RZA Announces New Album Wu-Tang: The Saga Continues

[Rev Jones]

Damn I've never looked at my post count before, but for some reason I looked at it right then as it hit 6000, ha! Well thymed.

congrats!

good to hear you are enjoying the album

[MikeAll]

...Meth stood out imo.

BIG COSIGN! Just got my physical CD yesterday and listened thrice. Feeling it. So far only real criticism is the chorus on Gd up. The Saga Continues

[MikeAll]

Does anyone feel U-God was missed?

Yes! Uey is a dope MC and integral part of WTC. He adds a necessary element. Hopefully the Ghost exec produced WTC album happens and U-God plus everyone gets on it!

[MikeAll]

For the physical album lovers out there : is this being released in the mid price range everywhere?

Got CD for $16.99 Canadian @ sunrise yesterday.

[MikeAll]

I actually like how the beat plays out. Reminds me of RZA's golden era. He was good for one of those per album. Peace

#truth

[hotnikks]

Yes! Uey is a dope MC and integral part of WTC. He adds a necessary element. Hopefully the Ghost exec produced WTC album happens and U-God plus everyone gets on it!

True

[']

I was surprised to hear Sean Price... Thought something else started playing by accident.

[soul controller]

#truth (only faggots hashtag) #truth!

most of you think its a decent album when it sucks hard.. hardly any WU TANG CLAN tracks on it.. just random wu solos spots, hell they've dropped the clan name off of wu tang.. this review is awesome.. its basically how i see this piece of shit album.


https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums...aga-continues/


The Saga Continues


Entertainment One


• 2017

4.5

by Sheldon Pearce

• Contributing Writer

13 hrs ago




Thanks to Martin Shkreli, Wu-Tang is worth millions again. But is their new album even worth your time?


The uproar surrounding pharma bro Martin Shkreli’s Once Upon A Time in Shaolin, a Wu-Tang Clan album pressed in an edition of one in 2014 and stored in a safe at a Moroccan hotel, was illuminating. Barely a year after A Better Tomorrow, the Clan’s first wide release album in seven years, went largely ignored, Shkreli bought the only pressing of Shaolin for $2 million at auction. As the latter was certified the most valuable album in existence, the former struggled to sell 50,000 copies. While listeners complained about not being able to hear the mythic Wu-Tang Clan album Shkreli dangled over their heads like a carrot for years, they largely rejected the Wu-Tang album that was already easily accessible, which was telling: With Wu-Tang Clan, now, it’s more about the idea, the legacy than the actual music.
Wu-Tang Clan lore has long been so significant that a prospective juror in Shkreli’s fraud case admitted they couldn’t be objective because of it—sure, Shkreli’s bad business denied access to medicine to many but he’d also tarnished the sacred Wu emblem with his petty posturing. “It’s my attitude toward his entire demeanor, what he has done to people,” a transcript of the jury selection process revealed. “And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.” They’ve become a symbol, a “Chappelle’s Show” skit. Recently, Bloomberg reported that Shkreli himself may even have been seduced by the Wu-Tang Clan mythos; the very rare Wu-Tang artifact he thought he paid millions for could just be an unauthorized side project later repackaged and marketed as a crafted and prized collectible (Shkreli admitted in the album’s eBay listing that he never really listened to it), which led to an argument about what the working definition of a “Wu-Tang Clan album” even is. The status of that exclusive, and the crew’s new release, The Saga Continues, begs the question: What even makes a Wu-Tang album these days?
Before even releasing The Saga Continues, the project’s architects made clear that it isn’t a canonical Wu-Tang Clan album; RZA has pegged the offering as a curated collection of treasures from the Wu collective, and the project is billed to “Wu-Tang” and not “Wu-Tang Clan,” which is apparently an important distinction. So what is The Saga Continues? It can firstly be classified as a compilation, and secondly as a showcase for longtime Wu-Tang producer Mathematics. RZA executive produced the project, but Mathematics “crafted” it. (At the end of “Lesson Learn’d,” Redman, who is not a member of the Clan but gets more airtime than six living members, intimates as much, introducing Math as the show’s star.) The project has all the moving parts of a Wu-Tang album, but the gaps in posse cuts are filled by affiliates like Killah Priest and Streetlife. On average there’s one official Clan member per song, almost as if sharing space is a chore. Where Wu-Tang Clan once felt like a cohesive unit made up of diverse voices and personas, the group now seems like a dysfunctional family begrudgingly reconvening for reunions.

