The 12 Days of Wu-Mas #11 - My Gut Reaction: Cappadonna - The Cappatilize Project (July 22, 2008)

Darryl “Cappadonna” Hill released his fourth solo album, The Cappatilize Project, in 2008, four years after his previous effort, The Struggle, floundered about in the underground. This was quite the downshift from where the man was just a few years prior: as one of two acts signed to The RZA’s Razor Sharp Records (the other being Ghostface Killah) that ever managed to release albums, Cappadonna was moving tons of units (his debut, The Pillage, sold over five hundred thousand copies in the United States alone), was touring with the Wu-Tang Clan, and was basically on top of the world.

So what the fuck happened? Why did he vanish from the mainstream for so long? Short version: money troubles. Slightly longer version: money troubles caused by The RZA. 

Allegedly.

(Although if more than one person has made the claim, there's likely some truth to it, right?)

After the release of his sophomore project, The Yin & The Yang, Cappa bailed on his contract and went after his label for unpaid royalties, which he claimed the label had stolen from him. He understood that going after the Abbott of the Wu-Tang Clan was a risky business move, but he felt that he should be paid what he was owed (not an unreasonable stance – U-God felt the same way, as has essentially every other goddamn member of the Clan at one point or another). His ongoing pursuit of money that was rightfully his caused him to skip out on the recording sessions for the Wu’s Iron Flag (which also helps explain why he was cropped out of the photograph used for the cover art), although he did mend fences in time for 8 Diagrams. In between, The Cappatilize Project was recorded with zero Wu involvement, as was to be expected, given the legal circumstances.

So in between shifts driving his gypsy cab (Cappadonna, ever the trendsetter, was an Uber driver before Uber even existed), the Papi Wardrobe King kept at it with the pen, writing and recording new tracks to both hone his craft and to keep his name active in hip hop circles. The Cappatilize Project was released on Cappadonna Records, with any effort in promotion handled by our host himself, as this was a true DIY labor of… well, not love, exactly, because, well, you’ll read in a bit, but definitely something.

The Cappatilize Project marks the point where I stopped following Cappadonna's solo career, so all of this is brand new to me. I realize that some of you two will likely try to force me into turning in my Wu-Stan card, but I'm nothing if not upfront with you all. Besides, I was already following the nine other motherfucking members of the Clan - something had to give at some point. Life is short.

1. CAP’S BACK AGAIN

Cap opens The Cappatilize Project with an excerpt from a Malcolm X speech and a Big Zick instrumental that adequately soundtracks the man’s reintroduction to the (solo) rap game after a four-year hiatus, in which he apparently dealt with a “twisted-ass record deal” (read: Razor Sharp Records), “cab driver status”, “wild baby mothers”, “two tours with Ghost”, and “no calls from Rae”, that last line delivered in such an aloof manner that it’s damn near heartbreaking. Darryl masks whatever torment he felt during recording well enough, though, as “Cap’s Back Again” (a direct sequel to The Struggle’s “Cap is Back”, funnily enough) succeeds as a rap album intro, even though the gimmick of repeating the title at the end of every. Fucking. Bar. is annoying as shit. Then again, he’s “forever pushing the pain”, as he explains here, which is oddly poetic in its way. Hmm.

2. THE ANOINTING

I liked approximately fifty percent of the instrumental: every other set of two bars captures a hyperkinetic energy that actually makes listening to a Cappadonna one-verse wonder interesting. The fact that the other half of “The Anointing” is aggressively fake soul is slightly eased by our host, because for his part, Darryl puts in the work, coming across as a low-grade Ghostface Killah with less references to food, filling in those blanks with callbacks to his previous performances. This wasn’t that bad: our host sounds confident behind the mic, and while this Don Diggler persona is hilariously stupid as shit, at least Cap is still having fun here. A shame that the production is as frustrating as it is.

