Review Summary: Strange, cynical, celebratory.
Blade of the Ronin is a sumptuous, engrossing hip-hop feast, and as an album whose predecessor is more than a decade old, it refuses to cut any corners in achieving this. The first striking thing about the album is how marvelously realized its new setting is. With Bill Cosmiq producing this time around, and a few trends in hip-hop later,
Blade of the Ronin takes itself to the same uncharted expanse as
The Cold Vein; just on a different hemisphere.
Honestly, I wanted that to be the last thing I say about
The Cold Vein. The expansion of personality this album gives Cannibal Ox is daring and memorable enough to stand on its own. The atmosphere has been widened to make room for layers of spacey synth, with sounds constantly shifting and constantly resurfacing, so really, no two parts of a song sound completely the same. The beats are a little more on-kilter than El-P's, but they're always a solid backbone and provide a perfect arena for the emcees.
Which, to say one more thing about
The Cold Vein forrealthistime, there's more of here. I don't want to spoil anything, but... MF DOOM, Artifacts, and U-God, among others. And they all kill it. The album kind of feels like this massive room that any emcee, who passes the talent test at the front door, can just walk inside and contribute some good shit to. Though this is probably also because you can't predict when the Can-Ox members will show up in songs with multiple guests. And it all helps make the album the wild ride that it was always going to be.
The distinct personalities that shine through the album's thick walls of spacey vibration are always providing a great complement to the song's other sounds, and they're always entertaining, even if only for their detail. Sure, sometimes Vast Aire can be a little cheesy and droll, and some might not be into Vordul Mega's exaggeration of his whole slurred-stream-of-consciousness bit. But in the right light, which you should be able to find somewhere in the background, he appears like some kind of stoned prophet. In the first half of the album, his appearances are actually somewhat limited, charging up the anticipation. And like I said before, all the guests totally kill it. I mean, look at this bit from "Iron Rose." Is this DOOM or is this DOOM:
Iron clad and rhymin,'
At the droppin' of a diamond
Filthy metal fingers get it poppin' like a hymen
At first she said no, her iron was low
He had to go, get back to mining iron for dough
Flow with an iron tongue
Spit words from an iron lung, where flung
Who gives a flying turd or iron dung
It's crazy the way this album just appeared and offers such an immense selection of unique musical worlds. To some it may appear indulgent or needlessly unorthodox, but incidentally, I think a lot of the album's power comes from that its contemporary trippiness is offset by a huge chunk of hip-hop tradition. Its roots aren't as exposed as
To Pimp A Butterfly's, but that's because this album takes in all of its surroundings - all the death and all the technology. It takes it all in, however strange or cynical. And however dense or pretentious its flurries of words may seem, what they're saying is always a grab at some kind of truth. In result,
Blade of the Ronin cuts deep.