No matter how this is billed—group or collective, album or anthology—the project is a self-fulfilling prophesy: The Saga Continues feels like an unnecessary continuation of a Wu-Tang adventure growing more and more tedious, only persisting out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to the brand. They’re still trading on the name, yet they don’t even want to commit to making music en masse. The Wu-Tang group efforts are largely unimaginative affairs now. They’re mostly rapping in circles. They ignore the conditions that forged some recent solo work worth visiting. There’s none of the panel-by-panel storytelling of Ghostface’s Twelve Reasons to Die series, or the dramatic flair of the last few Raekwon albums. Ghostface is the least illustrative he’s been in some time. And Raekwon sounds flat-out disengaged. The project is packed with extremely dated references, and outdated rhetoric. On “Why Why Why,” RZA chastises strippers dancing for rich showmen like Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (“And she wonders why, why, why she can’t keep her husband?”) but doesn’t condemn or even mention the boxer’s history of domestic violence. In a guest spot, the late Sean Price proudly pronounces “I don’t weirdo with queer clothes.” Later on the same song, RZA raps, “Bobby Dig convert Lady Gaga/Back to heterosexual,” which aside from being problematic, misunderstands both Gaga and how sexuality works. Everything about this feels dusty, suspect, and archaic.

Anyone who comes in expecting a throwback is rewarded with a workable period piece: This is a spin-off in every sense. The Saga Continues is full of competent if forgettable rapping straight out of the Wu-Tang manuscripts, and each Wu rapper does a serviceable job mustering up shades of their primes, in function. The verses don’t do what they used to, but at a distance they move in the same ways. Songs are sketches using old Clan templates. There are skits. Mathematics knows the Wu-Tang blueprint well and is more than capable of executing; he supplies their staples: sample-heavy soul, knocking drums, and the usual snippets from martial arts cinema. But nothing notable or consequential happens inside. And worse still: nothing unpredictable happens. Why listen to a bargain bin Wu joint when 36 Chambers is readily available? Outside of servicing the most diehard Wu-Tang fans, this album has little to no utility.
As pointless as the project is, The Saga Continues isn’t a complete drag. Method Man and Redman, longtime partners in crime, come away as the standouts. They’re consistent, delivering the best verses on “People Say” and reuniting as a tag-team for the loud-mouthed “Hood Go Bang!” But early on, Redman all but provides the compilation’s thesis: “At my age it’s all about bread/Tryna be nice at 40, you can have it all shawty/I’m tryna make history, and history say: ‘Fuck rap,’ I divorced her, the bitch bore me.” More than anything, The Saga Continues seems like a lazy way to cash in on Wu-Tang cachet. This wouldn’t be the first time.





If you guys genuinely like this, you must listen to some wank fucking music.

[ForensikZ]

#truth (only faggots hashtag) #truth!

most of you think its a decent album when it sucks hard.. hardly any WU TANG CLAN tracks on it.. just random wu solos spots, hell they've dropped the clan name off of wu tang.. this review is awesome.. its basically how i see this piece of shit album.


https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums...aga-continues/


The Saga Continues


Entertainment One
• 2017

4.5

by Sheldon Pearce

• Contributing Writer

13 hrs ago




Thanks to Martin Shkreli, Wu-Tang is worth millions again. But is their new album even worth your time?


The uproar surrounding pharma bro Martin Shkreli’s Once Upon A Time in Shaolin, a Wu-Tang Clan album pressed in an edition of one in 2014 and stored in a safe at a Moroccan hotel, was illuminating. Barely a year after A Better Tomorrow, the Clan’s first wide release album in seven years, went largely ignored, Shkreli bought the only pressing of Shaolin for $2 million at auction. As the latter was certified the most valuable album in existence, the former struggled to sell 50,000 copies. While listeners complained about not being able to hear the mythic Wu-Tang Clan album Shkreli dangled over their heads like a carrot for years, they largely rejected the Wu-Tang album that was already easily accessible, which was telling: With Wu-Tang Clan, now, it’s more about the idea, the legacy than the actual music.
Wu-Tang Clan lore has long been so significant that a prospective juror in Shkreli’s fraud case admitted they couldn’t be objective because of it—sure, Shkreli’s bad business denied access to medicine to many but he’d also tarnished the sacred Wu emblem with his petty posturing. “It’s my attitude toward his entire demeanor, what he has done to people,” a transcript of the jury selection process revealed. “And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.” They’ve become a symbol, a “Chappelle’s Show” skit. Recently, Bloomberg reported that Shkreli himself may even have been seduced by the Wu-Tang Clan mythos; the very rare Wu-Tang artifact he thought he paid millions for could just be an unauthorized side project later repackaged and marketed as a crafted and prized collectible (Shkreli admitted in the album’s eBay listing that he never really listened to it), which led to an argument about what the working definition of a “Wu-Tang Clan album” even is. The status of that exclusive, and the crew’s new release, The Saga Continues, begs the question: What even makes a Wu-Tang album these days?
Before even releasing The Saga Continues, the project’s architects made clear that it isn’t a canonical Wu-Tang Clan album; RZA has pegged the offering as a curated collection of treasures from the Wu collective, and the project is billed to “Wu-Tang” and not “Wu-Tang Clan,” which is apparently an important distinction. So what is The Saga Continues? It can firstly be classified as a compilation, and secondly as a showcase for longtime Wu-Tang producer Mathematics. RZA executive produced the project, but Mathematics “crafted” it. (At the end of “Lesson Learn’d,” Redman, who is not a member of the Clan but gets more airtime than six living members, intimates as much, introducing Math as the show’s star.) The project has all the moving parts of a Wu-Tang album, but the gaps in posse cuts are filled by affiliates like Killah Priest and Streetlife. On average there’s one official Clan member per song, almost as if sharing space is a chore. Where Wu-Tang Clan once felt like a cohesive unit made up of diverse voices and personas, the group now seems like a dysfunctional family begrudgingly reconvening for reunions.

