U-God's Resume #27, "Fast Shadow"

--Official Stats--
Artist: Wu-Tang Clan
Song: "Fast Shadow"
Album: Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai – The Album
Release Date: April 11, 1999

I know, Wow, we're really scraping the bottom of the Wu barrel now.  The only was is up right? I doubt it. So this album is important to me as a Wu-Tang fan is because I didn't buy it. Sure I'm a big fan of the RZA, and I like the Black Knights and the Sunz of Man, not to mention Jeru and Kool G. But not only did I never buy this album, I never even regretted it. I guess this was the exact point in my life that I had become so disillusioned with the Wu that I stopped purchasing just any album that even one member appeared on. Not too many years before this I bought the High School High soundtrack for just one Wu-Tang song, by this time I was skipping entire albums. I could put some of the blame on the Internet, it was taking up a lot more of my time and improving my access to Wu-Material, but I think it had more to do with other disappointing releases from the Wu and their side projects, and hip hop in general.

So was this album bad after all? I don't know, I've never heard it. I'm positive that I've heard a few of the songs from this album over the years through mixtapes and radio and whatever else, but I've never even been curious about the content of this album. I assume that it sucks. As for this specific song? I've definitely heard it more than a few times as it came up on my mp3 rotations, but who knows where I got it.

Okay then, GLHF!

"Fast Shadow"

Lyrics

The first thing I notice is that this beat is directly from the GZA's song Shadowboxin', and that's okay I guess. RZA's done that before with some song off of Raekwon's OB4CL, which pulled the beat straight from some song on Method Man's Tical (nice job research department). The beat is good, but the fact that I've heard it before in a slightly different form is distracting.

So, who is actually on this track? Sure the rear cover says the song is by the Wu-Tang Clan, but who is it really? Method Man (of course), ODB, the RZA, U-God, and Masta Killa. Not a bad line up at all. Unfortunately, U-God has only the chorus, and he really phoned it in. More on that in a second. Everyone who drops an actual verse here sounds good, but I think Meth takes this one.

As for the chorus? It's by far the worst part of the song (and ODB kicks the song off by yelling over and over for something to be sucked). Here is U-God's contribution...

Music makes me lose control
This is not just rock and roll
Hip hop digs right to the soul
Music makes me lose control
Wu-Tang, now we on a roll
On a rise, now here we go
Guaranteed to flip the show
RZA beats is outta control
Outta control, outta control, outta control
Outta control, now here we go

Kind of dumb. Really dumb.

Track Score: 7/10
U-God’s Score: 2/10
Impact on Rep (+,-,=): None, nobody heard this.

Next Week: We cover U-God's first appearance on Inspectah Deck's debut album in the track "The Grand Prix".

About this series: U-God’s Resume" is a series of posts which looks at each line of U-God’s entire career to determine if his status as ‘wack’ is justified (as labeled by internet morons). I think it is not. U-God is dope. We'll prove it. Leave it to the Tort Team.