I almost abandoned this review.  I’ve been swamped trying to do too much at once:  Building a website, transferring content, learning to read code, networking, editing, etc., but during that whole time I have been thinking about writing.  GZA/The Genius, from the infamous Wu-Tang Clan, is still on tour and his latest album, Pro Tools (Baby Grande), is still fairly new, but the particular performance that I saw took place on the the 26th of last month and I was seriously beginning to wonder if the topic was getting stale.  It’s true, I almost abandoned this review until I remembered this quote that I had read from GZA himself, “I’m not one to write a rhyme in 30 minutes“.  He continues by saying, “Once RZA came to me and was like, ‘Don’t take two fuckin’ weeks to write a verse man, don’t strain your brain.’ Then when I take two weeks to write something he’ll be like, ‘This is a masterpiece man!’ That’s how I have to do it, I like to work like that.”  These quotes hit me instantly and, not only encouraged me to continue but also epitomize the basis of the GZA’s appeal to me and the reason for his endurance and consistency in the unstable and oft-criticized realms of Hip-Hop and rap music. (more…)

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Although River of Dreams was not like Beethoven, as Billy Joel desperately wanted me to believe back in 93, Snoop Dogg and Guns N’ Roses were actually a little closer to the genre.  I’ve been thinking about all of the reunions, repackaging, or horrible new releases from the likes of Aerosmith, Queen, the Dead Kennedys (minus Jello), Madonna, and The Police. It makes me freak out that the likelihood of the new music being listenable are slim to none. There is still some wishful thinking on the internet that Dr. Dre and Guns N’ Roses may release albums that have been years in the making but that is where their similarities end.

Dr. Dre has had quite the career since he started out with the Strip Club Anthem group World Class Wrecking Cru. I remember playing “Turn Off The Lights” all the time when I was a DJ at Déjà vu.  After his mid 80s success as a booty jam maker, he produced NWA’s Straight Outta Compton. The late 80s and the early 90s had Dr. Dre producing most of the popular gangsta rap music to come out of the era and, after NWA broke up, Dr. Dre came out with The Chronic. The original Chronic was a West Coast soundtrack to the early 90s and, once it dropped, Snoop Dogg, Warren G, Nate Dogg, Kurupt, Tha Dogg Pound, and more carried gangsta rap through its first wave.  Eventually, Dr. Dre decided to come out with his own label, Aftermath, in which he released a horrible album also titled The Aftermath. After The Aftermath disaster, fans waited for years for the Chronic 2001, which eventually came out in 1999. About a year after the Chronic 2001 came out, Dr. Dre began talking about what was to be his next album, “Detox“.

“Chinese Democracy” is the urban myth of an album that was suppose to be Guns N Roses’ follow up to Use Your Illusion 1 and 2.  GNR milked Use Your Illusions 1 and 2 from 1991 until 1993.  At that point, they released an album of covers called The Spaghetti Incident, which was their attempt to make their own Garage Days Revisited.  Around this time frame (1993-1994), Guns N’ Roses transformed themselves from one of the greatest rock bands into a band that did not create new music for their fans.  Axl wanted to sound like the industrial music at the time. Rob Halford from Judas Priest had a band called Fight that was short lived.  Axl Rose never let up on his dream to make Guns N’ Roses the next Fight and, in his quest, he fired every original member of Guns N’ Roses and recast them with bizarre replacements. He spent millions of dollars recording tracks that, somehow, started to leak on to the internet around 1999. The tracks that were leaking out way back then are actually the very same tracks that are leaking out now in 2008. These tracks were to be the next Guns N’ Roses album called Chinese Democracy. (more…)

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