Album Cover via Wu-Tang Clan/Instagram
Pete Hunt is still trying to figure out a justification for posting a link to Celly Cel & UGK’s “Pop the Trunk” on LinkedIn.
In May, Ghostface Killah released a new album, Set the Tone (Guns & Roses). There were guest spots from Jim Jones, Kanye West, Sheek Louch, and his “Verbal Intercourse” sparring partners Raekwon & Nas. If you missed it you weren’t alone. Promotion was limited to a single music video and a handful of interviews. Pitchfork didn’t review the album at all and Stereogum wrote about the 20th anniversary of Pretty Toney instead. (No shots fired, Toney remains a minor classic!)
Other Clan members have also dropped recent albums that were all but ignored. Did you know RZA released a new Bobby Digital EP? That Method Man dropped a third Meth Lab installment? That Cappadonna and Alchemist collaborated on a mixtape? Even as recently as Wu Block or Twelve Reasons to Die, these Clan-affiliated projects were accompanied by promotional tours, late-night appearances, and ample music press coverage. Today, if you don’t follow these artists on social you’re likely to miss the albums entirely.
The truth is that few fans are checking for new Wu releases. What old-school heads and contemporary devotees alike want is to revisit 36 Chambers, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Liquid Swords, and the other classic LPs. And the group seems more than happy to cash in on that nostalgia. Last year they played the hits on a global “N.Y. State of Mind Tour” tour with Nas. And since February, they’ve cemented their legacy act status with a Vegas residency.
The only “new” Wu music that continues to attract attention is Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the “one-of-one” album purchased by one-of-one asshole Martin Shkreli in 2015, later resold at auction, and currently being toured at private listening parties. (Alan Chazaro just penned a wonderful essay on the seductive appeal of Once Upon a Time… on this very site.) The mythology surrounding this release is understandable, but it’s unlikely that the music itself is better than anything on, say, 2017’s The Saga Continues compilation, an accomplished effort featuring nearly the entire Clan that most casual listeners remain unaware of.
Since that release—the last time the entire group (minus only U-God) appeared together on a full-length LP—individual Clan members have released more than 25 solo and collaborative albums. There have also been numerous guest appearances on everything from high-profile projects (Mr. Morale, Burna Boy’s I Told Them… Tom Morello’s The Atlas Underground) to mixtapes from artists that maybe twelve of you have ever heard of. The quality of these releases varies considerably, with much of the material landing somewhere between slightly undercooked and completely forgettable. But discerning listeners willing to wade through ill-conceived collaborations and low-budget retreads can find plenty of gems that either capture the magic of past hits or venture out in an entirely different musical direction.
Ahead we compile the best cuts from the Wu-Tang dynasty’s late and possibly final era. You can listen along with a seamlessly sequenced playlist on Spotify featuring plenty of bonus material. Together, these tracks constitute a Wu-Tang Forever-length double album that’s likely twice as good as Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the only release not included in this exercise. (Reader, if you can score us tickets to a listening session, we will gladly pay you in kind with an equally rare VHS copy of Ghost Dog.)
The lead single for Rapsody’s 2019 album Eve begins with D’Angelo (!) singing “Now when the emcees came to live out the name…” (!!) before the familiar organ from Willie Mitchell’s “Groovin’” drops (!!!) and a full on “Liquid Swords” revival kicks off. Repackaging a past hit might feel like shameless pandering in lesser hands. But here we have 9th Wonder (!!!!) behind the boards, and every single musical element —from D’Angelo’s multi-track vocals to the live instrumentation that accompanies the samples—is perfectly considered and deftly executed.
The song is named after Ibtihaj Muhammad, an Olympic fencing bronze medalist and the first Muslim American woman to wear a headscarf in an Olympic competition. Rapsody’s verses celebrate her female predecessors (“Women been leading the way since Roxanne Shante”) and her own lyrical acumen (“Ain’t an emcee on this Earth that make me feel afraid”), while GZA delivers a predictably brilliant 16 bars of astrological braggadocio and analog wisdom. The whole track feels warm and inviting, a homage that honors the past while living and breathing in the present.
