Rza: Ghost Dog Soundtrack

The brainchild of Wu- Tang ring-leader RZA, the soundtrack to Jim Jar-musch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai is a textbook example of stylized hip-hop. It's flow before lyrics, and beats before everything. It finds little value in storytelling, for its unity is wholly derivative of its emphasis on precise production. And while this formula certainly has its pitfalls, the album's upside still manages to redeem its shortcomings.

Unlike so many recent hip-hop ventures, Ghost Dog: The Album is without artifice. It neither feigns humility nor fancies itself revolutionary. Instead, RZA presents bravado as routine behavior and moments of genius as the norm. The flow is intelligent without being preachy, playful without being overly novel (this is especially true in the subtle humor and intricate internal rhyme of "Cakes"). RZA's beats are self-referential without being redundant or self-aggrandizing. In its rhythmic stutter-steps and its heavy reliance on organs and simple drum loops, the production alludes to the high style on which RZA built the Wu-Tang empire. But the album refuses to ride the wave of this past success. Tracks such as "Strange Eyes" and "Walking Through the Darkness" boast a soulful twang á la Al Green or Bobby Womack that marks a triumphant reinvention of Wu style. With these new sounds, RZA's genius finds expression as a continuous phenomenon rather than an isolated one—as a quality to be expected, not celebrated.

As it is a soundtrack, each song's scope is limited by obtrusive references to the film. And, because of the RZA's focus on the production of beats, he sometimes gets careless in his construction of tracks in their entirety.

On the whole though, the album boasts a quality that still eludes many hip-hop camps. For while Rawkus Records and the Cash Money All-Stars are integral to hip-hop's current dynamic, they are uneasy in the roles they play, and subsequently exaggerate their own presence. RZA, however, is self-justified without being self-conscious, comfortable in the lot that he has drawn. With Ghost Dog, he brings to hip-hop a subtle mastery, a quiet acknowledgment of that prowess which he constantly reinvents. (Epic)

—Thomas Kane

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