1999’s Beneath the Surface and 2002’s Legend of the Liquid Sword didn’t measure up to the commercial success of Liquid Swords or the album’s profundity, but they found GZA pushing himself and were critically lauded. 1995’s Liquid Swords, his sophomore album, is an accepted classic, a dark and damaging treatise on the art of rap and the horrors of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Without question, though, GZA has one of the best solo catalogs of the group, one as calculated and economical as his verses. Wu scholars will always debate which Clan member had the greatest solo record. He wasted few words while laying waste to everything in sight. GZA's best songs were approachable to the casual rap fan but deep enough for those willing to probe beneath the surface. Somewhere between crime author and wisened monk, GZA never yelled, almost rapping conversationally while delivering fatal lines to MC’s, shady record labels, and anyone else who elicited his scorn. Instead, he more closely resembled a ninja, rapping with swiftness and energy but an unshakable calm, the subtext as menacing as explicit threats. GZA didn’t have the charisma and swing of Method Man, the outlandish and captivating presence of ODB, the slang-laden verses of Raekwon, or the vivid and instantly quotable free-associative bars of Ghostface Killah. Listen to the best GZA songs on Apple Music and Spotify. Two years later, after joining Wu-Tang, he emerged as arguably the sharpest among all of the revered swordsmen on the group’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), delivering cutting anchor-leg verses on “Protect Ya Neck” and “Wu-Tang: 7th Chamber.” It could’ve been over for him no second act. His inauspicious 1991 debut, Words from the Genius, didn’t chart or produce any successful singles. GZA was the only member to release an album before Wu-Tang. Scott Fitzgerald’s aphorism that American lives have no second acts. GZA’s the only one with a style that actually instilled fear in me… He could make “cat” and “rat” sound threatening.”Ī cousin to RZA and ODB, GZA was one-third of Wu-Tang’s foundational trio. I knew in my heart way back before the Wu-Tang, and I strived to be like him, not like them.
I mean, exceptional MCs,” RZA wrote in 2004’s The Wu-Tang Manual. I’ve met them, and they’re exceptional MCs. “ Rakim, Kool G Rap, Kane – I’ve listened to them since day one.
#New hip hop code#
No Wu-Tang member adhered to the code like the eldest, GZA, AKA The Genius. Disciples know the core tenets: mental discipline and lyrical mastery, the pursuit of knowledge (of the world and of self) to sharpen your verbal sword. They created a cinematic world, a loose ideology, and a lexicon that fans, critics, and other artists have studied like scripture. Studying old styles to fashion innumerable new ones, Wu-Tang reimagined project buildings as pagodas, transposed the violence in their respective neighborhoods (AKA Shaolin) into verbal kung-fu and John Woo flicks. It’s impossible to imagine rap without Wu-Tang Clan, the largest and most influential group New York will probably ever know.
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