• Producer Tom Caruana obviously employed the breadth of Beatles-derived content -- a smart move, considering the abundance of over-ripe orchestrated covers and cheeky reggae send-ups (subsets that are rich with sonic doo-dads). But here's something to note for anybody else in the mashup market: There's tons and tons of Wu shit out there, too.
• Danger Mouse's Grey Album was awesomely clever; Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers is all about brute creativity. It's unfair to compare them on a 1:1 basis.
• The finished product manages to be totally respectful of all its source material, without seeming cautious. That's love.
• It's invigorating to hear some of the more shopworn Wu raps on top of crisp, snappy beats. In this setting, they're more like masterful mouth-music instead of weird gutter transmissions riding on RZA-haze. (Not that there's anything wrong with RZA-haze.)
• The clips of archival Beatles news reports are a nice touch; they focus on the nascent Fab Four, creating a plausible link between the rebellion of early Beatlemania and the hip-hop fuck-you that came from Shaolin Island. (A few Wu-related clips would've been good, too.)
• If you know O.C.'s "Time's Up," the last section of "Back In The Game" reveals that beat to be from a an orchestral version of "A Day In The Life." Whoo!
• Caruana should've used the version of "Run" with Jadakiss on it.
• Also: I hear lots of Inspectah Deck, but not much GZA.
Comments