#480

Impressions:  The title of the album itself is a challenge: “Are you tough enough for this?”  I guess we’ll see. Hmmm, kinda takes a while to get going… “Knuckleheadz,” production boring, but bouncy. Not bad, but seems a bit ordinary for ’90s hip hop. “Criminology” clicked a bit more from me. This album’s vibe takes me back to college; living in a post-graduate haze back in the “slums” of Champaign, IL,  shooting hoop and hanging out with local hip-hop and techno DJs. That’s some weird deja vu. Lyrically, it’s a densely packed album, that showcases cinematic storytelling, it’s more of a audio track of a movie about the rise and fall of gangsters. Raekwon can get a little one note as a rapper, but there’s a lot going on here. “Rainy Dayz” has a nice female back up singer and string sample that mixes thing up. Kind of long and too many “skits” in between songs, although I will never get enough of kung-fu movie samples. Nas makes an impression with his smooth flow on “Verbal Intercourse.” I don’t know what it is about the Wu-Tang brand… I like and admire them, but for some reason they’ve never won me over completely as a fan. Maybe it’s my personal taste or something, but for a group with so much skill and so many members: their whole world view seems really narrow. But, I guess that’s the point of this album, hence the crime narrative. I also suspect an album like this will suffer from my one-listen-and-review format. I could see a record like this needing a bunch of listens before it becomes fully appreciated.