the tag-team duo fueled in equal parts by righteousness and friendship, initially feels like the aspirational model here. On opener “Giant” RZA even channels some of Killer Mike’s bulldozer conviction (“Fuck CNN, this is ghetto editorial!” he fumes.) His rhymes still have a disjointed quality that becomes tedious in large exposures—he rarely carries a thought for more than a few bars—but it’s been years since he’s sounded this fired up. For anybody raised on those first few Wu-Tang records, his unmistakable lispy bark will always elicit a Pavlovian endorphin rush.
Banks, however, couldn't sound more out of place. Instead of singing in the focused baritone on Interpol’s first records, he leans on his higher registers, so much so that he even approaches howling, Adam Levine, “Just like animals, animals, like animals oh” territory. It’s as if he set out to make a rap album for people whose favorite part of Graduation was Chris Martin. And since nearly every song rigidly sticks to the same RZA verse/Banks chorus dynamic, all that mewling grows old fast.
Anything But Words’ best moments are the ones offer some relief from that endless back and forth. Kool Keith lends his weird energy to “Sword in the Stone,” a satisfying enough bit of fan service for hip-hop heads who have been waiting for a RZA/Keith team-up, while Florence and the Machine’s Florence Welch capably channels the spirit of contemporary R&B during her guest turn on “Wild Season.”
There are also decent verses from Ghostface Killah, Method Man and Masta Killa, but those outside voices aren’t enough to break up the often cloying monotony of an hour-long record that tries to repackage two cult artists as a mass-appeal pop act. Banks and RZA spent three years on this record, adding layers upon layers to the tracks and polishing them to an arduous sheen, then releasing it with the full backing of a major label. In interviews, they give off the sense that they’re hoping Banks & Steelz becomes something more permanent than just a one-off dalliance. But at some point during that all that tinkering, and all their efforts to mimic the chorus-centric template of Top 40’s tackiest crossover rap, the record lost whatever scrappy charm it might have held. Anything But Words is the rare side project that might have been better off if both parties had cared a little less.
