Pretty old material but still dope nonetheless. Gza breaks down the album track by track. link
“4th Chamber”—Crazy, crazy song. If I ever do a rock album, not saying I would, but if I did, it would have to be on that kind of vibe. It would musically have to sound like “Rock Box” from Run DMC. Making “4th Chamber” was crazy because I didn’t have a rhyme ready for that one. That’s why I went last on it [laughs]. Plus, Ghost killed it with his verse so I knew I had to come correct.
This is one of three songs that crowds always go crazy for when we do a Wu show. As soon as they hear the [imitates opening guitar sound] they just explode. It’s not even a GZA song to me—it’s a Wu-Tang song. And Ghost’s verse is [just] incredible to me. He delivered so well. I don’t know if you saw the video, I directed that too. This song, the guest verses, the video, the crowd response, all turned out perfect for this one.“Shadowboxin”—Meth delivered well on this one too. I even do his verse when I do it live! I mean, “I breaks it down to the down bristle,” is so dope. It’s hard not to rap along to this one. Just like when I hear “Triumph,” it’s hard not to do Deck’s verse. I think I was actually [just] the filler for that song anyways [laughs]. It always seemed more like Meth’s track. I remember RZA telling me I needed to get on it, so he put me in between. It’s an incredible song though, and I love performing it. It’s just another emcee lyrical joint with crazy smooth cadences.
“I Gotcha Back”—This was a short rhyme I wrote for one of my nephews. When I said, “My lifestyle so far from well, could’ve wrote a book called Age Twelve and Going Through Hell.” It’s for my nephew who was twelve at the time, and whose father, my brother, had been locked up since ’88. So he wasn’t around for my nephew when times were rough, so I wanted to up my nephew a bit with this track.
It was actually part of the soundtrack for the movie Fresh. I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but I directed the video for that song. The interesting thing about that [one] is how the video blends in with the movie itself. I had two nephews in the video, they were both real young at the time. And in video, they both had met up and shots rang out from some young gangsters. It’s a shame because both those kids in the video, both nephews of mine, ended up getting in trouble for ringing out shots and are both doing time right now. It’s kind of ironic. One of my nephews ended up getting eights years for that shit. So the whole song is a sad irony to me now.
