The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #12

Rounding out the annual holiday celebration is, once again, The RZA, who released three separate attempts to resuscitate his Bobby Digital persona in 2022. His third and final try, Digital Potions, was a vinyl-only affair released as a Record Store Day exclusive, and as we all know, limiting access to your work is always the best way to rebuild your fanbase, but I digress.

Digital Potions, which at one point was the working title for Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater so I guess RZA loved the name so much he couldn't just let it go, is a seven-song effort that seemingly provides hardcore Wu stans with what they'd been wanting to hear all goddamned year from the guy: the Abbot rapping, actually rapping, and over his own beats, no less. Well, mostly - there's one song that was outsourced. And there's guests featured on every fucking track, mostly the Reverend William Burke doing his best impression of Ghostface Killah on Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... You know what? I don't think this is what Wu stans wanted at all. Pity that most of them will never actually hear it to discover the harsh truth for themselves. Unless they (*cough*) look for it online or something (*cough*).

Click here to read my thoughts on Digital Potions, a former Patreon exclusive that is now available to everyone!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #11

The fifth and final Wu-Mas mix of the season is upon us, and even though there's still one day left in this annual series, there's no need to fret, as Wu-Tang is forever, or so I've been told. There isn't anything especially tied into the holidays on any of this year's mix show playlist thingies, so they can be enjoyed at any time of year by anyone, including the five friends I'm going to ask you to share this year's mixes with in an effort to spread the word. There's some very good music here, some of it better known than most, and they are deserving of the widest audience possible, so why not try to convert your friends to what we older heads like to refer to as "real hip hop"?

The tracklist for the final Max-Approved Wu Mixtape of the holiday season appears below.



WU-MAS 2023 - DAY #11 MIX:

1. Black Knights – “Roundtable”
2. Raekwon – “Glaciers of Ice” (featuring Ghostface Killah, Masta Killa, and 60 Second Assassin)
3. GZA/Genius – “Life Is a Movie” (featuring RZA and Irfane Khan-Acito)
4. Drunken Dragon – “How We Gets Down” (featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard)
5. Wu-Tang Clan – “Radioactive (Four Assassins)”
6. Wu-Tang Killa Beez – “Killa Beez (Original)”
7. U-God – “Rumble” (featuring Leathaface, Inspectah Deck, and Method Man)
8. Madaam Scheez – “The Sweatshop” (featuring Frukwan and Killarmy)
9. Black Knights of the North Star – “Diary of a Madman Pt. 2”
10. Solomon Childs – “Staten Island Stand Up”
11. CZARFACE & Ghostface Killah – “Face Off”
12. Bugsy Da God – “Howling Wolves” (featuring Islord, Killah Priest, Polite, and Trife Diesel)
13. Camouflage Large Clique – “Hear Me Out”
14. Method Man – “Party Crasher”
15. Inspectah Deck – “Shaolin Rebel”
16. School of the Gifted – “Once Again (School of the Gifted vs. 2nd Generation Wu)” (featuring PiRo, iNTeLL, and Young Dirty Bastard)
17. Cappadonna – “Bring It Out (Vodka Gravas ‘Holla & Moan’ Remix)” (featuring Wu-Tang Clan and Sunz of Man)
18. Gravediggaz – “Never Gonna Come Back”
19. Tekitha – “Ghetto Serenade” (featuring RZA)
20. Dreddy Krueger and Powerule Crew – “P.R.I.S.M.”

Enjoy the mix and the holiday season!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #10

Lost Jewlry, and sadly that is not a misprint even though it bugs the shit out of me every goddamned day, is a mixtape-slash-compilation offering from Raekwon the Chef. It's made up primarily of tracks left off of his sixth solo album, Fly International Luxurious Art, which was released two years after this freebie hit the Interweb. Proofread that all you'd like, it doesn't make any fucking sense, but it's exactly what happened. It appears that Rae wanted to thank his fans for sticking with him even though his solo projects were taking longer and longer to drop, so he wanted to tide them over with some new music.

