Liquid Swords Chess Box Edition Chapters 1-6

Hey everyone, as you can see we have in our clutches one of the best Hip Hop albums ever recorded released in a box set form. Before I judge whether the overall package is worthy of a price, I wanted to take a close look at the musical content first. I tried to avoid past interviews so below is a personal reflection about the album. This is Part 1 of a 3 Part post where I examine the music in two posts and then discuss the quality of the overall package in the last part. 

New York City in 1995 was a crime ridden beast that chewed most up without even bothering to spit their bones out. It was a slice of vicious reality where ghetto life could be cut short by the wrong choices available in the right hood gone wrong. Despite those factors among many the city had one shining light of salvation that everyone would take notice of, Hip Hop music. A lot of great artists were coming into their own at the time like Busta Rhymes and Gang Starr while Biggie was in full effect with Ready To Die already out. On the main stage were rowdy up comers The Wu-Tang Clan triple threat of releases beginning with Ol' Dirty Bastard's Return To the 36 Chambers and Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx followed by GZA's Liquid Swords, perhaps the most lyrically potent of the Wu solo efforts.

Liquid Swords is a very dark and methodical album where it does nothing flashy like popping bottles of champagne and driving luxury cars. This is an Emcees album, a true lyricist The GZA aka The Genius is introduced on the Wu-Tang's debut as "The Head" or brains of the clan. This is very much reflected in his detailed verses that read like a New York Times headline more than a typical rap sheet. This album plays like half ghetto lifestyle retrospect and half like a battle rap with GZA easily handling subject matter and metaphors while maintaining his Emcee title.
Produced entirely by The RZA the album sounds very dirty and rugged, the signature Wu sound consisting of hard beats and classic Kung Fu film samples. This album also features all clan members plus a few Wu affiliates. The atmosphere presented isn't a mistake, it's essentially a Winter album being released in November of 1995 and it balances the Summer release of Rae's Cuban Linx.
Liquid Swords is a very powerful album and I'd like to briefly touch on the meaning of the album title. The Wu-Tang Clan consider their lyrical ability to be without equal. Their Sword is their tongue and the Liquid is the flow at wich they move and speak. Liquid Swords can mean Smooth Talking among other things.

Liquid Swords: The first thing we hear, the introduction to the album is the voice of a child, this child is the son of Ogami Itto the Shogun's Decapitator, considered to be second only to the Shogun himself, was framed by a government division who was after his position in a bigger plan to control the Shogunate in the shadows. This is the plot to Lone Wolf and Cub, a Japanese comic written by Kazuo Koike, but what we are actually hearing is the movie that Shogun Assassin, the first two Lone Wolf films were edited to make one film for American theaters. The comics are among the best in Japanese story telling and the movies actually have the highest body count than any Japanese film. In the original story the child, Daigoro, actually has no voice and so when watching Shogun Assassin we are faced with a new voice, one that was in silence before, but is now heard and that is how we must begin to engage Liquid Swords. A voice that was once silenced is now expressed...

See, sometimes

You gotta flash em back

See niggas don't know where this shit started

Y'all know where it came from

I'm saying we gonna take y'all back to the source

Do the Knowledge... Yo!

This is the first direct implication that this is a direct root to Hip Hop Culture. The Rza, the producer, states that we 'don't know where this started, but we know where it came from'. Just what does that mean, how can one forget something, but at the same time have knowledge about it? The answer is that  one forgets something that was known to them when something is stolen from you. What is it that RZA implies then? The answer is that Hip Hop was being derailed by several factors, one of them being the production of Hip Hop music by record executives who were only concerned with profits which still persists today. Before the Wu-Tang Clan arrived Hip Hop was twisted into a misguided tool for information control where only violence and disaster are released to quench the needs of the people.

When the MCs came to live out the name and to perform

Some had to snort cocaine to act insane before he rocked it on

Now on with the mental plane to spark the brain with the building to be born

Yo RZA flip the track with the what to cut...

