REVIEW: U-God’s “Dopium”
When the cameos on your own album outshine you, it’s best that you move to a new field. So is the case of U-God, who could’ve been one of the unpolished jewels of the Wu-Tang Clan if it wasn’t for the fact that his lyrics aren’t that impressive. His debut solo album was a waste of energy and electricity, and did he really think this would be a good idea? Pfftt.
Dopium (Babygrande) is an album that features a lot of special guests, including Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Method Man, The Genius, Cappadonna, Killah Priest, Large Professor, Mike Ladd, and Jim Jones among others, and these guys totally rip U-God a number of anuses to the point where he looks like a block of cheddar cheese. If this album was released as… well, if U-God‘s vocal tracks were removed and released as Wu Shtyles, Bufo Frog Logs, or even Douchebag Rebels, it would have been considered an incredible project. U-God was known as the 4-bar killer so when he goes past four lines, he’s boring. Remove him, and this album would have jaded heads going “this shit is nice”. If U-God was a factor with the Wu-Tang behind the scenes, then I hope he continues working behind the scenes. But as a front man in charge, he doesn’t have the power to impress. Hell, if this was released as an instrumental, people would mistake this as something by The Alchemist.
In truth, the tone of his voice as always been nice and mellow in that Chali 2na-sort of way, but if he still writes his own lyrics, he needs to improve on them. If others are doing the writing, U-God needs to select better lyrics. Imagine if U-God did some tracks with Pharrell Williams? Now that might be good (keyword: might).
