Why Wu Tang is Forever | The Saga Continues (Album Review)

With sig­na­ture dark atmo­spher­ic Wu beats, sharp rhymes con­sist­ing of witty word­play and con­scious con­tent, inter­twined with vin­tage kung fu samples, mod­ern pop cul­ture ref­er­ences and socioeco­nom­ic com­ment­ary, it almost sounds like an audio revolu­tion. Cur­rent yet some­what nos­tal­gic, the intro to some tracks made me remin­isce on the begin­ning of older tracks as did some of the lines such as, ‘flee with the lot­tery’, I had an instant flash­back to ‘Tri­umph’!

There was sur­pris­ingly little word on the street about the release of, The Saga Con­tin­ues’ by Wu Tang, per­haps because it’s not per­ceived as a full clan album (miss­ing mem­bers GZA and U‑God) or maybe, just maybe it is that these men need no intro­duc­tion or hype. High expect­a­tions seems to have left some ‘fans’ cri­tiquing want­ing some­thing harder, nev­er­the­less these beats are clearly rooted from some­thing nur­tured in the 90’s and not of this era. For me the slight change of sound I think may be con­fu­sion in accept­ing these emcees have now grown into wiser men, with over 25 years in the game do you really think they will be sound­ing exactly the same? The slightly more chilled vibe of this album reflects being older and look­ing at life from a dif­fer­ent per­spect­ive, I respect that, and I’m noth­ing but grate­ful for anoth­er gem from the gen­er­als of Wu to whom I have grown with myself.

Pro­duced by DJ Math­em­at­ics a long time Wu affil­i­ate and fam­ily mem­ber, I have fond memor­ies of see­ing him open for the Wu Tang Clan many years ago and I vividly remem­ber think­ing he was the best DJ I had ever heard, and I haven’t felt like that ever since. For this reas­on, hear­ing him get­ting shown love for everything he has done, includ­ing design­ing the icon­ic ‘W’ sym­bol was some­thing sen­ti­ment­al for me, he did a great job on the pro­duc­tion. This album has that com­ic book feel, you won’t find any auto tune or trap beats here. Some hooks are a bit more melodi­ous com­pared to what the hard­core fan might expect but they aren’t over­done and work very well.

Red­man brings his wild energy as the first voice we hear, with all his col­lab­or­a­tions with Meth it’s no sur­prise, he’s not out of place and gets the air­time he deserves. I would nev­er have put Red­man and Inspec­tah Deck togeth­er but they com­ple­ment each oth­er well on ‘Les­son Learn’d’. Deck murders his verse it was prob­ably my favor­ite from the whole album with lines like, ‘I splash bravado, fast cash afi­cion­ado’. He also drops a men­tion of what has caused The Wu so much drama recently, ‘my price hik­ing like the pills Mar­tin Shkreli sells’ of course a ref­er­ence to the man who infuri­ated many by increas­ing the price of Daraprim — a drug for a rare para­sit­ic infec­tion called tox­o­plas­mos­is by over 5000%. Did Red­man also take a stab at him in the same track? ‘When I drop some­thing, you like Mar­tin, all ears’ who knows…

I respect Wu as a col­lect­ive but also as indi­vidu­al artists in their own right, each one is strong and has their own unique style, so when they come togeth­er it’s always a treat. One of the more well known mem­bers Meth­od man has a strong pres­ence on this album, his word­play had me gig­gling like a school­girl at times just because they were so sitty, ‘Some­times I leave the R out of Broth­er, why both­er’ clev­er line play. I love his atti­tude to life, accept me as I am like me or don’t. His punch­line on, ‘People Say’ may have gone unnoticed, ‘War­ri­ors come out and play-yayyyy’, which is ref­er­ence to where the sample is from, ‘I got the kind of love’ by The Dip­lo­mats, which is fea­tured on the cult New York movie, ‘The War­ri­ors’.  It’s these little details that I live for.  Per­son­ally I think there is a lot of wit on this album, you just have to appre­ci­ate it. One of my favor­ite lines was by R‑Mean, ‘Homie we focused, my camp Aus­chwitz with con­cen­tra­tion’, which is refer­ring to the con­cen­tra­tion camp dur­ing the Holocaust.

Anoth­er dom­in­at­ing pres­ence on this album for me is RZA, he comes across as a wise monk, only wiser with age, he stands out for me in the way only RZA can, I feel like he is teach­ing me about life and death, I have images of him stand­ing on moun­tain tops embark­ing on a spir­itu­al jour­ney (which he actu­ally describes). I picked up on a lot of ref­er­ences to the FBI and police bru­tal­ity. RZA addresses civil rights on, ‘Equal oppor­tun­it­ies to uplift our com­munit­ies, instead your shot to the head a black man’s life worth less than a loaf of bread’ talks about the crazi­ness of hav­ing to fight for civil rights in this day and age in Amer­ica and addresses police bru­tal­ity, the hook asks, ‘why why why’.

Con­scious skit’s one thing I love dearly about Wu, snip­pets address­ing the role of the black man and his import­ance in fam­ily touch­ing more on the tra­di­tion­al roles in fam­ily, which again I think is very remin­is­cent of 90’s hip hop.

Ref­er­ences to the Five per­cent nation may have fallen on deaf ears but for me these rekindle my love affair with seek­ing know­ledge dur­ing hip hop in the 90’s, many lines to make us think about being woke in this day and age. Anoth­er reas­on why this album was a breath of fresh air for me, it’s not about liv­ing in the past but it’s about keep­ing that con­scious­ness through­out the evol­u­tion of society.

To those who are not feel­ing this album I would say give it a few more listens, it’s the kind of album you feel more the more you listen to it. On that note, with the outro by RZA talk­ing med­it­a­tion, Islam and pick pock­et­ing Bruce Wayne that is all the com­pon­ents of a real life super­hero empowered by self dis­ciple, faith, ima­gin­a­tion and no lim­its. For these reas­ons, this album for me is just a remind­er why —  Wu Tang is Forever.