The 12 Hours of Wu-Tang: #9 - My Gut Reaction: Czarface & MF DOOM - Czarface Meets Metal Face (March 30, 2018)

Following 2016’s A Fistful of Peril and 2017’s First Weapon Drawn, an instrumental narrated storybook adventure that we won’t be getting into but rest assured it does exist, Czarface, the group consisting of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Inspectah Deck alongside Boston underground stalwarts 7L and Esoteric, decided to follow the Marvel Cinematic Universe blueprint for their fifth album. To do so, they partnered with a rapper-slash-producer so enveloped in pop culture references that his rap moniker and general aesthetic was swiped from a comic book supervillain. I’m speaking, of course, about Daniel “MF DOOM” Dumile, and the project was called, unsurprisingly, Czarface Meets Metal Face.

And it was a team-up that made so much sense that hip hop heads would have felt that something was missing from our chosen genre if these guys hadn’t worked together.

Inspectah Deck, Esoteric, and MF DOOM first connected back in 2015, on the Czarface track “Ka-Bang!” off of Every Hero Needs A Villain. I’m guessing that the chemistry was evident from that one song, similar to that of Deck and Esoteric themselves way back on 1999’s “Speaking Real Words”, the Patient Zero of the entire Czarface enterprise. I found the concept of this collaboration fascinating because Inspectah Deck has beaten his Wu brother Ghostface Killah at his own game: for at least fifty years now, Ghost had been promising an album-length project with DOOM, dropping occasional teasers along the way, but that album is as mythical as Dr. Dre’s Detox. But Deck can hit DOOM up on Skype anytime he wants, apparently, and even convince him to do actual work.

Said work, however, only consists of rapping, as DOOM doesn’t contribute any production to Czarface Meets Metal Face. Instead, 7L and Spada4, who have worked together since the first Czarface project but are now referring themselves as the production team The Czar-Keys (which is pretty funny), handle the boom-bap on every track. Most of the songs are handled by Deck, Eso, and DOOM in tandem, aside from a couple of exceptions, but they are joined by the occasional guest artist at times: rappers Vinnie Paz, Open Mike Eagle, and Blacastan pop up to challenge Czarface and Metal Face DOOM for the spotlight. Missing from the guest list, oddly, is Ghostface Killah himself, which seems like that would have been a gimme, but Czarface is doing another one of these team-up collaborative projects with Pretty Toney in 2019, so I'm sure he'll make it up to us later.

I was actually pretty intrigued by the idea of this album when it dropped earlier this year, but as Deck is one of the main draws, it counts as a Wu-Tang-related project and, as such, was subject to the Wu embargo. But I’m excited to hear this one now, so let’s get right to it.

1. TAKE YOUR MEDICINE

Instrumental intro. Does just as good a job with setting up this collaborative project as you would expect, and I’m not being sarcastic here.

2. MEDDLE WITH METAL

Well, that was something. DOOM ends his verse with a guttural “doooooooom”, which hopefully isn’t indicative of the amount of effort he put into Czarface Meets Metal Face. His verse wasn’t very memorable, as he’s clearly coasting on just the concept of the collaboration here, which is worrisome. Surprisingly, Inspectah Deck also doesn’t sound that great, but his verse was at least written well – perhaps he wasn’t really feeling like recording that day, or he was suffering from seasonal allergies or something. The energy on “Meddle With Metal” is completely off, even with 7L and Spada4’s instrumental, which I liked quite a bit, setting the right tone. Esoteric’s Hova-esque flow returns to close out the track, and at least Seamus was awake and alert in the studio that day, even if everyone else refused to give a shit. This was a disappointment.

3. BADNESS OF MADNESS

Holy hell is the Rebel INS fucking terrible on “Badness of Madness”. He tries to play it off at the very end of his verse, claiming that he was simply performing spoken word poetry, but that’s not a good enough excuse: he sounds like he wasn’t able to catch the beat, and yet decided to rap anyway, and he sounds like a fucking amateur Soundcloud rapper when compared to MF DOOM (who also sounds awkward, but hides it better than his bandmate). 7L and Spada4’s beat was okay-ish, but perhaps it wasn’t a very good one to ask artists to rap over? I’m concerned for the rest of Czarface Meets Metal Face now, as these first two songs should have been home fucking runs.

4. CLOSE TALKER

Shouldn’t this goofy skit have been a part of the album intro?

