Rza's decline in creativity or access to some good dope is one of the main reasons I don't really give the last Wu albums too much of my time.Rza was fearless when it came to sampling,which was what drew me to his production,as soon as he started studying music theory(i assume because he was tired of losing all that publishing money) it showed less and less moments of true creativity imo.
I don't think it was money so much as he switched from producing from instinct to producing to show off what he learned.
So instead of the wildness of making crazy beats w/ all kinds of unusual sounds layered in them and samples that weren't supposed to work but somehow did and general craziness, he started making beats to sound exactly like what he used to sample & basically just recreating original songs. While it's cool to do that, the old RZA would take a section or two from that composition & layer it into something better but today he just wants to leave the recreated song as is or have a section played in a loop. That's why half of ABT was basically cover versions of soul staples.
I miss the RZA who was like, "You know what this song needs? A pipe dragged along a chain-link fence, some steam sounds & sirens."
Or "Yeah, this song is a pretty basic loop, but let's turn up the drums over the hook for the fukk of it"
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Or, to bring it back to this thread, just the intermittent nature of the scratches & drum beat & the glorious beat switch that makes this whole song sound fresh from beginning to end
today's RZA just doesn't craft a beat from disparate elements like that anymore, he composes the music to show he can compose music & he's out