Gza Liquid Swords Album Zip Download ((NEW))

Liquid Swords is the second solo studio album by American rapper and Wu-Tang Clan member GZA, released on November 7, 1995, by Geffen Records.[1] Recording sessions for the album began midway through 1995 at producer RZA's basement studio in the New York City borough of Staten Island. The album heavily samples dialogue from the martial arts film Shogun Assassin and maintains a dark atmosphere throughout, incorporating lyrical references to chess, crime and philosophy. Liquid Swords features numerous guest appearances from the other eight members of Wu-Tang Clan along with Wu-Tang affiliate Killah Priest.

Upon its release, Liquid Swords peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart, and number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album platinum in sales nearly 20 years after its release.[1] Liquid Swords received critical acclaim for its complex lyricism and hypnotic musical style. Over the years, its recognition has grown, with a number of famous publishers proclaiming it to be one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. In 2007, the Chicago Tribune cited it as "one of the most substantial lyrical journeys in hip-hop history".[2]

Gza Liquid Swords Album Zip Download

DOWNLOAD 🔥 https://blltly.com/2y61Tp 🔥

Regarding the overall sensation of writing Liquid Swords, GZA stated "It's hard to say something is gonna be classic or not. But I can say that I felt the magic with this one. I actually saw it grow and come together, and felt that it was special as we were doing it."[4] He later noted in an interview with The Seattle Times: "It has great songs, it's not an ignorant album, it doesn't sound dated. If you listen to it and compare it to what's out now, it's timeless. Lyrically, it's not my best work. Not at all. But the chemistry? Production? Overall, I mean, c'mon! RZA's atmospheric production? Yes. It's my best album."

The album's cover was designed by Milestone Media Founder/Creative Director and chief artist Denys Cowan, according to the album's liner notes.[10] Cowan's black and white line art was inked by Inker Prentis Rollins. Milestone's Color Editor, Jason Scott Jones created the cover color art digitally at a time when digital coloring was emerging in comic art eventually becoming the standard.[11] GZA's personal manager Geoffrey L. Garfield, commissioned Cowan. Garfield, an avid comic book fan, said the cover art was supervised under the auspices of GZA GrafX, a subsidiary company of GZA Entertainment owned by GZA and Garfield. The concept of the chessboard with its sword-wielding warriors was conceived by GZA, an avid chess player. The GZA version of the Wu-Tang Clan logo, the "G" using the logo iconography, was rendered by Wu-Tang Clan DJ Mathematics who was also an accomplished graphic artist.[12]

GZA also enjoyed a successful side career as a music video director, and with Garfield as writer and producer, created all four videos for the Liquid Swords album ("Liquid Swords", "Cold World", "Shadowboxin'/4th Chamber", and "I Gotcha Back"),[13] and also did videos for Sunz of Man, Ghostface Killah's song ("Motherless Child") on the Sunset Park film soundtrack, Shabazz the Disciple (Penalty Records) and Case (Def Jam). The Source recognized their video "Shadowboxin'/4th Chamber" as one of the Top Five Videos of 1995.

Upon its release, Liquid Swords received critical acclaim. Selwyn Seyfu Hinds from The Source called GZA "a highly focused master-graftsman" and felt that "throughout Liquid Swords he maintains a clear, precise flow, one that reflects deadly-sharp purpose and skilled execution." Hinds also praised RZA's production on the album, noting his "increasingly sophisticated style: shuffling kicks, neck snapping snares, haunting melodies via strings or vibe-like textures and penetrating bass tones."[24] In his review for Entertainment Weekly, Dimitri Ehrlich said that, "With its tight beat, Liquid Swords emphasizes the finesse with which GZA weaves his vocals over straightforward rhythms."[16] Los Angeles Times critic Cheo H. Coker described GZA as "a hip-hop M. C. Escher" whose lyrics "reveal layer after layer of thought with repeated listening", concluding that the album cements the Wu-Tang Clan as "the kings of New York rap."[18]

Robert Christgau was somewhat less enthusiastic, giving the album a two-star honorable mention, which indicated a "likable effort that consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well enjoy".[26] In his column for The Village Voice, Christgau cited "Shadowboxin'" and "Killah Hills 10304" as highlights and called the record "gangsta [rap] as mystery, religious and literary".[27]

On October 8, 2015, the Recording Industry Association of America announced that Liquid Swords had earned a platinum certification for having sold more than 1 million copies. It became the first Wu-Tang-related album to get certified since 2004, when Method Man and Ghostface Killah both earned plaques.[30]

