PsychicTemp

Similar to how west coast ‘90s rap groups like Hieroglyphics or the Pharcyde take influence from NY boom-bap, this is an example of an east coast album that’s got substantial Cali g-funk in its DNA, in addition to its EPMD connections and reverence for George Clinton. Redman’s early run of projects seems to be pretty sick and advanced-sounding; this one feels like it ought to have come out like 5 years later. A little one-note overall, but the bassy, stoned haziness of it is ... read more

There are certainly some great songs on here, but overall it’s a scantly-produced album, and much weaker than what the best of the Wu-Tang solo discography has to offer. This is the project that many people claim was disrupted by the notorious RZA basement flood (thus destroying the originally-planned beats), but I’ve also heard conflicting info on that. Either way, it’s a sort of undercooked work that’s mostly carried by Method Man’s iconic voice

Absolute gas over 30 years later; probably my favorite non-Ghostface album in the greater Wu-Tang canon, and probably the best horrorcore rap album that didn’t come out of Memphis. Frukwan, Poetic and RZA’s performances and totally animated from front-to-back; it really sounds like they had fun on this one, and Prince Paul’s crate-digging is as impressive as ever—he really put together 5 or 6 of the coolest boom-bap beats of all time, and none of the samples come from ... read more

The third Roots album is pretty similar to everything the group had released before it (originally I failed to notice its distinction to its predecessor “Do You Want More?”), but having spent more time with it I would say it has a noticeably darker tone, and slightly murkier production to match it. At this point, the band had gotten so good at naturally blending samples, electronics, and live instrumentation that it’s often unclear where any given sound is coming from—a ... read more