Dutch singer Nicole Bus pulls off a similar trick with “You,” her breakthrough 2018 single that flips the “As Long as I’ve Got You” instrumental loop made famous by “C.R.E.A.M.” Producer Needlz, who previously worked on “Just the Way You Are” for Bruno Mars, lets the sampled vocal, horn, and string snippets build and build before the piano melody kicks in for the soaring chorus. It’s absolute pop bliss—but the song doesn’t feel complete until Ghostface hops on the remix with a swagger-drenched verse (“soakin’ my jewels in Palmolive”) that celebrates conspicuous consumption and Afrocentric reverence (“Your brown sugar got me higher than five octaves/ Black Betty Shabazz / Best bags, exotic stones / These young women, they admire your tone.”)
Buffalo’s Griselda collective is often compared to the Wu-Tang, as both crews excel at lyrical worldbuilding and fashion-oriented branding. Method Man was the first Clan member to collaborate with his appearance on “Lemon” from Conway the Machine’s 2020 debut solo album, From King to a God. The beat here is perfunctory Griselda—dissonant boom-bap engineered for luxury car stereos—but Meth blacks out and steals the song with witty wordplay (“Capone-N-Noreaga, watchin’ CNN / Black whip, black tint, y’all ain’t seein’ in / It’s Con’ and Meth’, spread the word, boy, it’s C and M / No seein’ ’em, these rappers in the scope, you’ll never see an Em”) that serves as both co-sign and “The What”-style bodying.
The best Wu-Griselda collab—and honestly my favorite song on this whole list—is “Buckingham Palace” which pairs Ghostface with Benny the Butcher, KXNG Crooked (from Slaughterhouse), and 38 Spesh (from countless mixtapes). This track first appeared on the Big Ghost – Ghostface Lost Tapes album—more on this later—but the best version is on Ghost Files – Propane Tape, which features Lost Tapes tracks remixed by Agalla, a producer affiliated with Harlem’s Purple City crew. The beatmaker does God’s work here with an instrumental reworking that evokes celestial Final Fantasy boss battles accompanied by live guitars and punishing drums. Every musical element from the original instrumental is stripped away and refined, as Agalla takes a very solid track and elevates it to transcendent.
Also good are “Sicilian Gold” from DJ Mugg’s 2023 release, Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley, and “FromTheProjects” by California producer NappyHIGH’s 2023 album Menace. These tracks pair Ghostface and Raekwon, respectively, with Westside Gunn, the Griselda rapper whose distinct voice and delivery seem imbued with a Purple Tape—or at least Pretty Toney—sensibility. (Gunn’s second album was, of course, titled Supreme Blientele.)
36 Chambers introduced a now familiar template for Wu-Tang songs—a brief excerpt of dialogue from a Shaw Brothers flick transitions into a cinematic boom-bap beat (hard-hitting drums, sampled instrumentation, vinyl crackles) and three or more Clan members spitting about streetlife, swordplay, and Shaolin. This formula has become so, well, formulaic that it can seem lazy when deployed on low-effort projects that try to signify “Wu” without matching 36 Chambers-level songcraft. When executed effectively, though, the familiar ingredients can still produce musical alchemy as these three tracks demonstrate.
“Unpredictable,” from Statik Selektah’s 2023 album Round Trip, brings Ghostface, Raekwon, Meth, and Deck together for a throwback posse cut with each rapper bringing their Chessboxin’ A-game. Logic does Statik one better on “Wu-Tang Forever” by snagging verses from the entire Clan. Logic himself can be a little corny sometimes, but he deserves props here for crafting a credible homage that lets each member shine over a “Triumph”-like runtime.
The real gem in this grouping is “Crazy 8’s” from 2021’s underrated Remedy Meets WuTang project, as this song features what—gun to my head, hand on Dianetics—might be the most manic Ghostface verses since Fishscale. I’m not spoiling anything by quoting lyrics here. I’m just saying: if you’re someone who puts “Kilo” and “The Champ” on nearly all your Spotify playlists (“Work out,” “Long Drive,” “Stoned in Safeway”), this is the track for you. The one caveat is that as great as Ghostface is here, there’s a “Trevor Noah” reference from Deck that will make you audibly groan.
