Cannibal Ox - Blade of the Ronin (March 3, 2015)

Fourteen years in the making, Blade of the Ronin, the sophomore album from the Harlem-based rap duo Cannibal Ox (made up of rappers Vast Aire and Vordul Mega, although DJ Cip-One oftentimes joined in the fun), finally saw release in 2015. Following up the 2001 underground cult classic The Cold Vein, however, came with a significant number of challenges, including a falling-out with The Cold Vein producer (and, at the time, the duo’s Definitive Jux label boss) El-P; Vast Aire’s departure from his crew, The Weathermen, amid allegations of stealing the rhymes of other members; solo careers with varying degrees of success, running in the same circles as the likes of Pete Rock, Billy Woods, DJ Mighty Mi, Madlib, and the like; and even Vast Aire calling out Vordul for holding up progress on a potential second album because of his mental health, which is pretty fucking cold. El-P has kept mum about his reasons for refusing to work with the duo any longer (even though his production on The Cold Vein is the finest work behind the boards he’s done, on the same level as DJ Premier’s beats on Group Home’s Livin’ Proof and Warren G’s production on the Twinz's Conversation – you wanna fight about it, that’s what the comments are for), but given the fact that he has a production credit on Vordul’s second solo effort Megagraphitti, I think it’s fair to say that whatever happened, it’s all Vast Aire’s fault.

I think we’re all in agreement and can move forward, yes?

Anyway, Blade of the Ronin is the second proper Cannibal Ox album, following a live project and a twelve-inch “comeback” single padded out to play as an extra-long EP (the one for “Gotham (Ox City)”, by the way), but it isn’t a reunion of Vast and Vordul, as the two had floated in and out of each other’s orbit throughout the fourteen-year hiatus. As mentioned above, both men had stepped onto the solo scene, building their catalogs and respective legacies while the cult buzz surrounding The Cold Vein grew to a deafening roar. Feeling the time was finally right to give the underground what it had clearly been hoping for, Blade of the Ronin was born.

The project was released on the duo’s own imprint, IGC Records, with distribution handled by iHipHop Distribution, which had also re-released The Cold Vein after the dissolution of Definitive Jux Records. The Harlem duo teamed up with producer Bill Cosmiq to handle the bulk of Blade of the Ronin (all but a single song, which we’ll get to in a few), affording the project the singular, cohesive sound that led critics and fans alike to praise the musical backing of The Cold Vein. They didn’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel, however: Blade of the Ronin still traffics in dark, sci-fi soundscapes, while Vast Aire and Vordul Mega (along with the occasional guest) deliver the same type of highly-specific boasts-n-bullshit, violent threats, and off-kilter pop culture references that won them a fanbase fourteen years prior.

1. CIPHER UNKNOWN (INTRO)

Well, god damn. Producer Bill Cosmiq provides an instrumental that sets the tone: dark, science-fiction action-thriller score in the vein of whatever a 2019 version of Ralph Bakshi would likely use. Better yet, have any of you two ever watched Upgrade? Came out last year? Kind of a horror-movie version of that crappy Tom Hardy Venom flick? “Cipher Unknown (Intro)” would slide seamlessly onto its soundtrack. It’s fucking great, you guys. (As was Upgrade – seriously, you two should check it out.) Someone recruit Cosmiq into the Soul Assassins immediately – imagine the likes of Meyhem Lauren, Sick Jacken, or, shit, even B-Real rhyming over this. Could have done without the barking dogs, though.