The reason? It's the most potent distillation of the Wu aesthetic as laid out on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Whereas Tical, Ironman, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, and Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version extrapolated upon themes and personalities that necessarily had to be curtailed in the interest of cohesion, GZA as a solo artist was essentially everything that distinguished Wu-Tang from other crews: strictly chess, kung-fu, battle raps, investigative reports, Five Percenter Islam. Most crucially, out of everyone in Wu-Tang's original formation, GZA is the only one who didn't seem to have much interest in being a star. Nor was he promoted as one, even if he did end up stealing the Wu's "Chappelle's Show" skits. Which still worked out: You didn't need to be a star or get much airplay to go gold back in 1996, and do you even know which track here was the first single? Do you recall ever seeing any videos from Liquid Swords? The album's lack of commercial ambition is also reflected in its status as one of the least sexual hip-hop records ever made. Off the top of my head, there are probably two total lines which acknowledge women as physical beings.

GZA's rhymes here are incredible, but Liquid Swords isn't just GZA's only great album, it might just be his only good one (though fine arguments have certainly been made on the behalf of Legend Of The Liquid Sword). It's hardly surprising that the man who told his peers during the height of hip-pop commercial fusion "make it brief son, half short and twice strong" didn't have much patience for rap derived from classic verse-chorus songwriting. But nonetheless, his later albums would make it abundantly clear how everything went right for him on Liquid Swords in terms of hooks and beats and song structure. (Listen to the chorus of "Did Ya Say That?" from Legend of the Liquid Sword or pretty much any track produced by someone not named RZA to get what I mean.) Really, 17 years after the fact, I'm still struck by how a record of such grim subject matter and "opium scented, dark tinted" music could actually be kinda fun. It's a crucial balance and even the most unhinged of the Wu are willing to exchange a bit of their own levity for GZA's gravitas. Ol' Dirty Bastard shows up in the only way that makes sense, refereeing a match between GZA and Inspectah Deck by yelling "duel of the iron mic! It's that 52 fatal strike! NUH!" Which is meant to convey absolutely nothing other than "this is the illest rap battle ever." Ghostface Killah sips rum out of the Stanley Cup while asking the toughest metaphysical questions on "4th Chamber". "Shadowboxin'" has no hook, but the interplay between Method Man and GZA made it a surprising interloper during frat parties in the late 90s. Catchy hooks abound, as with the playful reminiscence of the title track, the insatiable yet calm list of demands on "Gold", the impossibly bugged-out synth hook from "4th Chamber" tracing the flight of a mosquito.

The more important contrast to Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, RZA's self-described "summer album," Liquid Swords was clearly meant for winter warz. During the first round of solo releases, RZA created a sonic template that masterfully mirrored the personality of every MC, and this is his most cohesive and visionary work largely because GZA was already so fully formed. Even the kung-fu samples are the most seamlessly integrated, from the unnerving retelling of a failed assassination which begins the LP to the slain warrior who ends it, befallen by a decapitation replete he always assumed he'd inflict on another-- it's impossible to shake the grotesque sounds of his final breaths, where his slit neck emits a wailing winter wind. It's the most horrific effect on Liquid Swords, but not by much: the soul and funk guitars were originally pressed to vinyl and hot wax, whereas here, they sound like they were brought out of storage from particularly forbidding meat lockers. The lo-fi digital hiss of Alesis cymbals and snares evoke dirty, crushed snow and black ice. The slightly off-key hook from "Cold World" would later be sung by D'Angelo, but it's the bundled-up, shearling and Timberland's rocking dude on the cover of Brown Sugar, not the simmering lothario on Voodoo. And yet, there are still strange pockets of warmth: the minimalist patches during "Cold World" that evoke the eerie, disorienting calm of city streets abandoned during a snowstorm, that guitar bump in "I Gotcha Back" flickering like a trashcan fire, the juking Willie Mitchell riff in the title track that RZA admits was a rare straight rip, but a very inspired one all the same.

I won't begrudge any purist who wants to hear the crackle of "Duel of the Iron Mic" or the dense murk of "I Gotcha Back" enhanced by vinyl. But to these ears, Liquid Swords is a winter album meant to be heard in winter which is why most of us grew enamored with it as a portable experience, lodged into CD players or Walkmen, and stuffed between layers of puffy coats on subways, school buses. Even a solo listen in a car feels fairly inadequate, you almost have to ice grill a neighboring passenger while you're listening to it, knowing that they're plotting on the same gold. It's a record to make your surroundings as cartoonishly violent as Liquid Swords' chessboard cover, when you recognize that you're, as GZA memorably puts it, "trapped in a deadly video game with just one man." I've lived in Los Angeles for the past six years and really haven't found a lot of times appropriate to listen to Liquid Swords. That's not an indictment of its quality; it's a confirmation of its monomaniacal genius. 17dc91bb1f