The Wu-vacation must've seemed like a maniacal idea at the time. Take the nine free members of hip-hop's larger-than-life, larger-than-large ruling family, airlift them from their baronial estates on Staten Island, New York, and transplant to one big holiday villa in the Hollywood Hills to record an album. Planned as a respite from the familiar, a revitalising break from the pressure cooker intensity of their home, the experiment plainly worked.
That said, the Wu-Tang Clan's third collective album, 'The W', is hardly a slumber party of automatic sunshine and California girls. The intensity of this wise, wild, fathomlessly skilful and frequently ludicrous crew remains; 'Careful (Click, Click)' - a phantasmagoria of threat, echo, gunshots, sword slashes and ghostly melodies - is one of their bleakest and most unnerving tracks yet. As their leader RZA asserts, "It's a B-Boy album, 'cause we strictly hip-hop."
But the monotony that blighted 1997's 'Wu-Tang Forever' and the sluggish complacency of some of the Clan's myriad solo projects in the past three years is notably absent. There's a born-again urgency here, with the RZA reclaiming control of the mixing desk from his disciples and trying out a few new tricks to spike the usual routine of cinematic string stabs and virtuoso raps.
On the fabulous 'One Blood Under W', reggae chanter Junior Reid joins the party over rearing horn voluntaries, spacey atmospherics and a compelling shuffle beat. 'I Can't Go To Sleep', meanwhile, sees the rappers take their turn at theatrical sobbing over a huge slab of Isaac Hayes' glowering 'Walk On By', before Hayes himself turns up as a benign bringer of love and peace. It's the most sentimental Wu track since Ghostface Killah's 'All That I Got Is You', and strangely un-macho, too, at least until Hayes finally advises, "Stop all this crying and be a man."
Current hit single 'Gravel Pit' is virtually camp, even, a butt-wiggling party piece that conjures up unlikely images of Ninjas in Hawaiian shirts and big shorts. Even Ol' Dirty Bastard is let out of compulsory rehab for a while to join in the fun with the super-dumb'Conditioner', in which he and a passing Snoop Doggy Dogg square up to see who's the most wasted... Tough call.
The net result is the Wu-Tang Clan at their most playful and biting, recapturing the spirit and radicalism that made them hip-hop's premier innovators of the past decade. And the benefits of that Hollywood sojourn, for all but ODB? Well, a change is as good as arrest (and you can shoot me now).
Buy 'The W' album right HERE.
