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Liquid Swords is the second solo studio album by the American rapper and Wu-Tang Clan member GZA, released on November 7, 1995, by Geffen Records. Recording sessions for the album began midway through 1995 at producer RZA's basement studio in the New York City borough of Staten Island. The album heavily samples dialogue from the martial arts film Shogun Assassin and maintains a dark atmosphere throughout, incorporating lyrical references to chess, crime and philosophy. Liquid Swords features numerous guest appearances from the other eight members of Wu-Tang Clan along with Wu-Tang affiliate Killah Priest.
Upon its release, Liquid Swords peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart, and number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album platinum in sales nearly 20 years after its release. RIAA Search . riaa.org. Retrieved 2010-07-31. Liquid Swords received critical acclaim for its complex lyricism and hypnotic musical style. Over the years, its recognition has grown, with a number of famous publishers proclaiming it to be one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. In 2007, the Chicago Tribune cited it as "one of the most substantial lyrical journeys in hip-hop history".Baker, Soren. " All for One, One for All: Supergroup Wu-Tang Clan Let's Its Members Fly Solo ": Chicago Tribune: 4. June 20, 1999.
"I'm on a different level, trying to be cinematic," he remarked. "Like that shit in 'Killah Hill' where the kid gets his leg cut to hide the dope – that shit really happened, but I'm trying to make it more visual. Liquid Swords is a concept of being lyrically sharp, flowing like liquid metal – mercury, y'know? It comes from this flick, Legend of the Liquid Sword, where people would get their head cut off but it would still be on their shoulders. No one else would notice, because the sword was so sharp. Wu-Tang is a sword style, and this here is the sharpest. I'd rather slip on the pavement than slip on my tongue." Select, January 1996
Similar to other early solo Wu-Tang albums, Liquid Swords was recorded in RZA's basement studio in Staten Island, with some beats playing for over two days straight while recording. When asked in a later interview about his opinion of the album's beats, GZA remarked "I loved them. A lot of them had a grimy, Rock music-like feel to them. I just remember absolutely loving them." In the same interview, GZA described the writing process as "real slow." He further commented "I don’t say slow in the sense that it necessarily took me a long time to finish what I’m writing. I mean, Raekwon and Ghostface Killah can step in and record a song in about forty-five minutes. I on the other hand, would often go back and finish rhymes that I started. I would say I pieced things together more slowly then. Songs generally take me two to three days to write. Sometimes I take different sentences and put them together."
Regarding the overall sensation of writing Liquid Swords, GZA stated "It's hard to say something is gonna be classic or not. But I can say that I felt the magic with this one. I actually saw it grow and come together, and felt that it was special as we were doing it." He later noted in an interview with The Seattle Times: "It has great songs, it's not an ignorant album, it doesn't sound dated. If you listen to it and compare it to what's out now, it's timeless. Lyrically, it's not my best work. Not at all. But the chemistry? Production? Overall, I mean, c'mon! RZA's atmospheric production? Yes. It's my best album."
GZA also enjoyed a successful side career as a music video director, and with Garfield as writer and producer, created all four videos for the Liquid Swords album ("Liquid Swords", "Cold World", "Shadowboxin'/4th Chamber", and "I Gotcha Back"), and also did videos for Sunz of Man, Ghostface Killah's song ("Motherless Child") on the Sunset Park film soundtrack, Shabazz the Disciple (Penalty Records) and Case (Def Jam). The Source recognized their video "Shadowboxin'/4th Chamber" as one of the Top Five Videos of 1995.
Liquid Swords was performed in its entirety on July 13, 2007, at the Pitchfork Music Festival and again in England, on December 9 at All Tomorrow's Parties and on December 10 at KOKO in London, as part of the ATP-curated Don't Look Back series. After the cancellation of an appearance in Brooklyn, New York, the performance was rescheduled for December 13 and 14 at the Knitting Factory in New York.
