Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Music from the Motion Picture)

He’s not to be underestimated as an MC — something worth remembering, and if you forgot, revisit that first Gravediggaz album — but RZA’s production is always going to be the thing that makes him endlessly fascinating from a musical perspective. The “digital orchestra” about-face style he started transitioning to circa Wu-Tang Forever and displayed most prominently on his Bobby Digital albums actually works best in a cinematic context — literally, this time, as the eternal movie buff jumped at the chance to give Jim Jarmusch his best connection to the hip-hop world since Rammellzee’s Stranger Than Paradise cameo. Leaving big seams in the loops and creating string-section basslines that bounce more than soar adds a recognizable Shaolin grime to the film’s East-West hood-bushido milieu.