He did so with a twelve-track effort that contains zero Wu-related features, which one may see as a weird way to "thank" the stans that have looked up to the guy since Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Our host did score cameos from a then up-and-coming Freddie Gibbs and R&B songstress Faith Evans, which someone might enjoy, sure, and he secured beats from names such as Scram Jones, Buckwild, and Statik Selektah, none of whom are slouches behind the boards, so he might have been on to something here. Or not.

Click here to read my thoughts on Lost Jewlry (I hate that the poor spelling made it to the final product), a former Patreon exclusive that is now available to everyone!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #9

We're firmly into 2024 now, so referring to this series as the Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 seems a bit ridiculous. No matter: we have a job to do, and we're going to do it to the best of our ability. Well, I have a job to do, anyway. You two lucky readers get to sit back and enjoy this fourth Wu-Mas mix that has been compiled for the holiday season, with twenty additional Wu-Tang and Wu-Tang-affiliated tracks to add to both your playlist and your Wu compendium that you keep inside your brain. There's some underground stuff here, some relatively obscure artists with Wu ties, and even a few tracks that you've probably heard numerous times. Yes, the Wu-Tang Clan could do it all without sacrificing their dignity, except for those points where that was exactly what they did, but, well, those moments don't appear on these mixes, because the prerequisite is that I have to actually like the songs.

The tracklist for the fourth Max-Approved Wu Mixtape of the season appears below.


WU-MAS 2023 - DAY #9 MIX:

1. Cilvaringz – “Valentine Day Massacre” (featuring 60 Second Assassin, 9 th Prince, Shabazz the Disciple, and Blue Raspberry)
2. Masta Killa – “Tiger and the Mantice” (featuring Inspectah Deck and GZA/Genius)
3. TMF – “This Is For My N----z” (featuring Black Knights, RZA, and Solomon Childs)
4. Remedy – “The Art Basel” (featuring Ghostface Killah and Shyheim)
5. Dom Pachino– “4 Kingsmen” (featuring Bugsy Da God, Tommy Whispers, and Trife Diesel)
6. Pop Da Brown Hornet – “Black on Black Crime”
7. Maccabeez – “Maccabean Revolt” (featuring Daddy Rose)
8. Inspectah Deck – “Show N Prove”
9. Wu-Tang Clan – “Ruckus in B Minor”
10. Gravediggaz – “Pass The Shovel”
11. Method Man, Streetlife, and Deadly Venoms – “Don’t Hold Your Breath”
12. RZA – “Enter the Wu-Tang (Demo)”
13. Killarmy – “Mediterranean Flow” (featuring Reverend William Burke and Cappadonna)
14. Willie the Kid x Bronze Nazareth – “Fucking Blades” (featuring La the Darkman)
15. Raekwon – “This Is What It Comes Too (Remix)” (featuring Ghostface Killah)
16. Blue Raspberry – “Mr. DJ”
17. Royal Fam – “All the Kings Men” (featuring Benny Boom, Dark Dennis, Mighty Jarrett, and Seventh Sign)
18. Heaven Razah x Toyko Cigar – “Book of Seven Fists”
19. Bugsy Da God – “Terminators” (featuring Dom Pachino, La the Darkman, Prodigal Sunn, and Trife Diesel)
20. The Orphanage – “Smoke Flow (featuring Kinetic 9 and Shogun Assasson)

Enjoy the mix and the holiday season!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #8

RZA revived his Bobby Digital alter-ego on three separate occasions in 2022, each one exploring a different facet of the character while presenting the listener with a unified narrative journey. That's what I would have written had that last part actually been true, but I don't honestly believe that Prince Rakeem was thinking that far ahead when he was putting together the three separate Bobby Digital EP-length albums for release. Instead, he was likely more influenced by branding and marketing than anything else.

RZA Presents: Bobby Digital and the Pit of Snakes, which is admittedly a pretty cool title, performs double duty as both an album and as the musical accompaniment of a graphic novel by the same name co-written by RZA. The story finds our hero "embrac[ing] his id, ego, and superego [and] embark[ing] on a quest to figure out the nature of his reality and himself," or at least the press release claims, and that description just sounds fucking horrible. It does play as the natural endpoint for the Bobby Digital character, however, with RZA leaning all the way in to his more obnoxious traits and reading far more into a comic book superhero who originally fought crime while smoking honey-dipped blunts than absolutely necessary.

