"Movin' On Slackers Like They Know No Joke:" Career Crooks Emcee Zilla Rocca Channels Raekwon On "Faster Blade Redux" from Ghostface Killah's Ironman (The Witzard Premiere)
"
Ghostface [Killah]
's
Ironman
is still my favorite album in all of music. And
Raekwon
is one of my favorite rappers ever, so I wanted to take a stab at his solo cut off
Ironman
and pay direct homage, since
Raekwon
has had a big influence on me as a writer of visual
Crime Raps
[over] the past 3-4 years,"
Philly
emcee
Zilla Rocca
wrote within a recent email sent to
The Witzard
.
Zilla
's
"Faster Blade" (Redux)
expertly flips
RZA
's
Raekwon
cut from
Ghostface
's 1996 debut,
Ironman
. Not entirely unlike
Zilla Rocca
's recent
Son Raw
-produced
"98 Avirex Flow,"
"Faster Blade"
was uploaded to
Wrecking Crew
's
Soundcloud
—
Zilla
's
Philly
-based collective formed with fellow rapper-producers
Small Professor
and
Curly Castro
. Like much of
Wu-Tang Clan
's discography,
"Faster Blade"
takes its name from 1982-83
Hong Kong Martial Arts Action
film
, which is referenced within
Raekwon
's original lyrics and furthered referenced by
Zilla
's own
Soundcloud
artwork.
Zilla Rocca
really manged to squeeze a staggering amount of bars into
"Faster Blade"'
s roughly 2-minute run time and delivers some hard-hitting, multi-layered rhyme schemes like:
"Movin' on slackers like they know no joke / You know how we do, we do ski masks never seem to find (evoking Raekwon) / Proteges wanna reach out and try to kill me... check them movies from Guyana like Paperboy Atlanta—a local rapper sittin' in the slammer... sittin' still just like a Buddha out in Bermuda pushin' Pusha T and Future continuous slammin' lentils in my mental... and all the workin' folks love us, like Trump loves Russia / Resisters, the repercussion / Fake chiefs spot 'em like Cascade, their sh*t is masquerader. Faster blade!"
It's currently unclear where
"Faster Blade"
and it's 90's-referencing counterpart
may ultimately end up, but they might end up being re-released on some sort of mixtape compilation in the near future.
Zilla Rocca
and his fellow beat-making
Philly
cohort
Small Professor
are gearing up to unleash their proper full-length debut as
Career Crooks
, tentatively titled
Good Luck with That
;
Career Crooks'
past works can be previewed on their recent pre-album mixtape,
Sin Will Find You: The Collected Works
.
Anything I Touch, I Bruise Vol. 2: The Superior Foes of Zilla Rocca
, a collection of remixes over a bunch of tracks from his fellow rapping friends, who "appear courtesy of friendship, good booze, and mutual respect" is currently available on
Zilla
's
Bandcamp
page on an extremely generous
basis.
Zilla Rocca
's frequent partner-in-crime's latest 31-track appropriately-titled
Prince Jawns
is currently available for your unlimited streaming, FREE downloading, and non-rapping pleasure from
Small Professor
's
page, along with 20 additional like-minded releases.