On Style: Excursus on Listening to Method Man -- Enter the Shiv Style

A CanineMind Exclusive

If 4:21 left me less than satisfied, I’m still no less convinced that Meth has been receiving unfair hate as of late. On top of resequencing and relistening to T2 and 4:21, listeners should consider the following stylistic points…

Meth may be hip-hop’s most mis-appreciated MC. True, until Supreme Clientele transformed Ghostface into a Golden Child for the hip-hop literati, Meth was the most visible member of what was then one of the world’s most popular hip-hop acts. His classic smoked-out voice, his towering stage presence, and his easily memorizable lyrics from 36 Chambers’ “Method Man” made him, for the all the pop listening public seemed to care, the true pointman of the Clan – a mid-90s urban icon who attracted media attention in ways more critically beloved Wu brethren like Raekwon and GZA never managed. Subsequent recording and film projects with Redman (Blackout!!! and How High, respectively) solidified his status as a larger-than-life embodiment of urban cool/stoner goofiness for the MTV crowd.

The public embraced (and Meth fed) this image so eagerly that, twelve years after his debut, few seem to regard him as either a master technician or a capable, unique lyricist. So much the worse for all involved.

Flow-wise, Meth is on a level occupied by few others. They don’t just call him the Method Man because he’s “like roll that shit, light that shit, smoke it,” but also because “there’s like mad different methods” to his style: he can switch-up his delivery several times in a single verse, shifting from machine-gun to sing-song in an instant. 50 Cent and Chamillionaire sound like they were taking notes. Even among the Wu, he stands apart. Unlike Inspectah Deck, the Clansman closest to Meth in terms of structure and preferred slanguage (a.k.a. the “really dope but at least recognizably conventional MC” – compare their lyrics to the free-abstraction weirdness of the rest of the WTC and get back to me), or the notoriously flow-crazy Ghost, Meth’s vocal inflections give his verses a visceral, mantric quality.

Lyrically speaking, Meth will never be praised for being the most complex or abstract rhymer, even given the quantum leaps his verses made from “Method Man” (“I be Sam, Sam I Am”) to tracks like “Shadowboxin’” (“Hard times and killer tactics / Spittin’ words / Plus semi-automatic slurs”) and “Supa Ninjaz” (“Flabbergasted by tracks that be True Master’d / Opposites attract beef plus they ass-backwards”). To compare Meth with GZA or Elzhi would be to miss his own distinctive (and highly effective) rhyming method.

When putting together his verses, Meth combines his flexible flow with what I like to call the “shiv style” of rhyming: he picks up random, inoffensive pieces of language and refashions them into dangerous weapons. This is not the happy-go-lucky cultural recycling of Nelly (“Ande-rei, ande-rei, Mami, E-I, E-I, uhooooooh) or Young Joc (“Eeenie, Meenie, Minie, Mo”); this is brutal word re-usage. A tired saying (“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”) becomes a call for a beat-down (“If you can’t join ‘em, BEAT ‘EM, and push your way in”), legal procedure (“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law’) becomes supra-legal menace (“MCs have the right to remain silent / Everything you say can and will be used against y’all motherfuckers”). Meth’s aggressive approach to the commonplace is visible throughout his verse from “Triumph”:

As the world turns, I spread like germs

Bless the globe with the pestilence

The hard-headed never learned

It’s my testament that does burn

Play my position in the game of life standing firm

From foreign land

Jump the gun from the frying pan

Into the fire

Transform into the Ghostrider

A six-pack and a Street Car Named Desire

Who got my back in the line of fire holdin’ back?

WHAT?!

My peoples, if you with me, WHERE THE FUCK YOU AT?

Niggas is strapped and they tryna twist my beer cap

It’s court adjourned for the bad seed from bad sperm

Erb got my wig fried like a bad perm

What the blood clot

We smoke pot

And blow spots

You wanna think twice, I think not

Now Iron Lung ain’t gotta tell ya where it’s comin’ from

Guns of Navarone tearin’ up your battle zone

Rip through your slums

There’s a reason his lyrics might not strike listeners on first spin: they’ve heard a lot of what he’s said at some other point in their lives, spouted by parents, police officers, or high school English teachers. And that’s the genius of Meth. He recasts clichés by revealing their latent malice… or injecting something sinister of his own. Sharpened up in the uniquely Meth-style, even the blunt clutter of everyday language comes out on point.