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Album Review
by SashaS
20-12-2001
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| Iron flagging |
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Wu-Tang Clan : 'Iron Flag'
(Loud/Epic)
Wu-Tang Clan reclaim some flouted values to deck a dope album
‘Iron Flag’ restores the timeline to the Wu-Tang Clan’s chequered epoch-management. After issuing the genre-defining ‘Enter The Wu-Tang Clan’ in 1994 they found themselves attempting to better it but managing to mess it up. Two albums later, one expending /in a tad wrong direction/ and the other patchy, it feels like they’ve decided to stop toying with our expectations and deliver on demand.
‘Iron Flag’ is full of hooks that are enticing, captivating, sharp like well-chilled Mountain Dew. There is a sense that RZA, the music meister and producer, isolated himself with the big box of funky and soul records and assembled a musical collage bit by bit, phrase by phrase, before turning it over to his motley crew to cut-n-paste rhymes all over it. And the message is of unity, all of us living under one flag of humanity rather than divided by all the national-religious-economic-cultural banners. I propose a motion to adopt US dollar as national currency /rather than Euro/ as we already are much more the 51st State than will ever be European Unionists!
Excuse me outburst but it’s Christmas, time of sharing (spleen), giving (cantankerousness) and enjoying (canteen). You might be getting a wrong impression here but WTC album has put me in a good mood! There are rolling guitar riffs, engaging rhythms, infectious horns and funked-up brass, soulful vocals… Titles range from the Latino flavoured ‘Uzi (Pinky Ring)’, muscle-reviving ‘Ya’ll Be Warned’, ‘One Of These Days’, title cut… There are not that many guests bar Flavor Flav /‘Soul Power (Black Jungle)’/, Ron Isley /aka Mr Biggs on ‘Uzi’/, Four Assassins /‘Radioactive’/…
After so many solo projects the New Jersey-based collective sound again like a family, a rebel tribe with a cause. Not content doing things the familiar way though, the WTC members created an arcade game to promote the album. Users have to rescue soldiers by battling through the streets of Staten Island, their ‘Hoody’ borough of New York). At the end of the game, once Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, RZA, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Masta Killah, U-God and GZA have been rescued, players can triumphantly plant the Iron Flag of victory.
For the penultimate word, over to Ghostface: “If there is a message to this album, it’s that we the kings of this s**t.” The final phrase goes to U-God: “This album was made to show who’s the greatest.“ It shows, they are. The real dope.
To paraphrase another title - all killas, no fillas!
8.7/10
SashaS
20-12-2001
The Wu-Tang Clan’s album ‘Iron Flag’ is released 17 December 2001 on (Loud/Epic)
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