It seems U.S. hip-hop can currently be divided into camps to be counted on one hand with fingers to spare. You've got your 50 Cent school of lowest common denominator gutter-hop, Jay-Z/Missy school of innovative mainstream cyber-hop, the frequently tedious indie jazz-looping earnest-hop... Then, there's RZA. And, as 'Birth Of A Prince' proves, he's still out there on his own.
Somewhere between the Triton keyboard dependency of the mainstream and the virtually Mennonite refusal of any technology since the SP1200 sampler which characterises the post-Native Tongues school there's a third way. RZA, as a producer, offers an object lesson in the potential of a lucid imagination stretched tight over the bones of hip-hop on this mercifully decent release, the latest in a long line of frustratingly hit and miss solo efforts.
That's not say that the content doesn't confuse as much as any other RZA solo joint whilst careering from idle guns'n'bitches boasts to the familiar quasi-religious cod-philosophical gibberish. The constant is his ability to use sound and speech with such fluency of rhythm, texture, tone and timbre that he begins to sound like he IS hip-hop: eating, drinking and sleeping a particularly arcane and murky version of this black art. Just listen to him go on 'You'll Never Know', a track that sounds like a (particularly fine) offcut from 'The W'. Following a verse from one of the many so-so emcees that seem to have been drafted in to fill the gap left by absent friends, RZA returns to clean things up:
"Rappin' flow got you petro, my voice echo echo off the wall / Street money be stashed like Gordon Gecko / Get go, get go, leggo my Eggo, or fill my Eagle / Four, five, six in my hand I rolled the Ceelo / Whether kocking off pounds, ounces or straight kilos / You know how we go, its the Killa Bee show."
Unfortunately, it's not all as inspirational as the above and much of the album depends on familiarity. One of the few Wu cameos - from Ghostface on 'Fast Cars' - is just lazy and you frequently get the feeling that beats are found left on the floor from previous sessions rather than cooked specially for the occasion. It seems like hair-splitting though when tracks like 'Bob N' I', 'You'll Never Know', 'Koto Chotan' and 'A Day To God Is 1,000 Years' bust from the speakers.
Closing with the impassioned Five Percent diatribe of 'The Birth' - in which he visits scorn on the mental slavery imposed by generations of slave owners with recourse to ponderous mathematical explanation - and 'See The Joy' - a first person tale told by RZA as a sperm fighting for life - 'Birth Of A Prince' leaves the listener more confused than enlightened. But, whilst taking RZA seriously as a wordsmith is most likely misguided, failing to take him seriously as an emcee and producer is definitely not recommended.