RZA’s musical involvement with the Clan effectively ends after 2014’s A Better Tomorrow. (2015’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was largely produced by Cilvaringz and 2017’s “compilation” The Saga Continues was entirely produced by Mathematics.) This amicable separation has allowed RZA to follow his creative muse to strange new places, namely the Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater project with DJ Scratch, the Banz & Steelz collaboration with Interpol frontman Paul Banks, and… ughhh.. Minions: The Rise of Gru with Kevin, Stuart, Bob, and Otto.
“Trouble Shooting,” from 2022’s RZA Presents: Bobby Digital and The Pit of Snakes EP, operates in the same register as Banks & Steelz, meaning lots of live instrumentation, this time with a Khruangbin & Leon Bridges vibe. The chorus by former Wu-Tang touring guitarist Cody Nierstedt grates on the first few listens before becoming deeply embedded in your subconscious. This isn’t a great song, necessarily, but it’s a fully realized one that captures RZA’s current musical interests.
The “Plug Addicts” collaboration with Flatbush Zombies is more of a throwback, this time to his Gravediggaz “horrorcore” era. The production is more orchestral than anything on 6 Feet Deep, but the degenerate vibes are otherwise the same.
After his star turn on 36 Chambers, Method Man was perceived as the Clan member best poised for commercial success, which is why he got the first solo release with 1994’s Tical—a solid album, of course, but one that’s not quite on par with Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, Liquid Swords, Supreme Clientele and the other Wu classics that followed. And three decades later, Meth still lacks a single solo release that matches his peer’s critically acclaimed work.
The simple explanation for this is that Method Man has always worked best as a complementary flavor, and his best songs typically feature a lyrical foil, whether that’s another Clan member (“Meth vs. Chef”) or frequent collaborator Redman (see: the entirely of Blackout). Meth seems to recognize his inability to carry an entire project, as his last solo album, 2022’s Meth Lab Season 3: The Rehab, featured guest stars on all but one song. Meth also shuffles through the same handful of rapping cadences, something that’s more noticeable across an entire LP.
The format where Method Man truly shines, though, is guest appearances, as these three stylistically diverse tracks demonstrate. “Step,” from Ocean Wisdom’s 2018 album Wizville, is a jagged grime beat that Meth effortlessly murders with a deft and witty verse. DJ Nu-Mark throws an uptempo, disco-flavored beat at him on “Zodiac Killah” and it’s the same result. Droog’s “DBZ”—which should be near the top of your ongoing “best of 2024” playlist—is a more traditional NYC rap beat and Meth once again steals the show: “If that man still stands and he takin’ the stand still / Put that steel on the stand and tell him to stand still.”
U-God famously contributed his scant verses to 36 Chambers between stints in prison and his contributions to other Wu albums have only been slightly more substantial. That said, when given a chance to shine (“Uzi,” “Black Jesus,” “Cherchez LaGhost,” “Triumph,” “Winter Warz,” etc.), he’s delivered epigrammatic quotables in an almost spoken word-like cadence (“Olympic torch flaming, we burn so sweet / The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat”). It’s a style that works well on “Bit da Dust” from 2018’s Venom solo album, which was released alongside his autobiography Raw: My Journey Into The Wu-Tang.
Masta Killa’s presence in the group has been equally enigmatic. He was the final member to release a solo album (2004’s No Said Date) and his recording output since then has remained limited. To date, he has only four albums. (Wu-affiliate Killah Priest, conversely, has 17.) The most recent release, 2017’s Loyalty Is Royalty, is a pleasant surprise, featuring top-shelf production from 9th Wonder, Dame Grease, and RZA and guest spots from GZA, Inspectah Deck, and Prodigy. The Sade-sampling “Therapy” is the album’s strongest cut thanks to playful bars from Meth (“We used to shoot skelly in the streets / Wear the same Pelle-Pelle’s for a week”) and Red (“My weed more greener than Lou Ferrigno”).
