The 12 Hours of Wu-Tang: #4 - My Gut Reaction: Masta Killa - Loyalty Is Royalty (September 29, 2017)

Loyalty is Royalty may be the fourth solo album from Wu-Tang Clan founding member Elgin “Masta Killa” Turner, but it was supposed to be his third. My understanding is that the music he was recording at the time veered off into a direction different from what he imagined a project entitled Loyalty Is Royalty sounding like when he first announced it in fucking 2010, so he put this album on pause and released a drink coaster called Selling My Soul instead. However, he felt that album title was too good for him to waste, so after exorcising his pseudo-R&B demons, he quickly got back to work on what was originally supposed to be his retirement album (not sure where he stands on that now), dropping Loyalty Is Royalty in the fall of 2017,.

Masta Killa’s always been a bit of a mystery amongst the Wu, a crew that once featured a Ghostface Killah who always wore a mask because he was on the run from the law, but still needed that label and show money to support his family. He was the ninth member of the group to join, which accounts for why he barely factors on their debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), and wasn’t even an actual rapper at the time, learning the craft via trial by fire, honing his skills at an exponential rate as the various Wu solo albums began hitting store shelves amid the Wu-Tang takeover of our chosen genre. Masta Killa was the last guy to release a solo project, his No Said Date (a reference to the eventual planned release date for the project) finally dropping in 2004. (It is apparently the highest-selling album in the history of his label, Nature Sounds, a factoid I didn’t know until now, but it’s well-deserved, as that album still bangs.)

For a man who has been in the music industry for twenty-five years, and active as a solo artist for fourteen, Elgin sounds very assured behind the microphone. Unlike some of his friends, Masta Killa never saturated the market with guest verses, picking and choosing his outside collaborators using predetermined criteria that none of us will ever be privy to. (This is why his discography features cameos on tracks by the likes of Public Enemy, Afu-Ra, and producer 9th Wonder, but not many more outside of the ever-expanding Wu-Tang collective.) Ever the cold and calculating one, Masta Killa has taken his time with every solo effort, and Loyalty is Royalty should be no different.

I see these paragraphs are already getting shorter. Hopefully I’ll get a second wind soon.

1. INTRO

An instrumental. Pleasing, but unnecessary.

2. RETURN OF THE MASTA KILL (FEAT. YOUNG DUDAS & CAPPADONNA)

I commend P.F. Cuttin’s instrumental for providing a lighter, jazzier feel to the first actual song on Loyalty Is Royalty. My problem is that, whenever I seek out a Masta Killa solo album, which admittedly isn’t often, I want to hear dark soundscapes, the type that would accompany the man’s ninja character from Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style (or Wu-Tang: Taste the Pain for my overseas readers) as he slips down dark alleys to fulfill his mission. Our host sounds okay over these drums, if a bit bored, although his quick reappearance at the end of guest Young Dudas’s (generic as shit) verse was kind of flames. Cappadonna rounds things out with a performance that can do nothing but flail about wildly like a Muppet when compared to what he contributed to Ghostface Killah’s The Lost Tapes, my only frame of reference at the moment because I haven’t listened to any Wu projects since fucking 2015. Ah well, so much for that “return”, eh?

3. LOYALTY IS ROYALTY (R.I.F. – RAPPING IS FUNDAMENTAL) (FEAT. AB & JR)

I wasn’t expecting the title track to appear so early in the program. I definitely wasn’t expecting “Loyalty Is Royalty” to be a love song. (It could be argued that the subtitle “R.I.F. – Rapping Is Fundamental” proves that our host is executing a very elaborate metaphor regarding his love of our chosen genre, but if you actually listen to the lyrics, it’s a reach.) The presence of 9th Wonder behind the boards didn’t excite me in the least bit, but he turns in some good work, and Masta Killa’s two brief verses show that his love raps are underrated in the Wu canon. The crooning from guests AB and JR was also pretty nice. Not bad.

4. THERAPY (FEAT. METHOD MAN & REDMAN)

Producer P.F. Cuttin chops up a Sade sample for “therapy”, a Method Man and Redman joint effort (I see what I did there) hosted by Masta Killa, who delivers the opening verse mustering up all of the energy he possibly can, which isn’t all that much (I mean, if you’re reading this write-up I assume you’re familiar with the man’s flow?), but he still manages to pull it off. His line about the Clan having “a million songs” to pull from during their live shows is probably not that far off, really. Meth turns in yet another performance that proves the world had been sleeping on his rap skills just because he was the most marketable and charismatic member of the Wu when they first hit the scene and these days is more known for his acting roles than his music – the dude is nice. Reggie Noble brings up the rear with a punchline-heavy, if slight, closer. Overall, our host mixed it up with Meth and Red much better than I thought he would.