2. OPPOSITE OF DESOLATE (FEAT. DOUBLE A.B.)

Already throwing the listener a curveball, the first actual song off of Blade of the Ronin finds Cosmiq shifting direction to gothic boom bap. The instrumental for “Opposite of Desolate” still kind of goes, though. It gives the song a punch that our hosts can’t really defend themselves against, although Vordul Mega, the first voice heard on the project, tries his best with vivid imagery and genial babbletron tendencies. Guest Double A.B.’s chorus is okay, nothing special, and the way it leads directly into the third verse without warning is disorienting, so “Opposite of Desolate” isn’t a perfect song, but it’s fine. Especially if one completely ignores Vast Aire’s downright ridiculous extended G.I. Joe allusion, dropping names throughout his verse like a smug GZA. I say all of this, though, to say this: “Opposite of Desolate” will likely be exactly what you want to hear from Cannibal Ox if you enjoyed The Cold Vein, so tread carefully, but confidently.

3. PSALM 82

“Psalm 82” was originally released prior to Blade of the Ronin, featured on the “Gotham” single that marked the resurrection of Cannibal Ox. That explanation doesn’t make it suddenly acceptable that the song sounds dated as shit, however. Cosmiq’s instrumental is fine at times, harder drums and tambourines joining forces to take over the world, but there are entire sections of this beat that sound like the man was simply trolling the listener. Even with a title such as “Psalm 82” and Vast Aire’s name drops during the (crappy) hook, this isn’t really a religious song: Vordul Mega says a bunch of nothing during his contribution, while Vast’s almost comically brash delivery wraps itself around boasts such as, “You’ll never ever rap better than me / … plus I’m thrice as mean,” inserting a reference to that old sci-fi show V along the way because he could. This one wasn’t great.

4. THE POWER COSMIQ (FEAT. KENYATTAH BLACK)

Naming the song after its producer isn’t that big of a deal – Method Man and Redman famously did this on their joint single “Da Rockwilder”. However, both Method Man and Redman appeared on that song, whereas Vordul Mega is nowhere to be found on “The Power Cosmiq”, the Cannibal Ox brand carried solely on the shoulders of the always-sarcastic-sounding Vast Aire. So that’s weird. What I found fucking hysterical is how not only does guest rapper Kenyattah Black essentially fill the Mega slot, he does so by performing two verses, twisting the knife in the man’s back. However, he sounds decent, so I’m not really complaining here. Vast Aire’s verse is filled with eyeroll-inducing references to the Saw film series and Pokémon, so even though the instrumental wasn’t bad, “The Power Cosmiq” won’t reward repeat viewings.

5. BLADE: THE ART OF THE OX (FEAT. THE ARTIFACTS & U-GOD)

The only song on Blade of the Ronin not produced by Bill Cosmiq is instead outsourced to Motown mastermind Black Milk, who turns in a credible Wu-Element impersonation that loops a soul record into confrontational, boastful boom bap. The boys in Cannibal Ox knew what they were sitting on was special, because both Vast Aire and Vordul Mega turn in solid goddamn performances. Hell, Vast Aire even drew out a chuckle because of a reference he makes to Chappelle’s Show. The inclusion of New Jersey stalwarts The Artifacts looks a bit like a headscratcher until you remember Tame One’s membership in The Weathermen, which then makes this collaboration even more confusing given what I wrote before, but clearly hatchets have been buried, even if just for business purposes, and both El da Sensei and Tame excel with their enigmatic trash talk. “Blade: The Art of the Ox” (oh hey, I just got that title) is such a great imitation of the Wu-Tang Clan’s aesthetic that fucking U-God pops in as a “surprise” guest for the final verse. (It is a “surprise” for people who refuse to read song credits, anyway, and besides, it’s not like our hosts were deliberately obscuring his presence.) And you know what? Golden Arms sounds really fucking good. You can’t tell me that “Blade: The Art of the Ox” wasn’t originally recorded for a sequel to that Think Differently compilation Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture. (A proper sequel, not that bullshit dubstep follow-up. Obviously.)