Click here to read my thoughts on RZA Presents: Bobby Digital and the Pit of Snakes, a former Patreon exclusive that is now available to everyone!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #7

 

Today we have the third installment in the Wu-Tang mix show series for 2023. I'm a huge Wu stan, even though the very term "stan" is problematic as shit, since you won't ever find me defending any member of the Clan whenever they do dumb shit online, and besides, you all have read my reviews trashing U-God in the past. That said, even I haven't listened to every single Wu-related offering out in the world, because my day job and my real life prevent me from discovering some mystical way of adding hours to one's day, and I'm willing to bet you two haven't either, so a lot of these tracks may be new to you, which is exciting, because I like introducing people to music.

The tracklist for the third Max-Approved Wu Mixtape of the season appears below.



WU-MAS 2023 - DAY #7 MIX:

1. 71Raw – “The Master & the Student” (featuring Rugged Monk and Solomon Childs)
2. Mathematics – “Four Horsemen” (featuring Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, Method Man, and Raekwon)
3. Roc Marciano and Killah Priest – “Slugs Thru Ya Papaya”
4. Kinetic 9 – “Afro Soldier” (featuring Ho2fa and Leggezin Fin)
5. Frukwan – “The Gravedigger” (featuring The Holocaust, Killah Priest, Shabazz the Disciple, and Shaka Amazulu the 7th)
6. Ghostface Killah – “The Grain” (featuring The RZA)
7. Joe Young – “Crack Babies 2.0” (featuring Cappadonna, Masta Killa, Method Man, and Raekwon)
8. Ghostface Killah – “Sweet Violence (Bob James)” (featuring Raekwon)
9. Raekwon – “Rock ‘N Roll” (featuring Ghostface Killah and Jim Jones)
10. Raekwon – “Criminology” (featuring Ghostface Killah)
11. Big Bob x Solomon Childs – “Dungeon Masters” (featuring Ghostface Killah)
12. Buddha Monk – “Warrior Chiefs” (featuring Babyface Fensta, Drunken Dragon, Dutchmaster, Popa Chief, Shorty Shit Stain, Spiritual Assassin, and War)
13. North Star – “Luv Allah” (featuring Kinetic 9)
14. Timbo King – “Verbatim (Timbo King vs. Timbuktu)”
15. Gravediggaz – “Defective Trip (Trippin’)” (featuring Biz Markie and MC Serch)
16. Brooklyn Zu – “If I Had A Gun” (featuring Rugged Monk, RZA, and Shavo Odadjian)
17. Soul Kid Kilk – “Mortal Combat”
18. Gravediggaz – “The House That Hatred Built”
19. La the Darkman – “Fifth Disciple”
20. Wu-Tang Clan – “Careful (Click, Click)”

Enjoy the mix and the holiday season!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #6

Northstar was a rap duo comprised of Christbearer and Meko the Pharoah (R.I.P.). They hailed from California and were one-half of The RZA's planned extension of the Wu-Tang brand outside of its Staten Island home (the other being the group Black Knights). Aside from his fellow Clan members, RZA spent most of his studio time with his West Coast brethren, taking much more of an interest in their careers than, say, Sunz of Man or Killarmy. But that's a story for another time.

Bobby Digital Presents: Northstar is Christbearer and Meko's debut full-length album. We may never know how they felt about their mentor plugging his name into the title of their fucking album (and then putting one of his alternate stage names elsewhere on its cover), but they were likely happy with the recording process, which found them rapping alongside multiple Wu-Tang Clan affiliates (although not any of the core members, tellingly). RZA himself provides four beats, with the rest of the project handled by a varied cross-section of producers, including one unlikely name who winds up turning in the best track of the project.