5. O.G.S TOLD ME (FEAT. BOY BACKS & MOE ROC)

This wasn’t bad, but it would have made more sense had Masta Killa not appeared on the track at all, as “OGs Told Me” is about the folks coming up in the game, and our host has been a part of it for twenty-five fucking years. (Man, do I feel old as dirt now.) This Dame Grease production feels barely like a Masta Killa song anyway – he gets one lone verse in the middle of the track, and then monopolizes the outro to shout out the Clan, but otherwise the man is a nonfactor. The bulk of the burden is carried by rapper Boy Backs and Wu-affiliate Moe Roc, but while the song sounded decent enough, there’s very little replay value to be found here. It is what it is.

6. WISE WORDS BY THE RZA (FEAT. THE RZA)

So maybe you can’t get a verse or a beat from The RZA for your project anymore. This spoken word interlude bullshit isn’t a good substitute. All this manages to do was get me pissed off at Prince Rakeem again. Just how much in love with his own goddamn voice is he?

7. TROUBLE

9th Wonder flips the same sample producer Fatal Son did for Shyheim’s “In Trouble” from way back in the day, and does a much better job with it, handing our host the soundscape he needs for his storytelling rap. Masta Killa has an eye (and ear) for detail, and it shows in his rhymes, which are delivered with the steady and engaging cadence of a guy shooting the shit with you on the front porch with a tumbler full of bourbon sloshing around in his hand. The production isn’t stellar or anything – by 9th’s standards, it’s fairly lazy. But our host makes it work with a credible performance that will leave you wondering what happens next.

8. SKIT

Not a skit, but a True Master-produced one-verse wonder where the verse comes to an abrupt end, seemingly mid-syllable. The point of all this is lost on me.

9. DOWN WITH ME (FEAT. SEAN PRICE)

Masta Killa’s ode to hip hop, sort of. He and the late Sean Price rap about rapping in a fairly rote manner, although both artists sound pretty good as they’re reciting their bars over 9th Wonder’s instrumental. It’s just that the plot is lost multiple times throughout “Down With Me”, only to be located toward the end, where our host is shouting out both radio and mixtape deejays, and then cities, and then entire countries that support our chosen genre. “Down With Me” could have used a rewrite (as could my paragraph, honestly, although I have eight more of these to get through today so nah), at least on our host’s part, but for what it was, shrug?

10. TIGER AND THE MANTICE (FEAT. INSPECTAH DECK & GZA)

Hey, how about that, it took me four albums to finally hear some fucking sound bites from kung-fu flicks. I miss those, you know? Anywho, Christopher Blockade Newbie’s instrumental for “Tiger and the Mantice” (not a typo, at least not on my part) buckles under the weight of the artists involved, who I still believe should all band together to release an alternate Wu-Massacre project to challenge Raekwon, Method Man, and Ghostface Killah. Our host’s delivery is just… off somehow, as though he were so impressed with his bars that he forgot to practice them before he jumped into the booth, and the GZA’s closing verse doesn’t hold a candle to his finest hour, Liquid Swords. (And why would it, considering that moment happened over twenty years ago, right?) Inspectah Deck sounds just as good as he did on Czarface’s A Fistful of Peril, though, so that was cool. This song, and that title, deserved a much better instrumental, one that might have helped our host and The Genius sound a bit more involved.

11. REAL PEOPLE (FEAT. KXNG CROOKED & PRODIGY)

Chainsaw’s instrumental knocks: hell, this should have been used for “Tiger and the Mantice”. And aside from a misstep on the part of our host, where he cribs a bit from The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Real N----z” freestyle during his hook, everyone performs well on “Real People”. The late Cellblock P sounds angry as shit, as though he were pissed off at every single critic who thought he had lost his will to write, and Crooked I, making his second appearance on the blog today, is a fucking beast. Our host is the weakest of the lot by comparison, but that doesn’t mean anything as he also sounds great on here. I feel like I cannot stress to you two enough how good this song was.

