“Yo, let me introduce you to these two really cool smooth dudes.” As the coronavirus pandemic (otherwise called COVID19) intersects the streets of New York in a chokehold, rapper Bobby Briz from Staten Island, pens in a time of lockdown, a lyrical pandemonium flow-funk music video shot on an IPhone at hand of Kennedy Price titled, “PENdulum” from his long awaited collaborative EP, He’s Black / He’s White. However, dueling with him in bringing the pain is a double-edged sword, fellow samurai brethren representing the lowly land of shaolin, is iNTeLL, the rising son of the Wu-Tang Clan’s U-God.
Reminiscing on a time in hip hop at the 40th Annual Grammy Award ceremony where the late mic grabbing pioneer, Old Dirty Bastard bum-rushed the stage to kiss Erykah Badu and declare, “Wu-Tang is for the children,” the Wu-Revolution has now become reincarnated with the lesser of two evils, contemporary philosopher Bobby Briz and 2nd generation of the Wu, iNTeLL. Even as the duo dynamically trade off on bars, they make known like a whirlwind swarming your hood with a thousand superior samurai dragons to their viewers, the killa bees and every other hip-hop artist on watch by spit firing an unforgettable charred hole in the track.
The symbolic horrorcore visuals of the dark lit, foggy interrogation room with a sole light bulb swinging “back and forth, back and forth” like the namesake lyrics on ‘PENdulum,’ Bobby Briz is an amped up total nutcase in his braggadocio, bugged out, and murderous Slim Shady style flow. Briz is relentless in refusing to hold back words or bite his tongue while displaying extensive vocabulary and multi-syllabalistic satirical rhyme schemes. “Everything that glit is not all gold/but we bitcoin/Yeah we big boy/You’re a shrimp/crawfish/We sharks mixed with offense/We evolved and/you’re just not shit with the nonsense/You should not spit/Usually I encourage people to live out that art/but some of you should probs quit.” iNTeLL, in his collectively cool, calm, then dirty and perverted yang, mischievously adds in a line of pettiness; “And keep all of your girlfriends from sucking our dicks.”
The rising Tao of the Wu then spits, “Flip around/turn the W to a M/From Wu-Tang/making millions more than men/We do things that you cannot call a trend/ Amusing/ Can I call his friends/Always been more brethren than a weapon ex perception/make your head spin as we swing through/Daily Bugle said we kings too.”
A modern day collective of “Bad Meets Evil,” the cutting duality of Bobby Briz and iNTeLL, are indifferent when samurai slashing the jugular off of this record and making it look like child’s play, and in doing so, like the tristate assassin’s backhanded lyrics mention, “We’re superior artists/wit’ samurais/Ya’ll left looking stupid like you just took an apple pie to the face in a lunch room/right in front of your friends and your crush too/Sucks to be you and not us.”
Like the reference, Wu-Tang is forever. A cemented brotherhood in hip hop is for eternity.
