The Making Of Liquid Swords
by David Ma
“Cold World”—Just another dark, gritty street tale. Normally, when I hear a beat, I already know where to go with it. I can picture the track and just vibe off it. As soon as I heard the beat to “Cold World,” I knew it would be another inner-city story. And the beginning is obviously taken from “The Night Before Christmas.”
I have this cousin who we call Life. He sang a little bit of background on the album, and he was in the studio when we were making this track. He’s got a great voice, not a great as it used to be [laughs], but he’s been singing his whole life. He was singing Stevie Wonder’s “Rocket Love,” where the hook goes, [sings] “Took me riding in your rocket, gave me a star, but at a half a mile from heaven, you dropped me back down to this cold, cold world.” RZA was the one who told Life to change the words and use it as a hook. So we added the hook and we got [Inspectah] Deck on it and boom! That’s how that one went.
“Labels”—My whole negative experience with Cold Chillin’ was part of why I made this song—but it wasn’t the main reason. I wasn’t deliberately trying to write a song dedicated to problems with labels and so on—I just threw Cold Chillin’ in there because they were an established label at one time. It actually started when I heard my friend say: “Tommy ain’t my boy!” Then it just kind of clicked in my head to use “Tommy” and “Boy.” I mean, I like doing songs based around wordplay with one theme. I actually love doing those kinds of songs. It comes naturally to me for my rhymes to have double meanings.
“4th Chamber”—Crazy, crazy song. If I ever do a rock album, not saying I would, but if I did, it would have to be on that kind of vibe. It would musically have to sound like “Rock Box” from Run DMC. Making “4th Chamber” was crazy because I didn’t have a rhyme ready for that one. That’s why I went last on it [laughs]. Plus, Ghost killed it with his verse so I knew I had to come correct.
This is one of three songs that crowds always go crazy for when we do a Wu show. As soon as they hear the [imitates opening guitar sound] they just explode. It’s not even a GZA song to me—it’s a Wu-Tang song. And Ghost’s verse is [just] incredible to me. He delivered so well. I don’t know if you saw the video, I directed that too. This song, the guest verses, the video, the crowd response, all turned out perfect for this one.
“Shadowboxin”—Meth delivered well on this one too. I even do his verse when I do it live! I mean, “I breaks it down to the down bristle,” is so dope. It’s hard not to rap along to this one. Just like when I hear “Triumph,” it’s hard not to do Deck’s verse. I think I was actually [just] the filler for that song anyways [laughs]. It always seemed more like Meth’s track. I remember RZA telling me I needed to get on it, so he put me in between. It’s an incredible song though, and I love performing it. It’s just another emcee lyrical joint with crazy smooth cadences.
“Killah Hills”—This is another one of my favorites. It’s a very special song as far as the album’s concerned because it’s long as hell and has no hook. It’s up-tempo and is straight through. My cousin Life who did the hook on “Cold World” also did some singing on this too. This song has a lot of depth in terms of sound ’cause we used to layer weird shit over it.
For example, myself and Killah Priest were in the city one day with a portable ADAT recorder I just bought. We were just walking around, going to stores, buying water, juice, whatever, and just recording the random stuff, you know, just picking up sounds and shit. I think we recorded the Hells Angels riding by [us] too. RZA was in a restaurant talking to some guy, and we were banging forks on the tables, and we just recoded all those sounds too [laughs]. So we incorporated all that into the production.
As a song, it’s a street story, but not told in a regular street way. I’m talking about slanging on the block, but not just your average street dealer. These were more sophisticated cats. Some of it came from a documentary I saw on the infamous Pablo Escobar. He was sending judges intimate photos of their wives and things like that. I think this is [probably] my first real Mafioso track. It’s like a dense, short film.
“Investigative Reports”—I don’t remember this one that much. RZA kicked us the beat and Rae just set it off. RZA decided to put all that news footage in there and U-God did the hook and I just followed it up. This one was just all of us doing our parts. I think it was just a simple track we put together.
“Swordsman”—This is another one of those hard ones that I love. The beat just knocks. The hook also came from a routine we used to sing a long time ago. But like I said, we used to harmonize often back then: [sings] “Every emcee has his place, to begin in the emcee race.” The melody is from an Earth, Wind and Fire track. It’s just a dope, recycled hook. I love this song a lot too. I think I delivered well on it.
“I Gotcha Back”—This was a short rhyme I wrote for one of my nephews. When I said, “My lifestyle so far from well, could’ve wrote a book called Age Twelve and Going Through Hell.” It’s for my nephew who was twelve at the time, and whose father, my brother, had been locked up since ‘88. So he wasn’t around for my nephew when times were rough, so I wanted to up my nephew a bit with this track.
It was actually part of the soundtrack for the movie Fresh. I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but I directed the video for that song. The interesting thing about that [one] is how the video blends in with the movie itself. I had two nephews in the video, they were both real young at the time. And in video, they both had met up and shots rang out from some young gangsters. It’s a shame because both those kids in the video, both nephews of mine, ended up getting in trouble for ringing out shots and are both doing time right now. It’s kind of ironic. One of my nephews ended up getting eights years for that shit. So the whole song is a sad irony to me now.
“B.I.B.L.E.”—I really wanted to get [Killah] Priest on the album. And when I did, he said he could cover the whole track, so we let him do it. It’s incredible to me, man. Some people still tell me that that it’s their favorite song off the album. I mean, it’s a really deep song. He broke down lots of things: preachers, ministries, churches, details, and a lot of insight on a lot of stuff. “The earth’s already in space, your bible I embrace, a difficult task I had to take…” The song’s just perfect and ends the record out brilliantly.
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