The Tale Of The Liquid Swords.

There is a tendency amongst a lot of people to generalise when it comes to music, and there’s an even bigger tendency amongst a lot of people to generalise when it comes to hip hop. A lot of lads who are normally open-minded about films, books and rock music seem to see hip hop as a childish genre that hasn’t produced any good albums. In part, this is down to artists like 50 Cent and Pitbull and I’m gonna be honest, if that was my only experience of hip hop, I’d have written it off a long time ago. I want you to forget all that though. Forget Pitbull. Forget 50 Cent. Forget all that crap and listen to GZA.


Put on ‘GZA’ - ‘Liquid Swords’ and the first words coming out of your speakers definitely won’t remind you of hip hop. What you’re hearing is a sample from the banned martial arts film, ‘The Shogun Assassin’. A young boy is telling the story of how his mother was killed by ninjas. The story starts to come to its climax and one of the catchiest choruses in modern music starts to attack your eardrums. Listen to this song, and I promise you will be humming it all day. 

The opening track definitely isn’t the highlight though, as the album plays out and the tracks go on, you start to realise that there is no other album like this. 4th Chamber is a mind fuck that will leave you wondering what just happened, Gold is another catchy as hell chorus that will make you keep coming back for more and the whole album climaxes with the wonderful B.I.B.L.E (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth) in which GZA takes a backseat and lets Killah Priest do the talking. And how glad you’ll be that he did. B.I.B.L.E, just like the rest of the album, is a truly wonderful listen that will never be beaten or bettered. Especially not by the likes of Pitbull and 50 Cent.