Pitchfork

Last summer, early reports surrounding Wu-Tang Clan's then-forthcoming fifth album 8 Diagrams listed "You Can't Stop Me Now" among the song titles to expect, but when the record eventually leaked around Thanksgiving, the track was nowhere to be found. Maybe RZA really is as crazy as everyone says. Recently unveiled for a RZA solo LP coming this summer in the rapper/producer's Bobby Digital guise, "You Can't Stop Me Now" rides hard for the soulful hooks and the psych-funk guitars that had fellow Clan members Raekwon and Ghostface so incensed over 8 Diagrams-- and there's nothing about its production to explain why it would've been an also-ran. So, crazy like a fox, then.

The sample is lifted from a version of "Message From a Black Man", a Barrett Strong-Norman Whitfield composition best known in its 1969 recording by the Temptations. It was previously most famously sampled by MF Doom as King Geedorah on 2003's Take Me to Your Leader (Pitchfork's #20 album of 2003 and #82 album of 2000-2004). In a pre-release 8 Diagrams album breakdown for Scratch Magazine, RZA likened "You Can't Stop Me Now" to a "black Western", and the rattlesnake percussion sure fits that description, while the guitar-- which on 8 Diagrams, at least, was to have been played by John Frusciante-- is more Dead Man than Clint Eastwood. Horns bat lazily against the murky bass, and children's sing-song counters the original r&b singer's ghostly confidence. Bobby D's verse is a Staten Island reminiscence of sorts: "In 93 Wu Tang dropped the first LP." Inspectah Deck shouts about his own painful memories, then vows to keep up the fight. He's no Ghostface Killah, the Clan member originally touted as appearing on the song. Still, the message is clear-- and not really that crazy.

Stream:> RZA as Bobby Digital [ft. Inspectah Deck]: "You Can't Stop Me Now"
[from Digi Snax; due summer 2008]