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Too legit to quit

And then there’s Ghostface, who delivers his best verse of both his the Wu’s disc with “The Heart Gently Weeps.” The song immediately comes to life when he grabs the mic: “I brought my bitch out to Pathmark/She’s pushing the cart/Headed to aisle four, damn I got milk on my Clarks.” What happens next is a predictable drug-related shootout, but the stanza’s sheer bombast and humor single-handedly elevate the Beatles-sampling experiment. Ghost’s raspy, workmanlike cadence seems louder in the mix than the other rappers on the track, and he even sings a hook. “That bitch is crazy and, uh, she brought her baby.” (One wonders what George Harrison would think of it.)

So despite some inner squabbles, Wu-Tang don’t sound like they’re anywhere near finished. The group is too profitable and too vital an enterprise for its creative, legacy-minded, financially-interested members to abandon it. An attempt by Raekwon to re-form the group without RZA will surely fail, since RZA has repeatedly shown that he’s the only person capable of bringing the group’s disparate talents together on disc. Most importantly, as both The Big Doe Rehab and 8 Diagrams prove, Ghost and RZA need each other more than they may ever admit.