That it should be RZA of all American hip-hop artists that deigns to look beyond the closed borders of the U.S. scene and embrace the talent of European artists is telling. It's an odd cultural insularity that has led successive generations of American hip-hop artists to give precisely not-two-shits about the music that comes from outside their communities.
But RZA, remember, is quite possibly the most influential producer of the 90s and he didn't get there by following the hip-hop herd. Innovation doesn't come without opening the receptors in the way that, say, Timbaland has to house, dancehall and Eastern rhythms or Roots Manuva has to German techno and dub. Both these artists and RZA have arrived at sounds that are uniquely their own. Arguably, the freedom to cut and paste your map of influence into something uniquely personal is one of the very principles that define 'hip-hop' as a loosely conceived 'state of mind'.
And, whilst the mid-nineties was the high-point of that roughly grouped 'Shaolin' style (the dark, dense ghetto music made not just by Wu-Tang but by acts like Mobb Deep and Onyx) there was a whole world of music outside of Staten Island and Queensbridge. Take a listen to Parisian hip-hop act NTM's classic '95 album 'Paris Sous Les Bombes', released in the same year as Reakwon's classic 'Cuban Linx', and you know that RZA has been listening to French hip-hop for a while.
Now, in the purity of its pristine isolation from the 'industry' and the 'popular', European hip-hop offers RZA an escape from the context in which he finds himself at home. In simple beats like 'Passaporto Per Resisere' and 'The North Sea' there's a freedom that he hasn't permitted himself since the Wu franchise turned 'pro' with 'Wu-Tang Forever' and 'Ironman'. A cynic might suggest that some of these beats probably date back to that time.
This sloppy creativity is both the album's strength and weakness - its creative impulse is unchecked and sprawling and the 19 tracks here offer little in the way of order and coherence. Working with the more established acts - Saian Supa Crew, IAM, Xavier Naidoo - there's a suspicion that RZA focuses too much on providing the appropriate sound rather than letting them stretch themselves to rise to his style. Blade, Skinnyman and Mr Tibbs' half-hearted rhymes on 'Boing, Boing' (a beat surely salvaged from the cutting room floor when 'Cuban Linx' was dusted down) suggest that at least some of the guests were so wowed by the opportunity that they went and blew it.
Ultimately, 'The World According To RZA' falls just short of the immense promise of the concept in part because of the usual poor quality control but also because, like other hip-hop producer projects (with the notable exception Pete Rock's 'Soul Survivor') the producer's sound gets stretched in too many directions as it races to accommodate the diverse styles of the guests.