5. FOREVER PEOPLE

About damn time we got a banger on Czarface Meets Metal Face. “Forever People” features Eso, DOOM, and Deck rising a drum beat with some minor bass melody in the background, and everyone sounds fucking fantastic. The boasts-n-bullshit flow on here as everyone turns in some choice work. Deck, in particular, seems to be much more excited now than he did earlier on the project (pretend albums are recorded in the order the songs appear on them for that comment to make any sense), while MF DOOM floats over 7L and Spada4’s instrumental like a plastic bag in the wind. Esoteric has my favorite verse on “Forever People”, though, mostly because of the line, “so ahead of my time, I don’t speak in the right tenses,” which is both funny and cold as hell. All in all, I loved this shit. More like this one, please.

6. CAPTAIN CRUNCH

Another percussion-heavy track that’ll make you want to harness the energy created by your head involuntarily nodding along in order to power a lawnmower, or possibly the floodlights you installed in your backyard three years ago. “Captain Crunch” is flames, you two. MF DOOM opens the track this time around, giving the track its title and almost immediately dropping a reference to Bill Cosby’s rapist ass, although at least he stops just short of endorsing that monster’s actions like some other rappers have done in the past (looking in your direction, Kanye West, the patron saint of rapists, domestic abusers, and pedophiles). 7L and Spada4 borrow some lines from Ghostface Killah’s cameo on Czarface’s earlier “Savagely Attack” (from their self-titled debut) to build a chorus, and come on, there’s like a one hundred percent chance that DOOM is going to pop up on the Czarface Meets Ghostface album, am I right? Maybe he’ll pop up during the end credits to set up yet another collaboration. That’s a free idea you guys can have, by the way. Having Deck compare himself to Jeremy Renner in the Avengers movies (not his character Hawkeye, just Jeremy Renner) is also perfect, so much so that I had no idea exactly how to put into words how I felt about Deck’s contributions to the Wu-Tang Clan until just now. Huh.

7. DON’T SPOIL IT

A strange inclusion on the project, as Inspectah Deck goes it alone for a one-verse wonder. (Esoteric and DOOM pop up during what functions as the chorus-slash-outro, but that’s it.) The Rebel INS gets his GZA/Genius on, working the titles of multiple movies that either feature rappers in prominent roles, or those that are directly about hip hop, into a single stanza that doesn’t entirely pay off, but at least he was game for trying something different. I can also never get enough Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai references in my rap music, so I should send Deck a tin of muffins or something.

8. PHANTOMS (FEAT. OPEN MIKE EAGLE & KENDRA MORRIS)

7L and Spada4’s instrumental for “Phantoms” is moody as fuck, and that’s intended as a compliment: it takes sinister turns down dark passages that lead the listener to areas within their psyche they wouldn’t expect to see. All four artists talk about ghosts and such in their own ways: DOOM opens the track with a verse talking about the two “Phantoms” that do battle with his mind (he’s really just talking about the angel and devil on his shoulders, but whatever), while guest Open Mike Eagle’s contribution sounds awkward at first, but as his interactions with his visiting spirit grow in number, it gets to be pretty funny. Czarface themselves are pushed to the second half of their own song, as Deck speaks on vague supernatural subjects (and delivers the hilarious line, “Haley Joel Osment, I see fake n----s”), while Esoteric abandons the theme to unleash a performance brought to you by the letter “f”. The hook, performed by singer Kendra Morris, is appropriately dramatic and haunting, trying the room together well. Aside from Eso’s need to feel special on here, “Phantoms” was really fucking good, you guys.

9. BOMB THROWN

After the existential dread that crept into your subconscious during “Phantoms”, you need to hear something much more lighthearted, and 7L and Spada4 have got just the elixir for you. “Bomb Thrown” is a jaunty affair where Deck and Eso unleash quick verses to establish the fact that this is still their album. (It’s nice to hear that Esoteric is just as upset as I am about A Tribe Called Quest’s Grammy snub.) But the track belongs to Doom, whose contribution is twice as long as that of either of our hosts, his bars weaving their way through random references and obtuse shit-talking in an engaging manner. It’s slight when compared to the previous track, but I still enjoyed it. The instrumental interlude at the end was also pretty dope.

10. YOU MASKED FOR IT

The line about “stolen infinity jewels” elicited a chuckle, but otherwise you can skip right past this interlude.

