Cappadonna
The Pillage
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Every dynasty looks to perpetuate itself, and as these two debuts suggest, Wu-Tang Clan is no different. Throughout the troubled middle of the hip-hop Nineties, as the Clan built its international empire of New York uncommercial commerciality, guys like Killah Priest and Cappadonna showed up at the studio on time, providing the odd group choruses and guest raps for the Clan's off-kilter music. Now come their crooked close-ups. Creative, headstrong, singular and endlessly peculiar, both place themselves in the hands of young-generation Clan producers like True Master and 4th Disciple. Priest and Cappadonna also collaborate with established masters Genius and RZA, respectively, adding more luster
Read More to what Cappadonna calls their "Wu pedigrees." Killah Priest, smoothly rapping over a pristine nineteenth-century piano figure and a faintly simmering drum track, excoriates those he takes to be "fake MCs" on HeavyMental. "I've burned thousands already," he boasts, decreeing that "too many rappers in the East wanna be gangstas" and "too many gangstas in the West wanna be rappers." He brooks no Hollywood flash or playa high jinks; he's on a Messianic trip, opening HeavyMental with "One Step," a gospel-infused testament urging unity and progress, gussied up with references to the Bible and American history. On "Cross My Heart," he goes strong against a wound-up True Master track that twists grooves like Play-Doh. But Killah Priest gradually spaces out on HeavyMental, blurring his focus, ending up not with a rich, history-minded documentary of his concerns but, instead, an album that merely creates a decent vibe. On The Pillage, Cappadonna triumphs with strategies that are as weird as mustard on pasta. He enters with grand cragginess, lithely rapping on his loping, brass-flecked "Slang Editorial" and remaining as lively throughout "Pillage," a track that sounds as though producer Goldfinghaz's three-year-old is messing with the console. You're not sure what to make of them; these two songs might introduce anything. Then, producing "Run," RZA swings on board, erecting keyboard scaffolding and ladders high above the drumbeats. Cappadonna really gets in the zone. On tracks like "Blood on Blood War" and the somewhat slower "MCF," he celebrates Wu-Tang as RZA devises nervous grooves made of sweetness, finesse, syncopation and countless fast-minded mathematical calibrations. True Master is as magnetically strange as RZA on "Supa Ninjaz," which features U-God, Method Man and a background of "rock the body, body." And, whether howling out the title of the ur-wack ballad "Oh Donna" or rapping above the wonderfully deafening, lawn-chair groove of "Check for a Nigga," for the rest of the album Cappadonna keeps coming with his notion of today's hit parade. He even rewrites and rewires "Shaft" on "Black Boy." Where Killah Priest attempts a lofty persona that almost presides above the Clan universe, Cappadonna is down
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