On-again, off-again Wu-Tang member Cappadonna has benefited quite a bit from being the “10th member” with the popular crew, but he’s still never been able to break through and become his own artist the way that some of his more popular brothers have. With Wu-Tang‘s status as a unit being questionable at best, Cappadonna has had independence thrust upon him and continues to try to make it work on his own with Slang Prostitution.
Cappadonna seems to want to move away from his Wu-Tang days and implies that the crew has abandoned him as well on the hard-nosed acappella “You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down” series of interludes. In reality, however, Wu nostalgia is a big part of what will draw people to the album and, upset or not, Cap makes no real attempt to separate himself from his past. Those looking for some old-school Wu will get it but they may find out that they didn’t really want it.
Anyone who lived through the height of the Wu-Tang era probably copped their fair share of sub-par second and third tier releases because there were bees on the cover and Method Man had a verse. Unfortunately, Slang Prostitution is more like one of those albums than Liquid Swords. The various producers do turn in competent tracks though nothing stands out because they too are just playing into memories of older classics rather than giving Cap anything fresh to work with.
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Even on the more interesting tracks (“Stories”), Cap sounds uninspired and is mostly just rapping by numbers. Raekwon [click to read] eventually drops by (“Life’s a Gamble”) as does Masta Killa (“Fire”) but they contribute to one of the biggest issues with the album more than they help it–an unmanageable number of guest appearances. For the uninitiated, most of these features won’t stand out enough from each other (let alone Cap himself) to do anything but confuse the situation. The album does pay proper honor to fallen emcee and onetime Inspectah Deck [click to read] protégé Lounge Lo, who appears prominently on the album.
Slang Prostitution isn’t an unlistenable album, but it lacks the polish of The Pillage and past releases. The man responsible for the lethal verse on 1996’s “Winter Warz” release from Ghostface‘s [click to read] Ironman still has razor sharp lyrics, but suffers from generosity with the microphone, and producers, that unlike 4th Disciple, Tru Master and Bronze Nazareth, defy the ability to update the recipe with the trademark Wu ingredients.
