Artist: Wu-Tang
Album: The Saga Continues
Label: eOne
Release Date: October 13, 2017
To Infinity
Written by Silas Valentino
You know it, I know it; Wu-Tang is forever. The Staten Island ennead–who in 1993 produced simultaneously one of the best debuts and overall greatest hip-hop LPs ever–mastered the straddle between longevity and legacy. Wu-Tang could easily call it quits any day now and their influence would remain undisputed (heck, they could have gone out with a flash bomb when their 2015 double album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was sold to one person and one conniving capitalist only: “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli) but no–Wu-Tang have a few more before they hit the door.
As made sonically evident in their latest, The Saga Continues, also the collective’s fourth compilation album, Wu-Tang are embracing their mid-life adventures with throwback production in their beats and relevant wit coating their lyrics. Eight of the nine Wu-Tang Clan constituents are represented throughout this 18-track, slow-burning odyssey with member U-God absent due to the lawsuit he brought against his comrades last year over royalties. His truancy nominally classifies The Saga Continues as a Wu-Tang–hold the “Clan”–experience. Why can’t it be all so simple?
Beyond hawking numerous lyrical shots at Shkreli–who not only purchased their album for $2 million but then used snippets of its unheard mystery to soundtrack his video gushing over the Donald John Trump presidential victory–The Saga Continues keeps things perky and pertinent by serving as a showcase for Allah Mathematics, a Queens beatmaker who produced the entire album with RZA keeping ransk as executive producer. Mathematics is an established Deejay (he also drew the classic Wu-Tang Clan logo) who’s worked with Wu-Tang plenty of times in the past but through his guidance, the rest of clan sound their best in years. When speaking to Beats 1, RZA explained that Mathematics’s mastery of beat production recall an early-day Wu-Tang where drum and bass reign supreme (not to mention a finesse with an ASR-10 sampling keyboard) and he was reinvigorating for the RZA and the group. It’s this continuation of a classic Wu-Tang sound that earns the album its name.
Although blotted at times across its 18 numbers, a majority of the album’s tracklist satisfies. “Lesson Learn’d” pairs up Inspectah Deck and Redman to welcome us to their latest cartoonish episode where INS begins with a nod to all-time classic verse (“I said one, two, three and to the fo’”–lean back, Snoop) before reestablishing his authority on the mic: “Hater, wouldn’t last a day in my shoes/You know very well, bet he swell, you can tell he jeal’/My price hiking like the pills Martin Shkreli sell.”
Later, on the mid-album highlight “Pearl Harbor,” Ghostface Killah, Method Man, RZA invite the since-deceased Brooklyn legend Sean Price who lights up the track with his carnivore candor: “Yo, you ever been face-fucked with a four-fifth?/Sweating, facial expression is stressing like ‘oh shit.’” The beat features East Coast staples: chest-pounding rhythm, horn section plush and a little bit of soul but it’s the playful lyrics that mark the track. During the song’s hook, Ghostface goes “A bunch of ho-ho-hoes wanna ride with me” and then receives a genuine callback of “Go Santa!” It’s 2017 and Wu-Tang just gave a shout-out to Old Saint Nick in an effort to edge out Run-D.M.C. for the best hip-hop Christmas moment.
In a closing moment of somber exposition, The Saga Continues winds down with the spoken-word “Message” from author and professor Kaba Hiawatha Kamene. He details the plight of a fatherless child who enters the world ill prepared but Kamene demands we fight to get these lost ones back. “But we as adults, get to buy them back. I’m ready to compete with anybody for our young people’s minds. And what we have to is change the paradigm of how we’re interacting with them, deal with them from a heartfelt place where they can understand.”
It may seem boldly idealistic or obnoxiously altruistic but Wu-Tang are, and will forever be, a mentor for the mislaid and the damned.