No matter how this is billed—group or collective, album or anthology—the project is a self-fulfilling prophesy: The Saga Continues feels like an unnecessary continuation of a Wu-Tang adventure growing more and more tedious, only persisting out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to the brand. They’re still trading on the name, yet they don’t even want to commit to making music en masse. The Wu-Tang group efforts are largely unimaginative affairs now. They’re mostly rapping in circles. They ignore the conditions that forged some recent solo work worth visiting. There’s none of the panel-by-panel storytelling of Ghostface’s Twelve Reasons to Die series, or the dramatic flair of the last few Raekwon albums. Ghostface is the least illustrative he’s been in some time. And Raekwon sounds flat-out disengaged. The project is packed with extremely dated references, and outdated rhetoric. On “Why Why Why,” RZA chastises strippers dancing for rich showmen like Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (“And she wonders why, why, why she can’t keep her husband?”) but doesn’t condemn or even mention the boxer’s history of domestic violence. In a guest spot, the late Sean Price proudly pronounces “I don’t weirdo with queer clothes.” Later on the same song, RZA raps, “Bobby Dig convert Lady Gaga/Back to heterosexual,” which aside from being problematic, misunderstands both Gaga and how sexuality works. Everything about this feels dusty, suspect, and archaic.

Anyone who comes in expecting a throwback is rewarded with a workable period piece: This is a spin-off in every sense. The Saga Continues is full of competent if forgettable rapping straight out of the Wu-Tang manuscripts, and each Wu rapper does a serviceable job mustering up shades of their primes, in function. The verses don’t do what they used to, but at a distance they move in the same ways. Songs are sketches using old Clan templates. There are skits. Mathematics knows the Wu-Tang blueprint well and is more than capable of executing; he supplies their staples: sample-heavy soul, knocking drums, and the usual snippets from martial arts cinema. But nothing notable or consequential happens inside. And worse still: nothing unpredictable happens. Why listen to a bargain bin Wu joint when 36 Chambers is readily available? Outside of servicing the most diehard Wu-Tang fans, this album has little to no utility.
As pointless as the project is, The Saga Continues isn’t a complete drag. Method Man and Redman, longtime partners in crime, come away as the standouts. They’re consistent, delivering the best verses on “People Say” and reuniting as a tag-team for the loud-mouthed “Hood Go Bang!” But early on, Redman all but provides the compilation’s thesis: “At my age it’s all about bread/Tryna be nice at 40, you can have it all shawty/I’m tryna make history, and history say: ‘Fuck rap,’ I divorced her, the bitch bore me.” More than anything, The Saga Continues seems like a lazy way to cash in on Wu-Tang cachet. This wouldn’t be the first time.





If you guys genuinely like this, you must listen to some wank fucking music.

wank bro? why is it the European wu fans are always the ones complaining about the clan. yall the reason wu dont respect this forum anymore cuz they see a buncha european white boys shit on the movement. you use the word wank and have the audacity to tell others we like shit music when you use corny 90 yr old white grandma slang....

as far as the review, i know you didnt write it but since you seem to share thoughts with the "incredible" wink wink pichfork album review team of corny white hipsters ima just act like you did

this shit is better than a better tomorrow...

lesson learned is wack?
people say is wack?
fly navigation is wack?
why why why?
my only one is wack?
fast and furious?
pearl harbor?
frozen?



everyone of those songs is atleast solid AND better than every song on ABT minus ruckus in bminor, half of miracle, a better tomorrow and necklace. did you even listen to the songs or are you one of those people complaining about singing who forgot songs like tearz, reunited, little ghetto boys, hollow bones, tragedy, can it be so simple, etc etc existed. it literally has THREE modern day hooks and Gd up is only one thats garbage. my only one got GREAT verses by ghost rza and cap and a passable hook over a good beat.


this shit is no different than chambermusik and legendary weapons. meth and gza werent on chambermusik and gza and killa werent on legendary weapons...

