There was a point where the Wu was infallible - an almost indestructible force of MCs and producers that topped anything ever before seen in hip hop... maybe even better than The Juice Crew even though the Wu lacked the individual star power of The Juice Crew, they more than made up for with a thick stream of elevated rappers attacking sparse grime-filled instrumentals.
But then the Wu started showing their weaknesses, and for me, being a big Wu-head, this was long before Wu-Tang Forever came out. In fact, I consider that album to be pretty shitty, compared to their discography up to that point. But the real first chink in the armor to show itself up in full album form was this here Shyheim tape. His "On and On" single got heavy play on BET and was a good song of its own, and it made me go, "Whoa, there's like a kid division of Wu-Tang? That's crazy." But the full-length tape was a shitty capitalization on the Wu-Tang pop culture phenom going on. This was Wu-Tang's JV team trying to show and prove on the varsity level, when they should've hung in the shadows for a while longer, or at least just stuck to the occasional single.
I think what bothers me most about this tape, and others done by pre-pubescant male rappers, is the sex and violence songs. I know times are hard now and the world is a ghetto and kids give each other blowjobs all the time at recess, but come on man, when you're 12-years-old, you are not moving kilos and clocking mad bitches. It's fuckin' stupid, and rap like wrestling is something that you enjoy suspending disbelief so you can go, "Yes, Young Jeezy is selling a ton of cocaine throughout the nation," or you can think, "Yes Vinnie Paz is taking Illuminati overlords to task," but you're not gonna think that some little kid, no matter who he rolls with, is getting his dick sucked every night. And if he is, that kid is gonna end up being fucked up like Michael Jackson, and perhaps thrown down the hill by Mohammad.
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