Cappadonna, meanwhile, wasn’t even elevated to full member until 8 Diagrams. He also spent time after Wu-Tang Forever living homeless and driving a cab. His musical output during this period was, unsurprisingly, sporadic. He’s been much more prolific over the past decade, releasing eight solo albums and several mixtapes (including Alcappachemist with The Alchemist) and collaborative projects (including The Second Coming with Canibus and Almighty). Reader, I’m not going to pretend to have listened to all of these, but I can say that 2022’s 3rd Chamber Grail Bars album with producer Stu Bangas is solid.
You can’t discuss Raekwon’s contemporary music without acknowledging the guy sounds virtually identical to his Purple Tape heyday. His wordplay might be a little less dense than it was on “Criminology,” or “Knowledge God,” but his vocal delivery and timbre haven’t changed a bit. Nor has his preferred subject matter. Rae has been spinning gritty street tales for three decades now, and that rigid formalism still produces compelling music on tracks like “This Is What It Comes To” from 2017’s The Wild album.
More interesting, though, is when Raekwon veers outside of the mafioso lane. On “Marvin,” Rae and Cee-Lo Green pay tribute to soul legend Marvin Gaye with a track recounting the singer’s remarkable life, from his musical triumphs to his struggles with substance abuse and troubled relationship with his father. In less capable hands, this kind of capsule biography could come across as hackneyed and overly sentimental, but Rae litters the lyrics with clever phrasings and perceptive asides.
Rae also sounds great on tracks like “Its My Thing Freestyle” where he gets to demolish a classic beat alongside one of its producers. This is simply stellar rapping, and there’s a playfulness to his lyrical detours—”Love Johnny Rockets, ordering shakes”—that evokes his abstract nonsequiturs on tracks like “Apollo Kids” and “Skew It On the Bar-B.”
If you read his Wikipedia entry, you’ll find that Young Dirty Bastard is already as eccentric (and nearly as fruitful) as his famous father. He’s also a very skilled rapper able to credibly channel his dad on “Brooklyn Zoo” and “Triumph” when performing with the Clan. His own recorded output is fairly limited, but “This Is It,” a collaboration with Düsseldorf, Germany-based producer WireFang, hints at real potential.
Inspectah Deck has had a career resurgence with Czarface, the Silver Age comics-influenced “supergroup” he formed with 7L & Esoteric in 2013. The trio’s self-titled debut album was catnip for backpackers due to its uncompromising commitment to the source material (Steve Ditko, WWF Superstars, the Soundbombing II compilation) and impressive guest spots from underground luminaries like Meyhem Lauren and R.A. the Rugged Man. More successful albums followed, including LP-length collaborations with MF Doom (2018’s Czarface Meets Metal Face) and Ghostface (2019’s Czarface Meets Ghostface).
Deck sounds completely rejuvenated by the group, as he’s been able to trade the grimy street talk of Shaolin for uber-nerd argot (“I transform to a beast, call me Predacon”) and tech bro brags (“Got ’em under pressure, no gas, word to Tesla”) without losing his audience. If anything, he’s bigger than ever, and he was able to leverage that new prestige with a solo album, 2019’s Chamber No. 9, that represented a nice balance between his Wu and Czarface work. The album was largely produced by Brooklyn-based beatmaker Danny Caiazzo, who also handled the entirety of Ghost’s occasionally great 2019 Ghostface Killahs album. And on standout track “Can’t Stay Away” Caiazzo and Deck deliver a beautiful summer jam that blends Kanye-style chipmunk soul, Premier-like vocal snippets, and “I Used to Love Her” reminiscences.
Now… a quick aside about Trife Diesel, who partners with Deck on the excellent “Fire.”
A full two years before Punk’d, Method Man and Redman hosted a short-lived prank show on MTV called Stung which featured virtually the same premise. In one episode, the duo brought Ludacris into the studio, ostensibly to drop a guest verse. In reality though—*turns to camera*—he was about to get stung, as the track they were asking him to rap over was just a loop of asynchronous drumming on endless repeat.
