Over the past week, there’s been buzz building about the half-secret 20th anniversary Wu-Tang album: after Meth dropped a few hints during a performance in LA, Cappadonna confirmed things were coming together in a recent interview: “It’s all being done in the secret Wu-Tang Bat chamber. RZA has all the tracks lined up. There are recordings taking place in New York, L.A. and perhaps at the Wu mansion in New Jersey.”
That’s big news…not necessarily the album itself, but that a Wu mansion still exists in New Jersey. Cappa also commented on going back to back to the “original formula” of 36 Chambers, but that seems rather hard to accomplish if they are recording tracks in three different places, no?
But as usual, the god Tony Starks isn’t waiting around for his fellow Clansmen: just a few months after the underrated Wu-Block dropped, he’s back with 12 Reasons to Die (via RZA’s Soul Temple label), his conceptual collabo album with producer Adrian Younge, who coincidentally just dropped this new album with one of Ghost’s all-time favorite groups, The Delfonics.
Though anticipation has been building rather quietly, they pair aren’t treating it as just a side project: they’ll be taking the record on tour from March 28-June 2 (including a May 9 visit to the Wilbur Theatre in Boston), plus, “to visually flesh out the dark and gritty world of Twelve Reasons, Soul Temple Records has partnered with Black Mask Studios to produce a 6-issue comic book series and collected graphic novel featuring striking visuals and an intriguing dual-narrative structure with contributions from a host of stellar comic book artists.”
The just-leaked track “Enemies” (below) is featured on both projects (one of them minus Ghost’s verse), and no doubt is destined to end up being used during the montage of an upcoming Tarantino movie:
[See post to listen to audio]
Ghostface Killah x Adrian Younge – Enemies f/ The Delfonics
And despite having unlimited amounts of music right at our fingertips, if you are anything like us, you still listen to Ironman at least twice a week. And if you’re anything like me, you compulsively seek out reasons to re-purchase your favorite music as many times as possible, just because it burns you up inside to think there’s a version out there you don’t own. It’s a strange and crippling malady, but one that shows no signs of abating with Get On Down’s gold-plated edition of Ghost’s classic debut, available now on CD or 2LP bundle.
Besides the “Cherrywood Trophy Box” packaging, 24k audiophile gold disc, and included cover art puzzle, there’s the 48-page full-color, hard-cover book including extended artwork, album lyrics and text from journalist Chris Faraone (yes, our very sort-of own!), with Trees presumably providing some executive inspiration from down south.
At this point, we could start our own label…