"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 Premier)
"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 Persuaders-sampling 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 Faster Blade, Poisonous Darts, 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 "98 Avirex Flow" 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 name-your-price 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 Bandcamp page, along with 20 additional like-minded releases.