At Any Given Second It’s Real

Raekwon “Nothing”

The best compliment I can pay to Frank G, the guy who produced this track, is that when I first heard it I thought “wow, is Raekwon back with the RZA?” “Nothing” reminds me a lot of the eerie barebones minimalism of RZA’s work The W, especially the Raekwon showcase “Hollow Bones.” Both songs focus in on one particularly pained vocal moment from another song and loop it through the track, establishing an emotional baseline that contrasts nicely with Rae’s tough, throaty voice. The “I have nothing” sample is cut up in irregular patterns – it gets extended into a ghostly trill, stuttered or cut off, and sometimes looped in a more symmetrical meter. Even with Raekwon’s presence on the mic, the sample is the focus of the track. To some extent, that’s just the power of treble, but it’s also far more emotional than Raekwon’s sober, gruff rhymes, and the only element that resonates as much is a piano sample that gets dropped in occasionally for punctuation.

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