Method Man - Tical (1994)

I had half a mind to write something about Tical 2000: Judgement Day because it's pretty fucking great, then noticed that, magnificent though it certainly is, the first one is unbeatable; so here we are.

As it happens, that first clutch of solo albums in the wake of Enter the Wu-Tang can't really be faulted with RZA at the wheel and the other fifty-six members hanging around in the studio for most of them; but this might be the greatest of the bunch even if it's a close run race. Method Man was never my favourite member of the team, although listening now I'm not sure why and have revised my opinion accordingly. The slurping noises used to put me off but I guess you can get used to anything, and he packs more raw personality into a couple of lines than the majority of microphone botherers manage in a lifetime. Being who I am, I assumed the title was a pseudo-mystical reference to Tikal, the Mayan ruins in Guatemala, but of course Meth being Meth, it's yet another term for a certain quantity of those marijuanas you always hear about*. I've personally never been a fan of the space fags, while Meth clearly loves his weed more than almost anyone else in the universe, despite which this somehow speaks to me, regardless. You've got to admire a man who really knows what he likes this much.

It isn't just the seemingly effortless, often genuinely surreal stream of warped consciousness, but rather it's the marriage of the same to the beats which may even have been RZA's greatest assemblage on a single disc. Sonically speaking, these are moods rather than songs in the traditional sense, radically breaking away from the turntable roots into what may as well be organised noise facilitated by sampler. Aside from a few dusty horn sections or shoplifted vocal hooks, there isn't much here which sounds composed in conventional terms - more like loop the fuck out of whatever's laying around and wait until it sounds like music. So there's that relentless beat, dirty as the underside of a used car with bits of piano bolted to the chassis, or snippets of sound, elements which only become musical with repetition; and a three note bass which sounds like vehicle transmission interfering with your stereo, just a deep boom as though there's something wrong down in the foundations. For something which couldn't have existed without the technology, Tical sounds organic and granular to the point of resembling musique concrète. I'm not sure anything has sounded quite like this record since, even though Tical 2000 took a good shot at it.

*: A man on the internet reckons it's an acronym for taking into consideration all lives, but I'm not convinced.