The Unknown

Initially, the Wu-tang Clan was something of a family affair. As the group enjoyed their commercial heyday in the mid-90’, clan-leader and production master mind Robert Diggs, better known as the Rza, called on old friends, distant cousins, and friends of friends to swell the ranks of Wu family to a truly intimidating size. Though many of the Rza’s collaborator’s were truly gifted, particularly producers like Mathematics and 4th Disciple, and MCs like Killah Priest, by the end of the nineties Wu fans were becoming increasingly discouraged by the glut of substandard releases by aspiring nobodies appearing under the once vaunted Wu banner. Enter Bronze Nazareth, a hungry Detroit producer with no prior affiliation to the clan who is one of a new wave of Wu affiliates helping to lend some much needed inspiration and support to the ailing Wu empire. Nazareth’s dusty, sample based productions can seem somewhat anachronistic in the contemporary Hip-Hop landscape but they perfectly capture the distorted soul, and rugged but right sound of Rza’s early productions. Thankfully Nazareth is not a slavish imitator and if his first album, The Great Migration hewed a bit to close to Rza’s sonic template, The Unknown sees him digging beyond his beloved soul samples, dabbling in live instrumentation and sharpening his delivery, which comes off like a potent combination of EL-P’s mush-mouthed arrhythmia and Ghostface’s confessional non sequiturs. Thankfully Nazareth seems content to allow his spellbinding production work to take center stage; perhaps if he had given some of his Wu collaborators some space on the mic he might’ve crafted a masterpiece.