Chef Raekwon* – Immobilarity

It’s interesting reading the thoughts of other reviewers here, people whose first impression of Rae wasn’t necessarily from C.R.E.A.M.

If my own first touch point with the chef had been Immobilarity I prolly wouldn’t have hated it as much as I did when it dropped. But I made the obvious mistake of comparing it to Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… but there are no RZA beats on here, no Ghost and no Cappa, my gut feeling told me Immobilarity was only built 4 trash cans.

But times they are a changing, like Bob sang, you grow older and hopefully wiser and you come to realise that you may have been too quick to judge. While this is certainly no classic like his insanely dope debut, it’s actually not that horrible. A handful of tracks like “Casablanca”, “Jury”, Live from New York”, and “The Table” are great even! The album is way too long though.

As mentioned by Sykonee, Immobilarity didn't receive critical acclaim or see commercial success but it's possibly my favorite Reakwon album. It didn't have the Wu-Tang sound or a snappy single or really much promotion. These things worked against it st the time and I think still do today.

For me it worked because it was a such a departure. Face it, at the time we were all getting sick of the weak Wu-Tang sub-projects and s. The Rza's production became shoddy when he quit sampling and their in-house producers were just making vague shadows of his sound. '99 was really the begining of the Wu's decline.

Immobilarity's only real flaw was it should have ended with "The Table" and thew "Sneakers" after the "Outro" as a hidden track which were becoming popular at the time. Seriously burn a CD like this, give it a spin and let it ride. You'll come to realize that this was a concept album, a soundtrack to a "Wu-Gambino's" flick that doesn't exist. Every track leads into the next and reveals the plot. This album must be taken in as a piece, that is until "Sneakers" which is a great song but doesn't fit the album and the remaining tracks just bring the album's flow to a halt.

I feel that the album was ahead of it's time. Think Jay-Z's "American Gangtser" with the Jazz/Soul samples replaced with "The Godfather"'s string's and piano and "Scarface"'s late 70's early 80's pop synths. But in the bling era of multi-disc releases there was no room for a 50 minute laid back ghetto crime story on a major label. Today that wouldn't be an issue. Give it a chance, it's a worthy follow up to "Only Built 4 Cuban Links".

A lot of folks dismissed this album simply on the grounds that it wasn’t "Cuban Linx, Pt.2". More than that, though, it was amongst the first solo Wu albums that didn’t feature any RZA productions. Funnily enough, I didn’t even realize this was an issue because, along with "The RZA Hits", this was my first purchased Wu album. Truthfully, it was the music on this album that actually GOT me to check out more Wu, because I hadn’t heard anything in hip-hop like what "Immobilarity" offered, and eagerly wanted to hear more. Granted, I’ll it that my, er, ’knowledge’ of the rap game was quite weak at that point, but there it is.

Having since been properly indoctrinated into the Wu legacy, yeah, I can hear that "Immobilarity" doesn’t hold a candle to previous Wu efforts, but I still enjoy this a lot. For whatever reason, the heavily synthesized loops of Italian composers works for me. As far as Wu albums go, it’s quite unique.

Plus, how can you not love the subtlety of the Wu logo on the front cover?