The second single released for the album, was the title track "Liquid Swords", released over one year later on October 10, 1995. GZA later commented "Usually I take a beat home and write to it for a few days, but it wasn’t like that with this track. I think RZA played the beat for me and I just spit to it right there. The hook was actually a routine from around ‘84 that me RZA and Ol' Dirty would do: 'When the emcees came, to live out the name.' Just like that."
November 28, 1995 saw the release of the album's third single "Cold World". In regards to his writing approach to the song, GZA stated "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."
The fourth and final single released for the album was "Shadowboxin'", released early 1996, with "4th Chamber" as its B-Side. In an interview with Wax Poetics, GZA praised Method Man's rapping on "Shadowboxin'", saying that the song "seemed more like Meth's track". GZA stated "Making '4th Chamber' was crazy because I didn’t have a rhyme ready for that one. That’s why I went last on it. Plus, Ghost killed it with his verse so I knew I had to come correct. 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."
NME hailed Liquid Swords as "the best hip-hop album" in years, citing RZA's "spooked, creaky, incredibly dense" production and GZA's complex and "quite brilliant" lyrics. Mojo magazine characterized the album as "creepily beautiful" and "East Coast hip hop with a far more warped and disturbing slant on inner-city sickness than the in-your-face Californian equivalent". In Select, Matt Hall wrote that RZA "provides a series of austere rhythms, sparsely dotting violin stabs and plucked harps to provide the perfect backdrop to Genius' downbeat tales of New York's mean streets… Liquid Swords sneaks under the tape to qualify as Rap Album Of The Year." Tom Doyle of Q wrote that GZA can seem "perhaps unreasonably hardcore in some of his approaches...but when his rhyming is enhanced by the dislocated soul chorus of 'Cold World', the result is dramatic and hypnotic."
Robert Christgau was somewhat less enthusiastic, giving the album a two-star honorable mention, which indicated a "likable effort that consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well enjoy". In his column for The Village Voice, Christgau cited "Shadowboxin'" and "Killah Hills 10304" as highlights and called the record "gangsta rap as mystery, religious and literary".
On October 8, 2015, the Recording Industry Association of America announced that Liquid Swords had earned a platinum certification for having sold more than 1 million copies. It became the first Wu-Tang-related album to get certified since 2004, when Method Man and Ghostface Killah both earned plaques.
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| About.com | United States | 100 Greatest Hip-Hop AlbumsAdaso, Henry. About.com's 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Albums . About.com. Retrieved 2010-05-04. | 2008 | 62 |
| Best Rap Albums of 1995Adaso, Henry. About.com's Best Rap Albums of 1995 . About.com. Retrieved 2010-05-04. | 2008 | 3 | ||
| Ego Trip | Hip Hop's 25 Greatest Albums by Year 1980–1998 (1999). 9780312242985, St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312242985 | 1999 | 3 | |
| Face | United Kingdom | Albums of the year | 1995 | 16 |
| The Guardian | 1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die | 2007 | * | |
| Hip-Hop Connection | United Kingdom | The 100 Greatest Rap Albums 1995–2005 | 2006 | 7 |
| HUMO | Belgium | Albums of the Year | 1995 | 13 |
| Melody Maker | United Kingdom | Albums of the Year | 1995 | 42 |
| NME | Albums of the Year | 1995 | 30 | |
| OOR | Netherlands | Albums of the Year | 1995 | 24 |
| Paste | United States | 300 Greatest Albums of All Time | 2024 | 174 |
| Pitchfork | United States | Top 100 Albums of the 1990s | 2003 | 87 |
| Q | United Kingdom | Albums of the Year | 1995 | * |
| Robert Dimery | United States | 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2010). 9780789320742, Universe. ISBN 9780789320742 | 2005 | * |
| Rolling Stone | Top 25 Hip Hop Albums (by Chris Rock) | 2005 | 13 | |
| The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time | 2020 | 347 | ||
| Select | United Kingdom | The 100 Best Albums of the 90s | 1999 | 42 |
| Albums of the Year | 1996 | 36 | ||
| The Source | United States | The 100 Best Rap Albums of All Time | 1998 | * |
| Stylus Magazine | Top 101–200 Albums of All time | 2004 | 137 |
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