11. ASTRAL TRAVELING (FEAT. VINNIE PAZ)

Strangely, Doom mostly sits this one out, only popping up to drop the occasional ad-lib. Instead, Deck and Eso look to Vinnie Paz (of Jedi Mind Tricks – now there’s a group I haven’t listened to in a while) for lyrical support, and Paz delivers the opening verse with the verve and aplomb of a man who just doesn’t care if anybody even likes him anymore. He’s alright, but the real money’s to be found with Czarface. Each rapper receives a different 7L and Spada4 beat to spit over on “Astral Traveling”, with Deck’s show of rap dominance taking the crown, while Eso’s otherwise-engaging performance is knocked down several notches due to some homophobic bars at the beginning of his verse (wasn’t Czarface Meets Metal Face released in 2018? The fuck?), although Esoteric does deescalate the misogyny toward the end of the track, which, dude, why didn’t you just rewrite the entire thing?

12. NAUTICAL DEPTH (FEAT. BLACASTAN)

Instead of blasting off into space, we turn inward onto the planet with the first single from Czarface Meets Metal Face, which obviously has to include both Czarface and DOOM in order to sell the album in the first place. This serves as an excellent gateway for the project: 7L and Spada4’s instrumental is jazzy boom bap and it hits hard, as do the bars from everyone involved. Inspectah Deck spits one goofy line (“we go dumber than Trump”) that still works because I didn’t see a lie, people: Trump is a fucking moron. Deck, Eso, and DOOM all get stupid on “Nautical Depth”, and the world is just a better place for it.

13. STUN GUN

Esoteric goes solo for “Stun Gun”, stringing DOOM along for ad-libs and abandoning Inspectah Deck entirely. And he delivers his best verses of the entire album, no bullshit. Instead of experimenting with a themed like Deck did earlier, Eso merely spits two verses filled with braggadocio that proves that he can still operate outside of the Czarface mentality. His bars are packed to the brim with pop culture references, some more dense than others (his line about the website Rotten Tomatoes was pretty clever), and he even manages to use the word “erudite”, which makes him sound like a pretentious asshole until you remember that Seamus goes by the nickname “Esoteric” when he performs. This shit was nice, even if 7L and Spada4’s beat seems to be from a completely different galaxy than the rest of Czarface Meets Metal Face.

14. MF CZAR

7L and Spada4 utilize some dark synths to give “MF Czar” a bleak, futuristic soundscape, and for the garnish they swipe one of Deck’s lines from fucking three songs ago to serve as a “hook”. The Rebel INS contributes an opening verse that just proves he has a subscription to HBO – there’s no new ground broken here, and he had a better line about being cut from a different cloth earlier in the program. So “MF Czar” belongs to Esoteric and DOOM, both of whom talk their shit in defiance of the drones hovering at eye level with lasers pointed at their temples, or at least that’s how the music made me feel about all of this.

15. CAPTAIN BRUNCH

“Captain Brunch” appears to be a remix to the earlier “Captain Crunch”, with MF DOOM and Eso’s original performances intact. Strangely, Inspectah Deck’s contribution is missing from this retool (much like Jeremy Renner in Avengers: Infinity War), but he’s still here to give listeners an new chorus, an actual chorus, as opposed to the Ghostface Killah sound bites “Captain Crunch” utilized. 7L and Spada4’s newer instrumental sounds just fine, and both verses still came off as pretty damn good, but I just prefer the earlier take more. Ah well.

16. SLEEPING DOGS

Essentially an instrumental outro, which was welcome at this point.

THE LAST WORD: Czarface Meets Metal Face doesn’t live up to the promise of its very name: there are a few too many misfires for this project to be considered an underground classic. That said, there were some fantastic songs on here that are worth your time: “Phantoms” is a fucking winner, and there are several other tracks that showcase the best traits of a Inspectah Deck/Esoteric/MF DOOM supergroup. 7L and Spada4’s instrumentals throughout explore newer territory, expanding upon what the definition of boom bap actually is, and for the most part they’re successful. The bars on Czarface Meets Metal Face are also pretty much what you expected to hear: pop culture references layered atop one another that the boasts-n-bullshit have to dodge. Surprisingly, though, some of the tracks are fairly bad: the first few songs on here feature terrible Deck performances, and there are times where DOOM seems to be questioning why he signed that contract in the first place. The only guy who seems consistently happy to be here is Esoteric, whose performances rate among the best of the entire project, even when he abandons the concept of “Phantoms” to play to his own strengths. Czarface Meets Metal Face is the worst album of the four (not counting First Weapon Drawn here for obvious reasons) Czarface have released so far, and there are still some fantastic fucking songs on here. There just aren’t enough. Oh well, we’ll always have Every Hero Needs A Villain.

-Max

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