Meth has not lost a single step since his prime, and his performance here sees bars and flow as good as they've ever been, the perfect hybrid of 36 Chambers' sing-songy crooner and the rugged, monotone spitter of Tical and "Shadowboxin'".
RZA is our guide throughout, opening and closing the album and providing a steady hand on the group cuts, but it's Method Man who quickly takes the lead with barely a glance backwards. Yes, he still spits in blatant refusal of the rules of tempo, cramming together a flurry of important-sounding words like "should we just leave our homes like the prophet Muhammad left Mecca for Medina?", but his palpable passion and worldly wisdom more than make up for the occasional "we cross more streets than Frogger" bar. His gravelly growl is all over the album, including a three-part solo song – all named "The Saga Continues", get it? – which spans the tracklist to provide a note of consistency. Mathematics' role as producer leaves us with the somewhat unique situation of RZA being free to just rap, with Saga allowing him more verses than any album since Wu-Tang Forever. Uniformly, these beats are fantastic, paying respect to RZA's many styles without aping them or cynically looking for the next big hit. Martial arts movie samples dominate, even taking over the entirety of "Famous Fighters" – this is Mathematics' love letter to the 90s Wu-Tang, after all, and the man knows as well as anyone those cheesy samples should be a lead character alongside any of the original nine rappers. There's nothing insincere about his love for those early classics, either: Method Man's rubbery bars bounce over the top of "If Time Is Money" like a lost cut from Tical, "Pearl Harbor" boasts a massive Ghostface hook over glittery slo-mo glory a la Supreme Clientele, and "People Say" employs a soul vocal sample in deference to Wu-Tang Forever. After years of albums dictated by RZA following his own muses down various foxholes, Mathematics prioritises the good of the group and takes a backseat in the best way. It seems appropriate that the guy who originally designed the W symbol is behind the desk for their most convincing throwback Mathematics weaves grimy bass and drums around lilting piano and string cues like an accomplished student of the RZA style. Freed from that hefty baggage, and with RZA behind the mic rather than the mixing board, The Saga Continues sees the group at their most uninhibited in years. The Saga Continues, like previous 'Wu-Tang-but-not-Clan' records Chamber Music and Legendary Weapons, sidesteps those lofty expectations via a slight rebranding, as technically a compilation of songs featuring Wu members. Review Summary: the wave burst, split the megahertzĪs it turns out, all that was needed for the Wu-Tang Clan to make a comeback was to not make a Wu-Tang Clan album.
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