That hook addresses the problem directly. Fake MCs needed to be on drugs in order to rock the mic. Now with the correct mode of thought a true foundation can be built and so RZA produced this vision for the future. GZA's lyrical mastery is absolutely evident on this track. I remember hearing this on the radio and losing my mind. I remember hearing the funky beat for the first time not understanding the key it was in and the humming bass that just vibrates underneath the heavy drums. It's still a nasty banger.

Duel Of The Iron Mic: The title is a play on the 1971's Duel of the Iron Fist. The opening is the villain from Shogun Assassin, Restudo Yagu offering Ogami Itto a fair duel with his first son in order to spare Itto's life while promising him safe passage while traveling through Japan. Itto agrees and outsmarts Yagyu's son and kills him in a disrespectful manner by decapitation. The dialogue about "using an old style" and "waking them up" are from different films, anyone know where they're from?

This album succeeds the iconic Raekwon debut Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, so the Wu are already on their Gambino tip. The album features the majority of Wu members and they are all credited by their Wu-Gambino names first and then their rap aliases. Ol' Dirty Bastard doesn't drop any verses, but RZA uses his voice as hook. 

Living In The Wold Today: This track features Method Man rapping with Genius on a bass heavy RZA track, but listeners will note the light strings dancing lightly above it all. The lyrics deal mainly with fake MCs and what happens when you battle The Genius. GZA says the hook came from an old school crew in the Bronx who used to say something like "And if you listen to me rap today, you be hearing the sounds that my crew will say. And we know you wish you can write them, we'll don't bite them, well okay..."

Gold: Meth opens up this track that deals with drug politics. The atmosphere of this whole song is very very New York City winters, yes the whole album is actually produced with a cold, Wintery feeling in mind. The album was even released in the beginning of November stressing the point even more. 

Cold World: GZA's cousin Life sings the El Debarge interpolated chorus on this one and D'Angelo sings the chorus on the Cold World remix. I remember not liking that version when it came out because I thought the beat was dope so I bought the Maxi Single and got to the Instrumental track to only hear D'Angelo going "Do Do Dooo" all over the track, I think it was a completely different beat too. I was vexed about that. The song deals with living in the city about how even if you aren't a criminal you know about criminals because either you really know them or they're on the news or we taught about them in school. Rolly Fingers AKA Inspector Deck shares this track, I feel like out of the 9 members of the Wu-Tang Clan I think Deck is best matched with GZA lyrically. They both have detail heavy verses and intricate vocabulary that the listener can really imagine.

Labels: Ok seriously, this song. This was the promo song that was floating on mixtapes before the album was announced and it's still a nasty cross examination of how record companies treat artists. The Genius among other Wu members have felt the burn from record companies before becoming the successful stars we recognize them as. Labels opens and closes with magnificent execution.

Lot of people, you know what what I'm saying

That be getting misinformed, thinking everything is everything

You could just get yourself a little deal, whatever

You know what I'm saying

You gonna get on, you gonna get rich 

And all these labels be trying to lure us in like spiders

Into the web, you know what I'm saying

So sometimes people gotta come out and speak up

And let people understand

That you know you gotta read the label

You gotta read the label

If you don't read the label you might get poisoned

Here we have another RZA introduction and I'd like to state that his inclusion on this entire album is not like what Puff Daddy would do to Hip Hop years later by including himself on every record he ever worked on. RZA and GZA are actually cousins so this is first a family affair and then his role of Producer and at the time the only Wu producer his role is pivotal and it this is why it is ephasised as much.

The record companies that GZA names are : Tommy Boy, Def Jam, Rough House, Cold Chillin', Warner Brothers, Rutheless Records, Jive, Sleeping Bag Records, Reel To Reel Records, Tuff City, Virgin Records, Mercury Records, Capitol Records, Death Row Records, Epic, Rush, ATCO, Plateau, Wild Pitch Records, Uptown Records, 4th & Broadway, Island Records, Priority Records, Sorority Records, A&M Records, Pendulum Records, Colombia Records, Interscope Records, RCA Records, A&R Records, Atlantic Records, Bad Boy Records, Arista Records, Geffen Records, Mowtown Records and CBS Records. I think that's all of them!

