Very interesting debut. The only real issues I have with the album are just what’s expecting from finding your footing in music. Some pitchy vocals, some choppy production, just some little spotty bits here and there. I also don’t think the necessarily needed to be 52 minutes. "Anam Cara" kind of sums up what I don’t love about the project. It feels a bit aimless and like it doesn’t really rise in tension. I like the drums, it’s not a bad song, it just doesn’t feel complete in some way. Besides some small nitpicks, this album is very unique and creative. The atmosphere is really great. I thought from the opening track that this would be a full vibey instrumental, classical type album, but as the album went on, it just kept getting more varied and interesting. There’s some very simple guitar heavy folk songs like the closer, "Learn Song", there’s the aforementioned orchestral compositions with piano and strings. There’s also some sick synth stuff and wild futuristic chip tuney sounds that start to pop in "Blue Grotto". There’s some really cathartic moments of heavy distortion during climactic parts of the 10 minute epic, "The Haiku" and during the height of the penultimate track, "Update: Owain Glyndŵr Dead Again!". There’s just a really varied soundscape that pulls from a lot of genres blended together while still feeling relatively cohesive. That’s also due to some recurring motifs like the calming water running sound effects that pop in a few tracks. Just a really neat album. I like it a lot.

More of the same and I'm not complaining. It is pretty much the same formula, but to make up for the lost novelty of the first one, they simply did everything better. It's bigger, it's grander, it looks better, it's more professionally made. There's a bit of lost charm from the low budgetness of the original, but I can't complain because that movie looked gray as hell and this movie is delightfully colouful. The plot is also just more whacky. A drug trafficking organization ran in a shitty old summer resort. That's dope. That's fun. This movie is very fun. The whole gang is back, RZA gets to do his kung fu thing, Chris Lloyd gets to be Chris Lloyd, all the cheeky running gags are back and the soundtrack choices still hit. I see no downside.

Extremely refreshing. I feel like every cliché dumb fun movie that was slapped together is heralded as refreshing and it's kind of tiresome. 65 for example just wasn't a very good movie and had no substance or drive, but it's a big dinosaur vehicle so everyone said this is what we need, this is refreshing. No, this movie is refreshing. This whole movie is full of tropes and predictable plot points and yadda yadda, but it's really the small details that hint to me that this isn't just another 65. It's clearly a movie that was made with so much love and passion. It's just fun as hell and designed to be fun without the obvious corporate hand looming over each artistic decision. It's the little details. Like I said, it's a trope movie, but there's also tons of little tiny subversions of tropes that makes the story feel more human. There's no dramatic third act breakup between Hutch and his wife, they feel like a real couple trying to reconnect after drifting apart. The russian tough guys at the tattoo shop don't take the bait and decide to let Hutch go because they believe that he is indeed dangerous because they aren't npcs in a spider-man game. Just small things like that make this feel more human. The fight scenes were literally perfect. The last big set fight in particular was what bumped this from a 7 to an 8. It just looks like they put so much care into that scene. From a production stand point, a directing stand point and an acting stand point. They literally casted 3 of the most wholesome, least problematic celebrities for this movie. Bob Odenkirk, Christopher Lloyd and the RZA. What a trio. They don't look like they're just in it for a pay day, they look like they're in it for the love of the craft. Because I just KNOW that RZA had the time of his life getting to live out his action star fantasy and that thought brings me joy. Since I usually talk about music and cinematography in my reviews, here's my quick thoughts on that to wrap up the review. The soundtrack picks were top notch and the camera movement during action sequences was great. The score was serviceable and the colour grading looked really bad and grey. That's probably my biggest complaint is how dull the visuals are outside of the snappy action shots. 8/10. A truly refreshing movie.

