RZA As Bobby Digital, Digi Snacks

RZA used all of his diplomatic skills to reconvene the fractured Wu-Tang Clan for last year's 8 Diagrams album, only to be rewarded with flat sales and sullen public griping from Raekwon and Ghostface Killah, so no wonder he sounds relieved to return to his blaxploitation superhero alter ego, Bobby Digital. Even as he has forged friendships with Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch, RZA has become almost completely estranged from mainstream hip-hop, building a bunker out of his usual lyrical motifs (you can play Wu-Tang bingo with the references to Shaolin, killer bees and the Five-Percent Nation) and enduring obsession with brooding 70s soul (Can't Stop Me Now makes brilliant use of a paranoid Spinners sample). Live instrumentation and Billie Holidayesque vocal hooks make Digi Snacks colourful, though never particularly surprising. RZA may be a crazy "hip-hop hippie" by Raekwon's conservative standards but, if anything, Digi Snacks isn't weird enough.