Luda complains about being “unable to catch the beat” but still gamely steps into the booth, where he struggles vainly to find a rhyme pattern that will align with the jarring drums. At one point, Meth plays to the camera and insists that Luda include “frog sounds” in his verse. Luda remains a total professional throughout, and by the end of the segment, he’s actually worked out some decent bars—and even jokes that he might include the song on his next album.
I think about this skit all of the time when I’m listening to Trife Diesel, a Ghostface and Theodore Unit-affiliated rapper who would have snatched that Stung beat and murdered it, frog sounds and all. And if this piece weren’t already pushing 3,000 words, I would pad out the list to include more features from Trife, Streetlife, Shawn Wigs, and all of your favorite Clan sidekicks, hypemen, and let’s say briefcase carriers.
Reader, I’m not quite terminally online enough to know the complete backstory of blog legend Big Ghost. Completists can read his Wikipedia entry and requisite POW interview for further biographical details. For this article, though, all you need to know is that he transitioned from Ghostface-channeling shitposter to would-be beatmaker with 2015’s Griselda Ghost, a collaboration with the aforementioned Westside Gunn & Conway the Machine. Then in 2018 he surprisingly hooked up with the i/r/l Ghostface for The Lost Tapes.
Like other recent Ghost releases, this one was uneven, though one track stood out immediately—”Saigon Velour,” which unexpectedly brought together Ghostface, Snoop Dogg, and fucking E-40 for what felt like a dying 90s kid “Make-a-Wish” request. Was this collaboration as good as it would have been circa Tha Hall of Game? Hell no. But it was still pretty amazing! Alas, at some point Big Ghost removed the original song from Spotify (and presumably other streaming platforms) and replaced it with an “updated” version featuring his own verse tacked on after Ghostface’s. Dude is a perfectly competent rapper, but nobody wants to hear him bogarting the mic on a track with three legends. Thankfully the untarnished original song is still on YouTube. (There’s also a remix featuring Tricky—yes, from Massive Attack!—that somehow manifested itself into existence.)
The Twelve Reasons to Die project with Adrian Younge sounded brilliant as a pitch (a giallo-themed concept album produced by Younge and heavily influenced by Ennio Morricone scores), but the final product was lackluster. Ghostface and crew try way too hard to provide scene-by-scene exposition rather than simply inhabiting the characters. The sequel was also underwhelming right down to the lazy title (they just slapped a “II” on the end and called it good). The whole thing wasn’t a total wash, though. 2018’s The Brown Album—an alternate take on the first Twelve Reasons… produced by Detroit’s Apollo Brown—was an improvement on the original, with the reworked “Murder Spree” being a highlight. The tour that accompanied the first album was also amazing. Adrian Younge and his band would come out and perform numbers from Younge’s earlier work, then after an intermission, Ghostface would join them on stage for Twelve Reasons to Die cuts and band-backed greatest hits from Ghost’s solo and Wu discography.
“Skate Odyssey” is pulled from the recent Set the Tone (Guns & Roses) album. This one resembles Pretty Toney cut “Save Me Dear” in that it’s basically just Ghost and guest Rae rapping over the sampled song—The Whispers’ classic “(Let’s Go) All the Way”—with minimal production flourishes. If you check the credits you’ll see that both tracks were produced by Mr. Killah himself, which tracks as they feel personal and nostalgic. And though Ghost isn’t quite rapping with Pretty Toney-levels of urgency, he’s at least in a Big Doe Rehab-level of cruise control.
We can be honest and say that none of these songs approach anything on Supreme Clientele or Ironman, but like the other entries on this list it’s comforting to see that the artists involved can still produce compelling music. There’s plenty of money to be had in strictly playing crowd favorites at festivals, and it’s unlikely that any of these Clan members—most well into their 50s—would be churning out albums if they weren’t still inspired to create something new while working with old friends and young artists alike.
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