No Tears For The Reaper

Masta Killa with GZA and Inspectah Deck “Street Corner” – Wu-Tang albums are never quite complete without a bleak street ballad in the mode of “Can It Be All So Simple?,” and this is the requisite number on perennial Wu-underdog Masta Killa’s second record. Masta Killa is a fine MC, but even on his own records, he’s reserved and understated. He always seems severe and focused, dropping slow, sharply enunciated lyrics that often eschew persona in favor of cerebral meditations, and emphasize subtle internal rhythms rather than straight rhymes. On this track, he’s paired up with the two MCs in the Clan who most obviously compliment his style — his mentor, the GZA, and the increasingly rugged-sounding Inspectah Deck, who turns in one of his best verses in years. Following a quote that trails off on the suggestion that a revolution is not coming, and that “the world is just going to drive on and on,” Deck begins his verse dreaming of going down in a blaze of glory fighting for a revolution that sounds more like a bloody end point before moving on to describe his life in a world that just keeps moving, and changes only in barely perceptable increments because in fact, a true revolution is a maddeningly slow, ongoing process. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This week: Faunts, Bardo Pond, and The Pipettes.

Also: A very high quality recording (in spite of some mysterious fading midway through “Half A Canyon”) of a Wowee Zowee-era Pavement show is available in its entirety on Rbally.