This was very refreshing after listening to the sequel and much more consistent. I loved this a lot. I literally loved pretty much every song on this album. Going back to what I was saying about song length, it really feels like each songs fits it's length like a glove and like each song was fleshed out to it's full potential. Even the skits felt so much more earned and natural. I found myself settling in and just laughing and smiling when a skit would come on. Each one feels so real, like we're actually hanging out with a pack of loud mouthed fellas at a party, nearly on par with the world building interludes on 36 chambers. And they were so textured and flavoured. That's really it. This whole album is so flavoured and charismatic and just creatively put together in every sense. This album got my mouth hurting from smiling bro it's just so fun. Enough beating around the bush, I'm actually gonna go track by track on this thing. Nutmeg is a song that I only on this listen really came around to. I initially felt it was a bit too one note. Literally, it's a lot of the same note on the instrumental, but I really let the tension build and release while paying attention to the warm bass tone and light tappy drum which are really the elements that brought the song far past one note like I originally thought. It's also just a ton of fun lyrics smoothly blasted through to make a great opening track. One is a very iconic track which is another song that could feel repetitive if it wasn't for all the flavourful sauce put into each aspect that makes up the sound of the song. Ghostface rolls off rowdy party bars along with RZA throwing in his underrated mic presence with a very off kilter, but confident verse before closing the song with one of my favourite song endings in hip-hop. I LOVE when rappers interact with the sample of the instrumental and play around like that. Saturday Nite is another great case for my points on song length. It doesn't feel unnatural to have a minute and a half track with just one long verse because it's not crammed between a bunch of other songs like it and it feels like it said all it needed to say, spinning a story song about being investigated and harassed by some feds. Not to jump around too much, but later in the tracklist, Star True is a song with the exact same track length and again, it doesn't feel like thet just ran out of juice, it feels like they simply added the perfect amount of song to the song. Since I'm already jumping around, I'm now gonna breeze past some tracks that I do love, but I don't have too much to say on them. Ghost Deini is a classic wu banger with a sick gloomy beat and a beautiful sung bridge from Ghost. I feel similar about The Grain, a simply well made classic wu tang sound to some great verses from Ghost and RZA along with some complex textured production. Mighty Healthy is a very gritty gloomy track with some incredible energy and the inclusion of the iconic Melvin Bliss drum break. Finally, We Made It is another example of simply great song making with an immaculate song structure built around this beautiful string sample. Now back to the regular tracklist order. Apollo Kids, the 6th song on the album includes one of the hardest beats on the album by far. It's just Ghostface and Rae going back and forth, rapping bars that feel very suited to the wu-tang brand, very communal, like they're hyping each other and the whole crew up over this insane and gritty horn sample on the beat. Buck 50 is one of a few grand posse cuts. The beat is perfect for this type of gritty group track with a great sense of tension and gripping composition with this rattling wobbly sample that demands your attention with each verse. Naturally, they brought on Method Man, Capadonna, Red Man and switching up the format by closing with another hype verse from the Iron Man himself. This is also one of many tracks produced by RZA. RZA is really the mastermind behind the wu brand and the wu sound and while this album has many producers, RZA does keep a steady DJ hand in the background throughout which feels especially at home on these posse tracks. Stroke of Death is another track helmed by the creativity of RZA with this incredibly off putting and dizzying beat. One of those beats that really challenges you to flow perfectly to make it pop like the tempo changing masterpiece, No Snakes Alive on Take Me To Your Leader, MF DOOM's most underrated album. This all concludes in RZA slaying his own beat with so much grace, like a swift sword movement or a stroke of death to kill off the song. Malcolm is one of the most compelling songs with a revolutionary theme, weaving a story song about progress within the streets and bad actors who muddy the message in between samples of Malcolm X himself. All of this over a very versatile and ever-shifting beauty being this gritty beat by Choo the Specializt. This track relates to a big theme of black empowerment and politics which seems to be a combined artistic effort of Ghostface and RZA who has many political references and historical references throughout his career. Child's Play is another story song. A very charming love ballad about adolescent love and Ghost just reminiscing about his childhood in general over this light and fluttery sample. The drums and sample progression to go along with a switch in Ghost's tone halfway through the song before going back to the original beat is really effective, especially. WuBanga 101 is last real rap song on the album before one last skit and a little musical wrap up. This is the other big group track with verses from GZA, Raekwon, Masta Killa, Capadonna and of course, Ghostface. It's a great sendoff before the last few minutes of the albums with this group of guys simply going bar for bar over this soul sampled beat by Mathematics who also produced Mighty Healthy. It's really just a ball of joy in album form, plenty of quantity, plenty of quality, plenty of charisma. Now, for what stops this album from being perfect. I have intentionally avoided talking about this during my track by track section and I hate to bring this up again, but it's still insane to listen to such a talented artist talk about these progressive ideas and calls for black liberation in between these crumby dirtbag lines thrown in every once in a while. I just had to roll my eyes at a certain point after hearing another problematic bar. Weird line about gay marriage, casual use of the f slur, creepy moment on One about snatching girls' clothes off. It's just something I can't ignore. It's so close to perfect and I still do absolutely adore this album. I'll just have to live with the eyebrow raising lyric here and there each time I come back to this. It's a 9/10 for sure.