6. PRESSURE OF SURVIVAL (SKIT)

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7. CARNIVOROUS (FEAT. BILL COSMIQ & ELZHI)

Producer Bill Cosmiq returns for “Carnivorous” (and the rest of Blade of the Ronin). To embolden, italicize, and underline his reemergence on the project, he also contributes the chorus here, one that uses words in a way where sentences may have been formed, but they don’t necessarily add up to anything that makes any fucking sense. Funnily enough, Detroit stalwart Elzhi guests here (and not over his friend Black Milk’s instrumental), even managing to perform the opening verse, throwing as many animal species names into his stanza as possible, and it sucks. So does Vordul Mega, to be fair. And fucking absolutely so does Vast Aire, whose very voice seems to possess some sort of wink in its eye, as though he were purposefully baiting the audience with random shit spoken in rhymed form just to elicit any sort of reaction. (I mean, “A B-Boy’s Alpha” from The Cold Vein is the very pinnacle of that trope, as he opens the track with, “My mother said, ‘You sucked my pussy when you came out.’”) The beat on “Carnivorous” is boring and terrible, and every single performance follows suit. A fucking shame, but at least we now know which song to sidestep.

8. THUNDER IN JULY (FEAT. SPACE, SWAVE SEVAH, & ELOHEM STAR)

Baby Billy slows the tempo waaaaaaay down for “Thunder in July”, but the end result could be one of the finest Cannibal Ox efforts of all time. Over a Wu-esque backdrop that has me convinced a GZA/Bill Cosmiq collaborative project could be more than fruitful, Vast Aire and Vordul Mega talk their esoteric shit alongside guest spitters Swave Sevah and Elohem Star, all of whom turn in some excellent work (Vast Aire’s incessant need to paraphrase Yoda notwithstanding), and even the chorus, performed by Space, sounded pretty fucking good within the provided musical context. Yes, the hook itself doesn’t really fit the proceedings, especially alongside Sevah’s violent opening verse, but overall “Thunder in July” works far better than I’m sure anyone ever expected from Cannibal fucking Ox in 2015. Is this real life?

9. WATER

Cosmiq’s instrumental does sound like the background music from a game in the Legend of Zelda series as filtered through an underwater speaker, so that happened. It could have been much worse, anyway. “Water” itself was terrible, though, Neither of our hosts sound all that jazzed to coexist, with Vast Aire, not shockingly, turning in an awful performance that substitutes “self-assured” for “smarmy as fuck”, stringing together inconsequential non-sequiturs like lights around a Christmas tree decorated with ornaments filled with loneliness. Vordul fares no better, providing a contribution that makes no goddamn fucking sense, spitting bars just to hear the sound of his voice., It was inevitable that we’d hit another track with little to no redeeming value, but I was still kind of holding out hope, you know?

10. THE HORIZON (INTERLUDE)

An unnecessary instrumental, but at least it’s more of a pleasant quick listen than it is the cue for a bathroom break.

11. HARLEM KNIGHTS

Although “Gotham (Ox City)” (which we haven’t yet gotten to, don’t worry) announced the pending return of Cannibal Ox, “Harlem Knights” acted as the first official single from Blade of the Ronin. Over some sinister Cosmiq synths that worm their way into your subconscious, Vordul Mega delivers a terrifically visual description of his childhood growing up in Harlem and what went along with it, playing pranks in school, some minor shoplifting, and running from the police (“And when the cops came / You would swear that front of our gear, on our chest a small symbol of lightning” is a fascinatingly loquacious way of putting it). By contrast, Vast Aire merely talks a lot of shit about how he’s a better rapper than your fave. So yeah, “Harlem Knights” falls apart during its second half. Until then, at least, you get an excellent Vordul verse over what sounds like the score to a John Carpenter flick that doesn’t exist.