3. DON’T TURN AROUND (FEAT. Q-DINI)

Cap turns in his version of The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy”, basically. Over a sappy Solo instrumental that exudes positivity to the point where it sounds ironic, our host delivers three verses based around the importance of chasing your dreams and never looking back, which is where the title comes from, and not, in fact, from a Tina Turner song covered by Ace of Base. (Go ahead, look it up. It’ll blow your mind.) Apparently Cappadonna doesn’t subscribe to the theory that you have to remember your past in order to consider your future – he’s much more comfortable walking away from it entirely, tossing a struck match behind him to light the path. Okay then. Guest Q-Dini only drops in to provide a mid-song speech, so this is Cappadonna’s show, and while his passion sounds genuine and the intent is certainly there, “Don’t Turn Around” doesn’t quite hit the mark, although there’s enough good to be found here to warrant giving it a chance anyway. His shout-out to Bill Cosby during the last verse certainly didn’t age well, though, right? Also, he can’t seem to stop talking about touring with Pretty Toney, but that’s a gripe for a different time.

4. PEACE GOD (FEAT. BORN DIVINE)

Somehow, Cappa and guest Born Divine managed to fit a full-on back-and-forth verse into less than one minute of airtime (the rest dedicated to the outro and the instrumental), and it… wasn’t awful? Sosa’s fast-paced beat sets the mood for our host and his weed carrier to rush through a quickie crime tale, one which ends before the events depicted start to become tedious. Weird. Both Cap and Born operate at full speed here, passing the microphone around as though it were engulfed in flames, unveiling a sense of urgency to the lyrics that they don’t require, but works well with regardless.

5. GET PAPER (FEAT. LOUNGE LO)

Q-Dini’s instrumental isn’t that great, but its cartoonish steel drum-esque tinkling complements Cappadonna in a fascinating manner – fuck the doomed, er, DOOMStarks project, let’s try to line up a collaboration between the metal-faced one and Darryl Hill. It could work, people. Cap’s verse stays within his shit-talking wheelhouse, recapping his own come-up (“Fuck being broke, I wanna live like a white child” - *insert crying laughter emoji here*) and generally enjoying himself along the way. His younger brother Lounge Lo is far more menacing, however, disrupting the tone of “Get Paper” with some horrifically violent threats that don’t fit the track overall: anytime a rapper talks about the rape of a child, even if they’re not perpetrating the crime themselves, someone should send CPS to their home to take their kids away. It’s just fucked is what it is. Had he trimmed all of that awful shit, Lounge’s verse still would have paled in comparison to his brother’s, but not markedly so. Ah well.

6. IF YOU DON’T STOP (FEAT. BORN DIVINE)

Fontane’s instrumental may as well not even exist, that’s how little of it I can recall hearing during “If You Don’t Stop”. The rhymes from Cappadonna and his guest Born Divine dominate the day anyway, so maybe you won’t miss the beat all that much, so. Cap’s verse kicks off as an ode to how much he loves the ladies, sounding a little bit like an “Ice Cream” redux before he gets to his point, a tale about a woman who two-times him and has no problem fighting dirty. The line, “Women that love sex get real sneaky” is incredibly problematic – tons of women love sex, it’s just that our current society, which is far less woke than it needs to be, has conditioned them to portray themselves otherwise, lest they become somehow “tainted”. Ugh. Born’s hook is delivered in a bizarre monotone that extends directly to his verse, a fact that he even lampshades a bit (“She said she love my long verse with the hook in it”), but while his contribution is much friendlier to the woman he’s allegedly sleeping with, the song as a whole had failed long before he entered the game.

7. ONE NIGHT LOVE AFFAIR

“What’s up now, write a love song,” Cappadonna challenges himself at the very beginning of “One Night Love Affair”, and if that song title doesn’t make that much sense to you, I get it: our host doesn’t seem to understand what a one night stand even is, so. This Q-Dini-produced number is filled with Cappa’s love raps describing a woman he first hooks up with when he’s in the midst of an argument with his significant other, and they keep linking up for random adult situations whenever he feels so inclined, so this really is more about an “affair” than a one-night stand, but regardless, our host sticks to the theme admirably, even managing a proper callback to “Ice Cream” while he’s at it. “One Night Love Affair” is goofy and cheesy as shit, but not so much that’s it’ll be a problem – I don’t find it to be a great song and I certainly won’t be revisiting it anytime soon,. But it does what it sets out to do, which isn’t nothing.

8. GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT (FEAT. HUGH HEF & LAHLUGA)

Named after someone’s title in the Human Resources office of Cappadonna’s company, probably, this track functions more as our host presenting two of his boys to the (underground) masses than a true collaboration. Over a Q-Dini instrumental that is a joyous, soulful loop, Cap delivers an opening verse (that touches on the exact same topic as “Don’t Turn Around”, but not as well as that previous track), provides a (shitty) overly-wordy hook, and then hands it off to Hugh Hef, who is so deeply affected by how Black people are treated in the United States that “the only way I’ma get drafted is by them baskets”, which is a pretty solid burn. He sounded fine, as did Lahluga, who gives listeners a Shyheim-esque flow during his shorter contribution. Not terrible, but by Wu-Tang posse cut standards, you won’t be bumping this shit.

9. DREAM

I get that our host had to work with what he had available to him, but all of the music on The Cappatilize Project feels like a copy of a copy of an idea someone else has pulled off far more effectively. Take, for example, “Dream”. Solo’s beat isn’t bad, and it works both a Delfonics sample and a Martin Luther King Jr. speech excerpt into the mix, but the music itself just can’t hit as hard as it should because of the external limitations imposed upon it. (It also reminded me of Miilkbone’s “Keep It Real” for some ungodly reason.) Cap’s lyrics, which mostly run down a list of hopes and wishes he has for the future that can’t help but sound boastful anyway, are focused, and there’s a slight tinge of anger that bubbles up when he talks about his plan “of getting back all of my paper / that Razor Sharp stole from me,” so even though he was all “Wu-Tang forever” on the previous track, he hadn’t forgotten about his issues with their management. If Cappadonna were able to re-record this one with a more experienced producer, we might be on to something here. It would definitely surprise heads who had long since written off the Wardrobe King, anyway.

10. GOTTA FIND A WAY (FEAT. BORN DIVINE & MPM)

Since the song was never officially released, I’m guessing that Cappadonna thought it was safe to reuse the title “Got to Find a Way” on The Cappatilize Project, but even though the two tracks are similar in name, they’re not the same, as nothing on “Gotta Find a Way” holds a candle to Cap’s (preachy, but still absolutely correct) proclamation of, “It’s nice to be important but even more important to be nice.” On here, he shares mic time with Born Divine, who details his desire to avoid the street scene while hustling to get his music career going, while guest MPM croons a hook that simply eats up time. It isn’t a great song or anything, and Q-Dini’s instrumental is instantly forgettable, but something about Born’s line, “With a bullshit security job and CDs [for sale] in my backpack” hit home for me. Still, I could take or leave this.

11. WANTED (FEAT. KMC)

Also known as “Wanted (In Jamaica)” in certain Interweb circles, this was a bizarre attempt at reggae-lite, although, thank your lucky stars, our host doesn’t succumb to the need to reappropriate the culture, choosing instead to rap like he m=normally does over Danjah Mentals’s bouncy instrumental. This collaboration with guest KMC isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t stick the landing, and KMC’s seemingly never-ending quest to drop the names of more successful artists than he left me feeling apathetioc about the song in general. At least this one flew right by – the high energy present prevented it from being outright boring. But do you ever need to listen to it? I think you two know the answer to that.

12. GOON SKWAD

Considering that producer Sparx has the audacity, the motherfucking balls to loop a snippet from Philip Bailey’s “Easy Lover” (his duet with Phil Collins) for his beat to “Goon Skwad”, one would think I’d gravitate toward this one, given the 1980's nature of it all. I’d imagine that could have been the case, had it not been for Cappadonna’s consistent shouting throughout, as though he were trying to get a word in edgewise during an argument with the beat, that grates on the ears as soon as it begins. There’s no fucking way that his throat wasn’t hoarse after recording this one. “Goon Skwad” doesn’t even feature any other artists, which defeats the entire purpose of a song such as this: instead, this is a Cappadonna solo effort, and his effort is ass. The fuck happened, man? We were all rooting for you!