Click here to read my thoughts on Bobby Digital Presents: Northstar, a former Patreon exclusive that is now available to everyone!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #5

 

 

Today we have the second installment in this year's holiday special programming: another way-too-long episode of the Wu-Mas mix series. These have been both fun and frustrating to record, "fun" because, well, it's the Wu, and we all should know how I feel about them by now, and "frustrating" because, well, have you seen how much product they've released? Those jokes you hear occasionally about there being thousands of affiliated with the Wu-Tang Clan? Based in reality. I don't honestly believe that anybody has ever listened to all of it. I sure as shit haven't. But that just means there's even more out there for me to explore as I share with you what I've found thus far.

The tracklist for the second Max-Approved Wu Mixtape of the season appears below the embedded player, so get to pressing 'play' and bear witness to some Wu-Tang Clan songs that you may not have even realized were tied to the group in any way.



WU-MAS 2023 - DAY #5 MIX:

1. Prodigal Sunn – “Brutality (The Grindz Remix)” (featuring C.C.F. Division)
2. Ghostface Killah – “The Watch” (featuring Raekwon)
3. RZA – “Tragedy”
4. Method Man – “Ice Cream Man (Demo)”
5. Cappadonna – “Slang Editorial”
6. M.M.O., KGB, and Deadly Venoms – “PYN Symphony”
7. Raekwon – “State of Grace”
8. Ol’ Dirty Bastard – “Lift Ya Skirt” (featuring Missy Elliott)
9. Banks & Steelz – “Wild Season” (featuring Florence Welch)
10. Wu-Tang Clan – “Watch Your Mouth”
11. La the Darkman– “Polluted Wisdom”
12. Wu-Tang Clan – “Tearz”
13. GZA/Genius – “Swordsman”
14. Ghostface Killah – “The Forest (Original Version) (featuring Raekwon)
15. Raekwon – “Incarcerated Scarfaces”
16. Inspectah Deck – “Common Denominator” (featuring Method Man, Streetlife, and Carlton Fisk)
17. Killarmy – “Doomsday” (featuring The Holocaust)
18. RZA as Bobby Digital– “Kiss of the Black Widow” (featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard)
19. GZA/Genius – “Amplified Sample”
20. Gravediggaz – “1-800-Suicide (Poisonous Mix)”

Enjoy the mix and the holiday season!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #4

Czarmageddon!, the eighth album from the hip hop supergroup Czarface (comprised of Boston-based duo 7L and Estoeric and the Wu-Tang Clan's Inspectah Deck), finds our hosts deep within their wheelhouse. Having grown more than comfortable with the comic book-inspired alien superbeing named Czarface becoming the face for the group, Deck and (especially) Esoteric allow their respective freak flags to fly, talking mad shit behind the microphone while dropping in numerous pop culture references for many different types of media, all atop boom bap-informed, sample-heavy soundscapes provided by the Czar-Keys, a production duo made up of DJ 7L and Spada4.

Czarmageddon!, which also continues the group's tendency to run with the most awful puns they can come up with that replace rhyming words with "czar", comes after album-length collaborations with Ghostface Killah and the late MF DOOM, both like-minded artists with similar memory palaces and a love of comic book imagery. While guests were also invited to contribute here, Czarmageddon! is primarily the Eso and Deck hour, allowing room for both rappers to shine.

Click here to read my thoughts on Czarmageddon!, a former Patreon exclusive that is now available to everyone!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #3

 

 

Some of the better byproducts of The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas are the various mix show-slash-podcast episodes that have run as a part of the celebration, each one dedicated to the art of the Wu-Tang Clan and their extended family by showcasing songs that comprise their greatest hits and some unsung heroes. Even if the proper Clan members have slowed their output significantly (I'm still waiting for all nine hundred and three projects Ghostface Killah promised us during that one Verzuz), the mere existence of the myriad Wu b-teamers in the industry all but guarantees that the brand will never actually peter out. So as a way to share some of the many many parts of the Wu's legacy, I present to you the first of several supersized, twenty track episodes of the Wu-Mas mix series, all newly compiled for 2023. I truly believe that you two will dig a lot of this, even if you hadn't given the tracks or artists a second thought until now. It's okay, I won't judge.

The tracklist for the first overstuffed Max-Approved Wu Mixtape of the season appears below the embedded player, so get to pressing 'play' and bear witness to some damn fine Wu-Tang Clan tracks that you likely hadn't heard of before.