12. SABERTOOTH (FEAT. BILL COSMIQ & IREALZ)

Vast Aire shouts out the Iron Galaxy Clik (as it’s spelled in the liner notes) at the very beginning of “Sabertooth”, name-dropping both the very vanity imprint Blade of the Ronin was released through (named after a song off of The Cold Vein, naturally) and a loose collective of artists that includes guest Irealz, who subterranean Wu stans may recognize from his many collaborations with various Clan affiliates. Cosmiq pops back up in the booth to provide another hook for his own instrumental, but this time around he also contributes a verse, which sounded fine. But for the most part, “Sabertooth” plays as yet another posse cut where the goal was to outdo the last guy when it came to esoteric hyperbabble. Not that there’s anything wrong with that mission, obviously. But the beat on here is lacking the punch needed to encourage four separate artists to deliver stellar verses, and the listening experience suffers by slowing down to a crawl.

13. IRON ROSE (FEAT. MF DOOM)

As though he were anticipating my critique of “Sabertooth” way back in 2015, Baby Billy brings us the instrumental for “Iron Rose”, which is motherfucking flames. I’ve used the phrase before, but “gothic boom bap” is truly the best description for what he accomplishes here. It’s a goddamn travesty that Vast Aire has to fuck everything up here with an asinine verse that keeps repeating the word “iron” in relation to various unconnected concepts. (And for absolutely no reason, he adds, “My favorite rock band is Iron Maiden.”) His chorus is more of the same, and just as awful. It’s up to Vordul Mega and guest rapper MF DOOM to save the day, which they kind of do, thanks to performances that at least hew closer to what each man is known for behind the mic. I mean, Daniel’s verse also recycles the word “iron” far too often, but we expect gimmicky shit from DOOM. I’d still recommend everyone listen to “Iron Rose” because it is quite good, but maybe give the Vast Aire verse a side-eye for me.

14. SOLAR SYSTEM (COSMOS) (SKIT)

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15. THE FIRE RISES

Vordul sits out “The Fire Rises” so that Vast Aire can share the energetic, engaging track with a vocal sample from the late rapper Chinx, which Cosmiq constructs the instrumental around. Vast says nothing of importance, here: ostensibly picking up threads left by the preceding skit, the man stays in the lyrical space of, well, space for a bit before launching into his typical boasts-n-bullshit, capping his verse with a description of a woman’s arousal that manages top sound even more gross than every time Kanye West talks about fucking. And yet “The Fire Rises” sort of worked for me., It helps that the instrumental seemingly  had no time for Vast Aire’s bullshit, forcing the man to pay attention to elements of rapping such as “word choice”, “flow”, and “giving a damn”. Not bad, though Vordul is missed, but the Chinx Drugz vocal sample peers into an alternate universe where a collaborator of that nature wouldn’t have been unheard of on a Cannibal Ox project.

16. GOTHAM (OX CITY)

Released two years prior to Blade of the Ronin to whet the appetites of your average backpacker. Cosmiq’s instrumental is darker and travels to different seasons than one would expect, adopting a futuristic sci-fi bent for Cannibal Ox’s shit-talking specificity. Vordul Mega’s quick verse (and overly wordy hook) showcases an artist dipping his toe in the water, whereas Vast Aire is all about continuing where The Cold Vein left off (not production-wise, but that’s no knock against the instrumental). Given that the fucking song is called “Gotham (Ox City)”, it should come as no surprise that Vast spends the length of his stanza discussing Batman and the various members of the Caped Crusader’s rogue’s gallery, and it’s so try-hard that it’s fucking embarrassing. We get it: lots of people read comic books, and even more have seen the movies, so we’re all familiar with the Batman. (As though the duo were truly worried about the connection, “Gotham (Ox City)” even opens with dialogue lifted from The Dark Knight Rises. Groan. That’s the worst fucking one of the Nolan trilogy!)

17. UNISON (SKIT)

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18. VISION (FEAT. THE QUANTUM)

Because it’s only fair that he do so, Vast Aire steps out of the booth for “Vision”, leaving Vordul Mega on his own to collaborate with rap duo The Quantum, made up of Salvador and, surprise surprise, Bill Cosmiq, who also provides an instrumental that I can best describe as an El-P pastiche that was recorded while the producer had Raekwon’s “Incarcerated Scarfaces” still pumping out of his earbuds. The bars are chock-full of pseudo-intellectual hyperbabble, but if that wasn’t your bag, why the fuck would you still be reading a write-up for a Cannibal Ox project? “Vision” sounded decent enough – the beat is its best feature – but you’ll just be hungry in an hour.