13. TUG DAT ROPE

Q-Dini’s instrumental is his finest of the project, sounding the most like a Wu-Element beat of anything here, but Cappadonna doesn’t use it to his advantage, opting to deliver a one-verse wonder (the hook is built in to the bars, so everything flows together like water over Niagara Falls) in a downright unimpressed cadence (so, the polar opposite of “Goon Skwad”). The concept behind his use of the phrase “Tug Dat Rope” falls apart under the most half-assed of scrutiny, but, like a lot of The Cappatilize Project, Cap is only trying to encourage the listener to follow their dreams, which is hard to find fault with. It’s too bad this track was ultimately a nonstarter.

14. MY GANG (FEAT. BORN DIVINE & THE BETTER LIFERS)

Not sure why my copy of “My Gang” is censored, but it doesn’t matter that much to me, since the track was boring as shit. “My Gang” is what “Goon Skwad” should have been: a posse cut where Cappadonna introduces some of his boys. However, at least “Goon Skwad” had a decent idea for an instrumental: DJ Fontane’s weird shuffling thing here is garbage, and our host’s performance suffers as a result. Born Divine and someone from something called The Better Lifers (who the fuck are they?)  at least attempt to deliver good verses, but our host’s hook mostly consists of the line, “My gang gon’ kick y’all ass”, which, honestly, sums up just how lazy “My Gang” is in a nutshell. The hell with this shit.

15. HOLDIN’ (FEAT. LOUNGE LO)

The final song of the evening, “Holdin’” is by far the best track of the entire project, although it truly is too little, too late. Over a catchy B-Rock beat, Cappa and Lounge Lo each unleash verses that sound polished, confident, and like they gave a shit about how the final product would play. They both sound good, is what I’m saying. Lounge Lo’s verse is awfully short when compared to that of his brother, but while neither artist gifts the listener with a quotable (when written out, “Holdin’” is chock full of clichés), at least the song itself is enjoyable. Why this wasn’t moved to the middle of The Cappatilize Project is beyond me – audiences certainly could have used a jolt to wake them the fuck up.

A special version of The Cappatilize Project sold by Cappadonna directly through his MySpace page back in the day included an additional track, “What You See”. I don’t have that on my copy, but if you’ve heard it, chime in with a comment or two about its quality.

THE LAST WORD: I feel like I didn’t really miss much by stepping away from Cappadonna’s narrative all those years ago. The Cappatilize Project is a headscratcher, in that our host goes out of his way to cement his Wu-Tang Clan ties (especially if you look at his logo on the back cover artwork), but otherwise goes it alone, eschewing any and all Wu influence for the music itself. And it shows: damn near every single motherfucking song on The Cappatilize Project is boring. I want to be clear, though: said boredom doesn’t necessarily stem from the lyrics, as Cappa manages to pull some more-than-decent performances out of his ass during many points of this album. The vast majority of my issues come from the beats: nothing on here will cause anybody, not even the most hardcore Wu stan, to revisit The Cappatilize Project at any point, not even the two tracks where I specifically pointed out the instrumental (“Holdin’” and the audacious, hilarious (but not in a good way) “Goon Skwad”) as being somewhat interesting. The Cappatilize Project doesn’t feature anything that will hold the consumer’s attention, which is exactly what you would expect from a Wu-Tang Clan member without any Wu-Tang Clan commitments at the time of recording.

I didn’t hate The Cappatilize Project, because it’s clear that Cappadonna had a specific vision and a message he wished to relay over the course of an album (mainly all of the “follow your dreams” shit), and the guests that are present (most notably Lounge Lo, contractually obligated to appear due to being his younger brother and that’s how familial ties work) obviously collaborated with our host, so in that respect there is a spirit, a liveliness to some of this that is missing from a lot of the latter-day Wu-Tang projects (specifically those produced by M-80, but you didn’t hear that from me). But unfortunately, whatever fun had in the studio during these sessions fails to transfer to the listener, and it’s not even the poor mixing or lack of major label quality to the effort that fails the test – it’s the boring fucking beats. If Cappadonna gave these acapellas to a more experienced producer (my mind jumped from Pete Rock (pipe dream) to Big Ghost Ltd. (more realistic, I feel), these tracks could be fire, I honestly believe that. But based on what we ended up with, welp, I’m not looking forward to the rest of Cappadonna’s catalog. I’m not saying I’ll continue to ignore them – these Wu-affiliate reviews don’t write themselves. But still: meh.

-Max

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There’s a bit more Cappadonna to be found here.