12. FLEX WITH ME (FEAT. CHANEL SOSA)

I hated this shit, but I understand what producers Masta Killa and P.F. Cuttin were trying to accomplish here. “Flex With Me” is just a song version of the scene from Brian De Palma’s Scarface that plays out just before the music kicks in, but the problem is that there wasn’t all that much to work with from that sequence anyway, so Masta Killa appears lost, resorting to calling in an R&B singer for the hook, which, what the fuck? “Flex With Me” disrupts the flow of Loyalty Is Royalty which had been smooth in its own way thus far. As this serves the same purpose as the title track, our host really could have just left this on the hard drive.

13. CALCULATED (FEAT. RA STACKS & NICK GUNS)

“Calculated” doesn’t belong on Loyalty Is Royalty, either, but in this case it isn’t because it’s a bad song or anything: instead, its posse-cut vibe with relative unknowns would have fit better had our host put together a Method Man The Meth Lab-type project instead of what we’re listening to right now. But he didn’t, so it’s here, and it’s interesting. Cruz’s instrumental isn’t soulful or melodic: it merely is and it’s done well enough, at least for Ra Stacks, Nick Guns, and Elgin to all deliver entertaining performances. There isn’t anything “Calculated” about the song in the least fucking bit, but it was kind of a fun diversion.

14. NOODLES PT. 1

Producer-slash-sometime-rapper Timbaland used to refer to himself as Thomas Crown, a nickname that never caught on with anyone. Masta Killa pulls the rug out from underneath Timbo by actually sampling chunks of dialogue from the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair (the version with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo) for the Illmind-produced “Noodles Pt. 1”, a track that sets up a relationship between our host and a mysterious woman he meets at a party or gala (one that can only afford Edible Arrangements on its menu, which is lame, but whatever) that turns out to be the cousin of a former childhood friend or some shit – honestly, our host made this far too complicated for no reason. Masta Killa’s conversational delivery is fascinating to listen to, even the statements that don’t sound altogether natural (“Oh, and you C-Cypher?”), and the story (named after our host’s Wu-Gambinos moniker, which, you know, that would be a pretty funny way for the Clan to release a new group album without having to honor the standards a proper Wu-Tang Clan project would mandate) leaves you wanting to hear more. Thankfully, our host has something to help you scratch that itch.

15. NOODLES PT. 2

This is hilarious, at least to me: Masta Killa actually released “Noodles Pt. 2” seven years prior to Loyalty Is Royalty on the mixtape The Next Chamber. I’ve even written about it already, too:

I wrote this back in 2011, when phrases such as "back to the lab" were only slightly too old for me to use.

Why I didn’t question the existence of “Noodles Pt. 2” when a first chapter was seemingly nowhere to be found is a question I don’t have an answer for. But I will say that while my critique still stands (our host’s beat really doesn’t work with the heist aspect of the song), at least the album version (which is mostly identical) works better with the aid of context provided by the previous track. Thanks, Masta Killa, for answering a question I had forgotten to ask in the first place.

16. OUTRO

And we’re out.

THE LAST WORD: Of all the artists in the Wu-Tang Clan, Masta Killa wasn’t the guy I figured would be most likely to turn in actual albums, as opposed to collections of songs. But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised: he’s always been the quietest member of the group, biding his time and releasing his methodical projects on his own internal clock. Loyalty Is Royalty isn’t perfect, but it does provide proof that our host has a specific vision, as he did with No Said Date and Made In Brooklyn, and unlike his last effort Saving My Soul, it doesn’t suck. There are tracks which do, in fact, suck: Masta Killa isn’t immune to making poor choices. But I enjoyed a lot of this album, even if I found myself liking our host’s intent instead of the actual product at times. The man excels at posse cuts, where his only goal is to try and outdo the rest of the participants, so it makes sense that his songs with his fellow Wu brethren are among the favorites here (even if Nature Sounds employed the same proofreader as Raekwon’s Ice H2O Records – “Tiger and the Mantice”? Really?). But when the man branches out, he still sounded pretty good: I never figured he would work well alongside the likes of Sean Price, Prodigy, and Crooked I, but I’ve listened to recorded proof that he does. Loyalty Is Royalty may not quite work as a straight-through listen – the man takes a few chances that ultimately don’t work, and you won’t be able to change the track fast enough for your liking. But overall, Masta Killa’s solo albums have been weirdly consistent (aside from his third one, which we’ll pretend doesn’t exist), an outcome I could never have predicted. Huh.

-Max

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