This is overall a good time. It's messy, it has issues, but it's mostly fun. The main hurdle that permeates throughout this album and throughout Ghostface as a rapper is the problematic and weird bars. I've come to realize that the wu-tang clan hasn't always been on the right side of issues (particularly Ghost and GZA). Plenty of rap is controversial and edgy. Like, songs about murder and violence, but Ghost has particularly uncomfortable songs from time to time. Like, writing a song about murder and obscene violence is usually under the guise of obvious fiction and over the top fantasy, but hearing a 50 something year old dude talk about getting head and getting women or sharing his opinion on gay people or femininity or putting his two cents in on Kanye. It just doesn't hit the same. It's uncomfortable. There's quite a few bars (mainly from features) that actually reflect some progressive and good to hear views on trump with Nas condemning project 2025 on his verse for example. Most of the bars are great, plenty are even agreeable, but the few bad apples are hard to chew through. But, once you get past that, most of the songs are good. This album is definitely over stuffed and filled with half ideas and songs that feel unfinished. This album could've used some editing. Instead of plopping in a bunch of mostly good, but inconsistent 1-2 minute tracks that fly by at break neck speed, this album could've just stuck to 10-15 of it's best ideas and really fleshed them out to it's limits. I have a hard time complaining about lengths, but it's not really the lengths of songs that matter to me at all. I love stuff like Donuts by J Dilla where barely any track reaches 2 minutes and I love stuff like Velocity, Design, Comfort by Sweet Trip where songs regularly reach 7,8,9,10 minute marks. It's about whether the songs feel like they fit that length, whether they feel suited to that length. Too many of the songs on this album didn't feel fully filled in and a bit forgettable. Plus, there were several skits and only maybe one of them was actually funny. Dave Chappelle was not needed here. He wasn't even properly mic'd. Now, for some actual reasons to listen to this album. The production is pretty sick. A ton of this album is self produced and some of the best beats on here were made by Ghostface himself. Curtis May for example is a super smooth hip-hop head bopping experience and it's all produced by Ghost (Conway shines really bright on that track too). I like the heavy sampling throughout. I could see someone calling some of the production a bit lazy. Particularly The Zoom. He kind of just played a song and rapped in between it. I personally didn't mind this style especially when done more creatively, but there were definitely some beautiful soul samples and stuff that gave this that old school feel. Rap Kingpin had a really sweet whistle sample and sick DJ scratching on the hook. There's plenty of impressive stuff in these instrumentals. I think when it's all said and done, a driving factor of this album is the energy. This is a project made by a bunch of oldheads and some songs negatively reflect that. Some songs just feel a bit sleepy and uncharacteristically unenergetic. Soul Thang is a great example of a promising sound that just stays at that level for too long and eventually becomes tiresome. But, really why I'm giving this album slack is because this album is mostly full of very high energy. There's a few amazing songs that pushed the project over the edge into a positive territory. For example, the first track, Iron Man had my head bopping so hard it nearly flew off my head. It shows off how energetic this old school rapper could still pull off. And then, the song that really pulled me on board was The Trial. I truly think it's one of the best songs of the year. It fully harkens back to stuff on 36 Chambers with the energy of a bunch of hooligans spinning a web and creating a little movie in the form of a song. First we get an incredible back and forth from Ghost and Raekwon playing the role of defendants followed by a neat continuation of this energy with Pills and Reek Da Villian and then it's all wrapped up by a closing verse from GZA as the stenographer, brining back the tradition of always closing with GZA when he's on a wu song. This is all held together by Method Man as the judge and a simply incredible tension filled beat produced by Roads-Art. It's simply magic. It got me so giddy. The very next track has some great skill showed off by Ghost and Nas over a beautiful beat. Candyland is another highlight with some incredibly fun cnady related bars used as a cheeky allegory for drugs. Really reminds one of MM..FOOD although this song also has a really cringe estrogen bar. It's kind of ironic that Ghost ever gets homophobic considering he can also shows some great vulnerability and friendship on a song like You Ma Friend featuring his great friend, Method Man who has one of the best verses on the album. It's really a shame that Ghost seems quite stuck in his ways despite his ability to reflect and make great art. It's tough loving this album. It's not perfect and has many downsides, but the hits really do hit so I simply had to give this a 6/10.