Killah Priest - View From Masada review
Killah Priest hits us with his sophomore album, ‘View From Masada.’ The new album features guest artists, Canibus, Ras Kass, 
and The Maccabees. When you hear this album, you can tell that it follows the trend that pretty much every second Wu-album that has been dropping lately (with the exception of Supreme Clientele). If you judge it against all the other crap that drops at your local Record Town, the album is tight as hell. But when comparing it to the classic Wu-tang albums, it’s just average. Overall its pretty tight, it definitely grows on you.
In 1998, Killah Priest released the gem, ‘Heavy Mental.’ It’s pretty hard to match an album like that. On his first album, KP seems to drop jewels and knowledge with some mystic beats, but on this album he seems to want to come off more thuggish (more like ‘Cross My Heart’). If his intentions were to appeal to a bigger, more mainstream crowd, then it’s just going to backfire in his face. Realistically, the people who are going to buy this album are the Wu-fans so he should have just stuck with the chemistry that made his first album a classic.
The main problem with this album is that it was not produced by RZA. I’m not saying that the beats are bad, but RZA has a way of making an album unified so that every song seems to belong. Instead, this album was produced by a variety of different producers. A lot of the beats sound like beats from The Firm album. The rest of the tracks have a completely different sound to them. One even sounding very west coastish. If you listen to the album all the way through you can tell that it doesn’t fit together and a lot of tracks sound out of place.
Other than some of these drawbacks, the album is pretty tight. High points being, ‘Maccabean Revolt,’ and ‘If I die’ (both tight beats, and lyrics as if they were from Heavy Mental). If you are into Da Horsemen, ‘Bop Your Head’ is what you’re looking for (it’s just the renamed version of ‘Priesthood’).
Overall if you are a Wu/KP fan, you should definitely get the album, even though most of you won’t like it as much as the first, it is still worth getting. If you though the first album was too mellow then you will definitely change your mind about this one. It could have been better if RZA put it together but that would be too much to ask from a busy guy like him wouldn’t it (written in a semi-sarcastic tone). Pick this album up, or at least take a look at the tight cover artwork.
Killah Priest - View From Masada review
