Personnel includes: RZA, Ol' Dirty Bastard. Recorded in 2003. Robert Diggs seems to birth a new alias with every day, fitting for someone as overflowing with rhymes, beats, ideas, and influences as the man most commonly known as the RZA. His music exists in a world akin to the Chinese kung-fu movies he loves--dark, ever-raining, with violence lurking around any given corner. The RZA's unpredictable career has ranged from fueling the Wu-Tang Clan's oddly fantastic audio odysseys to crafting backgrounds for wildly fanciful films by iconoclasts such as Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino. BIRTH OF A PRINCE is just as intoxicatingly exceptional as the RZA's previous work would suggest, as likely to borrow from 1940s torch songs as from '70s funk, and as likely to reference Faye Dunaway and H.G. Wells as the Incredible Hulk and cars (and, of course, Wu-Tang). Not surprisingly, almost all of the original Wu-Tang members guest, and tracks like the back-to-back "Fast Cars" and "Chi Kung" would have both fit right in (and been standouts) on 36 CHAMBERS. Other tracks break down into ballads, odd chants, and whatever seems to fit RZA's fertile mind and commanding, perfectly-off-the-beat drawl at that moment. The result is another challenging yet wonderful record from rap seer of the highest order.

• Genre: R&B
• Format: Vinyl
• Released: 4/13/2019