yall need to stop geting ya panties in a bunch over one missing member in a 10 man crew. complaining about not enough songs with multiple members... remember method man, tearz, clan in da front, cream by chance?


i mean i read the review and complaining about rza being mysognistic (guess he hate maria and wildflower too..) and mad cause sean price and rza make fun of gays (*nerd from simpsons errr...being gay...i see the rizzer doesnt understand how sexuality works ah haaerr..).. those 2 points are some of the worst complaints i ever read about an album before. EVER. keep this fucking CAC away from hip hop albums. dude prolly sucks dick he has no right to even acknowledge wutang let alone speak about them with his dick breath sheldon


its like every album yall go in waiting for wutangforever 2... instead of just being happy we get 5-10 dope new wutang songs produced by one of our fav producers making dope beats for wu to rap on

these guys broke so much ground during their initial 5 years they lost everyone by cooking steak for baby food brain ass people. they dumbed it back down because as soon as they hit that super saian level on WTF they lost most of their original fan base and caught the white europeans. frankly, i think that bothered them and they went back to the simple rhymes of 36 chambers style... and yall still complain. its a decent lil project... the only people mad are the ones expecting this to be anything more than a dope wutang compilation nothing more.

yall must be real miserable fucks to hate on this album

[josborne3680]

Pitchfork, ha. Thread over. Peace

[num2son]

Review
http://www.wutang-corp.com/forum/sho...Saga-Continues

[rzatrax]

wank bro? why is it the European wu fans are always the ones complaining about the clan. yall the reason wu dont respect this forum anymore cuz they see a buncha european white boys shit on the movement. you use the word wank and have the audacity to tell others we like shit music when you use corny 90 yr old white grandma slang....

as far as the review, i know you didnt write it but since you seem to share thoughts with the "incredible" wink wink pichfork album review team of corny white hipsters ima just act like you did

this shit is better than a better tomorrow...

lesson learned is wack?
people say is wack?
fly navigation is wack?
why why why?
my only one is wack?
fast and furious?
pearl harbor?
frozen?



everyone of those songs is atleast solid AND better than every song on ABT minus ruckus in bminor, half of miracle, a better tomorrow and necklace. did you even listen to the songs or are you one of those people complaining about singing who forgot songs like tearz, reunited, little ghetto boys, hollow bones, tragedy, can it be so simple, etc etc existed. it literally has THREE modern day hooks and Gd up is only one thats garbage. my only one got GREAT verses by ghost rza and cap and a passable hook over a good beat.


this shit is no different than chambermusik and legendary weapons. meth and gza werent on chambermusik and gza and killa werent on legendary weapons...

yall need to stop geting ya panties in a bunch over one missing member in a 10 man crew. complaining about not enough songs with multiple members... remember method man, tearz, clan in da front, cream by chance?


i mean i read the review and complaining about rza being mysognistic (guess he hate maria and wildflower too..) and mad cause sean price and rza make fun of gays (*nerd from simpsons errr...being gay...i see the rizzer doesnt understand how sexuality works ah haaerr..).. those 2 points are some of the worst complaints i ever read about an album before. EVER. keep this fucking CAC away from hip hop albums. dude prolly sucks dick he has no right to even acknowledge wutang let alone speak about them with his dick breath sheldon


its like every album yall go in waiting for wutangforever 2... instead of just being happy we get 5-10 dope new wutang songs produced by one of our fav producers making dope beats for wu to rap on

these guys broke so much ground during their initial 5 years they lost everyone by cooking steak for baby food brain ass people. they dumbed it back down because as soon as they hit that super saian level on WTF they lost most of their original fan base and caught the white europeans. frankly, i think that bothered them and they went back to the simple rhymes of 36 chambers style... and yall still complain. its a decent lil project... the only people mad are the ones expecting this to be anything more than a dope wutang compilation nothing more.

yall must be real miserable fucks to hate on this album

Well said ForensikZ. Take heed haterz !!!

[Holocaust]

1st week sales-25,000

[The blackma]

I don't think it's a great album or a classic but it's a good one. The dudes get older and we are in 2017, think about it. I know brothers who expect a new 36 chambers... Come on ! They want Robert Diggs to produce incredible shit as he once did but he can't. The wu members don't trust him no more. I hope one day all wu elements like Rza, 4th Disciple, True Master, Y kim, Bronze Nazareth and other dudes like Moongod Allah, Cilvaringz and even some fans will provide tons of dope beats for a great farewell. But I think "The saga..." is the best shit Wu can release in this sinister era. Hip hop is not my shit nowadays because according to me it sucks. Too many clowns, too many wack shit, too many bitches.... Wu released so many dope albums and songs, the saga will never end in my mind.

[soul controller]

how can you call it a CLAN album. when theres no CLAN on it?

the lyrics are weak and child play-esque.