The Saga continues in part II

Protect Ya Neck 20th Anniversary

This isn't the most important Hip Hop record ever, but this is actually the most important Hip Hop song from the 90's because of what came before and what was to come because Hip Hop before this was a very different thing. I was 12 living in the Bronx going to Middle School and radio was my main thing. Me and my friends would meet up in the morning and kick rhymes that we heard on the radio before going to school- and at school and after school! We liked groups because we could all rap together so we picked songs from Onyx and A Tribe Called Quest, but once we heard Protect Ya Neck we wanted to do the whole song by ourselves! It was crazy hype (that's how we talked back then) and we would stay up real late to hear Funkmaster Flex play it on the radio. When it was the top song on the radio you could get injected with that feeling in the middle of the day. Hip Hop songs on the radio were mostly West Coast rappers with very little reflection about New York City, but it was the Wu-Tang Clan that brought that mindset back. Biggie's Party and Bullshit wouldn't drop for an entire year later and Illmatic wouldn't be released until 1994. The year is 1992 and shit just got very real for Hip Hop.

The Protect Ya Neck single was released 20 years ago this week. It was originally released with After The Laughter on Wu-Tang records in 1992 and it would be released on Loud with Method Man as the B side in 1993. The song is a fiery assault from 9 emcees that recently was unfound on a record though one should be aware that Tribe's Scenario was released a few months before and it can be seen as a predecessor of what was to come.

If Scenario is the greatest posse cut then Protect Ya Neck is a thug's version of that song. Busta Rhymes verse leaves the listener craving more jagged and raw verses, you couldn't walk the streets going "Rawr, Rawr, Like a dungeon dragon" without having someone lose their god damn mind and the debut single of the Wu is the continuation of that honest and dirty feeling many inner city residents all over the world still feel every day. We were all starving for something new and New York had just got served a 9 piece main course that replenished and rejuvenated our spirits. Hip Hop became a New York property again, many east coast rose to great heights. For me Hip Hop 90's era was created when this song was released because of how it affected personally.

Here's the video for Protect Ya Neck is a great look at the Wu-Tang before they got rich and famous. They're wearing Champion hoodies and standing around Staten Island slums. Then unknown Wu member Cappadonna makes a cameo and GZA's name is even misspelled as The Jizah. There's nothing fancy in this video at all, it's just pure rhymes- Because that's all you need, ya heard!?

Jeff Hanneman 1964-2013

We just heard the news that incredible Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman has passed from liver failure and after a lengthy battle with a skin disease. That's a pretty metal way to go out when you consider this guy wrote some of the most hardcore metal on the planet. I love the hell out of Slayer and my favorite album is Reign In Blood. This album takes me back to living out on the street, squatting uptown and just making art. Shit was rough, fun and I had this album as a soundtrack. I met Kerry King years ago and had him sign my copy which was later stolen from me, but yo the memories are real.

Liquid Swords Box Set

We got hold of the Liquid Swords box sets that came out recently on the Get On Down label. Stay tuned as we get a review up on the blog, but in the meantime check this episode of Frames animated by Mack Williams featuring The Genius dropping knowledge about Hip Hop's early days as only he could remember it.

All right, here's a shot of the box set too.

Chris Kelly 1978-2013

I was eleven when Jump was released in Feb 1992. I was in middle school and music was becoming important to me. Jump was a great party track that just featured kids like me, but it was so light hearted I felt it was corny and Kriss Kross was short lived in my book, but that's not to imply that Jump was totally crossed out since they had most of America jumping to their tune. Discovered by producer Jermaine Dupri they released three albums and Jump single was certified Double Platinum. Kriss Kross was such a big hit they went on to do lots of kid related Hip Hop projects like doing The Rugrats Rap which brought hip hop to a younger audience as well as influencing the mainstream Hip Hop to produce such child rappers like Little Vicious, Shyhiem AKA The Rugged Child and much later Lil Bow Wow. Kriss Kross recently got in February to perform at a So So Def anniversary show. On May 1st Chris Kelly AKA Mack Daddy was found unconscious in his Atlanta home and pronounced dead at a hospital soon after. Below is their second single, Warm It Up which is what true Emcees do.