The Severed Cortex

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Afro-Samurai-RZA/dp/B0000269IF/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-1514635-5264950?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1177379937&sr=8-1

Wu Tang had a lot of talent, that goes without saying, but from a pure music savvy none hold a candle to RZA. RZA, while still cranking out the occasional release, has turned to the movie score business where the art of songwriting often comes packaged in less than one minute in size while still driving home the emotion of the moment on the screen. To me that means being able to write songs outside the normal structures and that seems a lot harder to do than just writing a 3-chord 3 minute pop song. This, of course, coming from someone who struggles to figure out how to play three chords in succession.

Afro Samurai, for those of you not in the know, is an avant-garde wholly adult cartoon whose lead character is voiced over by Samuel L. Jackson. And as you can guess, Afro Samurai knows some m-f kung fu. I haven't actually seen the cartoon, but if it's anything like the website, it has to be pretty kick ass. RZA does all the soundtrack work for Afro Samurai and this release covers 25 tracks, ten of which can only be counted as songs in the normal fashion. The other fifteen songs are more of the one minute non sequitur variety. These fifteen show RZA off as a solid composer, and most of them have great hooks, but by the time you get into them they're over. As you can guess from the title character, the whole disc has a very seventies feel to it, but at the same time I don't really close my eyes and see Richard Roundtree or Coffee Brown. That's probably a good thing because while the seventies undertones make up the foundation, the songs are very up to date hard, techno, and edgy, which of course, is exactly what a cutting edge adult cartoon needs.

Normally I don't buy soundtracks, much less hip hop soundtracks, but as I said, there were enough grooves on here that I thought I'd take a chance. I don't think the release as a whole is outstandingly great, but it does showcase the talent of RZA. If I had to recommend something off here it'd be Cameo Afro or maybe the totally misogynistic So Fly, but other than that there's nothing of note here unless you just a fan of the show or a fan of RZA.