19. SALVATION

The Blade of the Ronin finale keeps things simple, with Vordul Mega and Vast Aire performing a single verse apiece over some interesting Cosmiq breakbeat-infused concoction. Lyrically, Vordul’s performance goes nowhere, while, weirdly, “Salvation” contains one of the few instances of the evening where Vast Aire’s cocksure attitude and delivery dripping with sarcasm is best utilized – his verse is really fucking good. “Salvation” ends Blade of the Ronin on a bit of a down note, primarily because its low energy level is very noticeable after the preceding run of tracks, but it also feels like a natural stopping point, so it’s hard to criticize that.

The digital “deluxe edition” of Blade of the Ronin comes with four additional bonus tracks. I don’t have that version and don’t feel like looking up those songs right now – this album was long enough, you know? But you two could certainly pool your resources, give the tracks a spin, and let me know if they’re worth tracking down in the comments.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Blade of the Ronin manages what I once thought to be impossible: it offers up a reality where Cannibal Ox is able to succeed without El-Producto behind the boards. By that, of course, I’m saying that the true star of this project is producer Bill Cosmiq, whose work behind the boards is gothic, immediate, edgy, in-your-face. You've heard the expression, "Let's getbusy"? Well, this is a man who gets "biz-zay!" Consistently and thoroughly. If anyone deserves to have his portfolio expand after Blade of the Ronin, it’s Cosmiq, without whose contributions this album likely would have been dead in the water, if we’re being real.

Vast Aire and Vordul Mega were never the greatest emcees: each has their moments of clarity, but for the most part they skew toward the “underground lyrical miracle who feels he should be praised merely because of the ‘underground’ part of the descriptor”-role, when for the most part their bars are merely fine. For Cannibal Ox, it’s more about the delivery of said bars, and while Vordul’s apathetic remove from most of his verses (save for the ones where he’s describing his childhood and teenage life, where the florusishes he adds are rather fantastic) allow him the space to observe and comment, Vast Aire’s right fucking there, staring you right in the eyes while he rhymes, daring the listener to blink. Vast’s vocal inflections suggest sarcasm, but he still seems sincere when he’s rapping about some of the dumbest shit you can imagine: realizing that he may never receive another opportunity to do this, he fills Blade of the Ronin with inane bars intended to sound deeper than they are.

And yet, the combination works, just as it did once before on The Cold Vein. Vast Aire and Vordul Mega balance each other, and the musical backing is strong enough to override most of the lyrical missteps on Blade of the Ronin. It’s to Cosmiq’s credit that his work isn’t overshadowed by the lone song on here not produced by him: it’s certainly a highlight, as it’s rather fucking great and the oddball combination of Black Milk, The Artifacts, and U-God is inspired, but it’s not the best song on the album. Blade of the Ronin is a mixture of sci-fi beats, pop culture references, underground cipher sensibilities, and, obviously, boasts-n-bullshit, and there’s no reason why it works as well as it does, but it does work, which I did not see coming in 2015.

BUY OR BURN? Cannibal Ox is an acquired taste, but if you enjoyed The Cold Vein as much as I did, maybe stream it first, but Blade of the Ronin is deserving of some of your hard-earned cash. Bill Cosmiq is no El-P, but thankfully that just means he’s formed his own personality right out the gate, and his work alone is worth the price of admission. The fact that Vast and Vordul rap over most of these beats is just a bonus.

BEST TRACKS: “Iron Rose”; “Blade: The Art of the Ox”; “Opposite of Desolate”; “The Fire Rises”; “Cipher Unknown (Intro)” (yep, I included the instrumental intro, what of it?); “Thunder In July”

-Max

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