WU-MAS 2023 - DAY #3 MIX:

1. Raekwon x Tokyo Cigar – “Knife Fight Alley” (featuring Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck, and Ghostface Killah)
2. Ghostface Killah – “The Champ”
3. Bronze Nazareth x Leaf Dog – “Grime Lords” (featuring June Megalodon)
4. Moon Crickets – “I Blessed All The God’s” (featuring Hannibal Stax, Hell Razah, Kabaka Pyramid, and Shyheim)
5. Wu-Tang Clan – “Severe Punishment”
6. RZA as Bobby Digital – “Do U” (featuring Prodigal Sunn and GZA/Genius)
7. El Michels Affair – “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”
8. GZA/Genius – “Silent” (featuring Ghostface Killah and Streetlife)
9. Prince Rakeem – “I Gets Down For My Crown (Demo)” (featuring Shaquan, Baby-U, and Inspectah Deck)
10. School of the Gifted – “Drive By”
11. Remedy – “Crazy 8’s” (featuring Cappadonna, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck, Masta Killa, Method Man, Solomon Childs, and Streetlife)
12. Royal Fam – “Hidden Chambers”
13. Frankie Cutlass – “You & You & You” (featuring June Luva, Sadat X, and Redman)
14. Royal Fam – “March of the Hooded Soldiers” (featuring Osirius, Sharecka, and Track Killing Omar)
15. Method Man – “Torture”
16. Shyheim – “5 Elements” (featuring Down Low Recka, June Luva, Pop da Brown Hornet, and Rubbabandz)
17. Ghostface Killah – “The Faster Blade” (featuring Raekwon)
18. Method Man – “What the Blood Clot”
19. Killah Priest x The Holocaust – “Diary of a Madman Pt. 2.2” (featuring Black Knights and Gravediggaz)
20. Method Man – “Dirty Mef” (featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard)

Enjoy the mix and the holiday season!

-Max

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #2

 

Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater, named after a favorite activity of our host growing up, is a bit of an odd duck in the Wu-Tang canon, as it is a RZA project fully produced by DJ Scratch, a guy whose numerous credits within our chosen genre cannot mask the fact that he isn't actually a part of the extended Wu family. While that description may seem strange, especially given that The RZA is generally known in our universe as the primary architect of the Wu-Tang sonic aesthetic, it might have been the kick in the pants the man needed in order to get back into the booth. Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater, formerly titled RZA Vs. Bobby Digital before everyone involved thought better of it, was created as our host's response to the then-ongoing pandemic of 2020, a period of isolation and loneliness for us all that ultimately inspired him to write some of his thoughts down, sourcing his musical backing from DJ Scratch (best known for his work with EPMD and Busta Rhymes) in order to fully focus on his pen.

Click here to read my thoughts on Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater, a former Patreon exclusive that is now available to everyone!

The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas 2023 - Day #1

 

I wasn't about to let the year slip away from us without bringing back The Twelve Days of Wu-Mas, the blog's annual tradition shining the spotlight on the Wu-Tang Clan during the winter holidays. 2023 has been a rough year for many of us, including myself, which you two may have surmised by the complete lack of updates on HHID throughout the entire goddamned year, but even though life happens, my goal is to persevere and help brighten the days for some of the two readers who like using this site as a way to pass the time while at work or school or whatever. To that end, I wish you all a happy holiday season no matter which holiday you celebrate, and I sincerely thank you all for sticking with the site (and its accompanying Patreon) through these turbulent times. I plan on doing right by you all, I swear.

That being said, the first day of this year's Wu-Mas celebration will be devoted to a project of mine that I've brought up a few times before, including last year, but it's never a bad time to revisit my imagined Wu-Massacre 2 album from 2019. It's a side project I'm quite proud of, even though, as with my own writing, all I can hear are mistakes and adjustments I'd make today, but I believe it's still deserving of a much wider audience. And who knows, perhaps if it finds its ways into the right set of ears, maybe Inspectah Deck, Masta Killa, and GZA/Genius can work to make this a reality, am I right?