Wu-tang were so ahead of their time with their Wu-Tang Forever album

[nieman]

Decks album was a decent listen at worst

Ugods was bad, barely even trying but still had serious gems worth listening to.

Gza album was his best outside LS. Synth beats or not.

Meths his best outside tical until 421. T2 tried to be too many things at once.

Bobby digital is like a 7 at worst.

But priest. Cap. Sunz. Killarmy. Lad. The swarm.diggaz.

All solid 3.5 mic albums or better . All of them minus ugod are good albums

Uey's best album is Dopium. It's actually pretty good. Keynote Speaker is solid.

Masta Killa prob has the second best catalog

 

[Mike Wins]

It was a great album, it's just 36 Chambers was so monumental, that is the one album that was so ahead of their time that they made a lot of rappers sound ancient.

Wu Forever is a great album, but not groundbreaking.

I got to argue it was groundbreaking. The production, engineering and mastering was next level. It's an elite album sonically. Movie score quality but still street and hip hop to the core. They found the sweet spot between the vintage Wu sound and going too far into digital and experimental. They never did anything like it before.

And to be real they leveled up as rappers since 36. Raekwon, Ghost, Deck, RZA and U-God especially delivered at a crazy high level. GZA ain't get enough slots but got some classic verses too. As do Meth even though he later spoke on not really feeling it at the time.

Still arguably the GOAT double album. At worst it's top 3, and got less filler than the other contenders.

The main criticism always come back to it's too clean, lacked the rawness and energy of 36. But it would have been foolish to try to recreate that.
They had too much money, fame and recognition to pretend to be hungry. Wouldn't have been genuine. This was like a celebration of everything they did the prior five years. And it was a unique and original album.

On that point maybe my least favorite aspect of hip hop discussion, is focusing on what albums ain't instead of appreciating what they are. Every thread about this album you gonna find dudes rushing to mention Black Shampoo. Like, why? It's one skippable track on a double disc. An album with deep cuts like For Heaven's Sake, Scary Hours, Older Gods, Severe Punishment, Impossible, Deadly Melody, Bells of War, Hellz Wind Staff. Why the first thing so many want to mention is the couple filler tracks?

 

[I love Latina women]

I might the only one on here who doesn’t really care for Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II at all

Some of the songs he dropped on the mixtapes leading up to the albums release were better

I feel like people on here overrate that album like crazy

What’s ironic is, I like a lot of other work by the producers on that album but Raekwon should’ve just kept it moving and never made a sequel to masterpiece

It’s very hard and typically impossible to live up to the hype and expectations of a masterpiece’s follow-up and I know most heads on here love Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II


Only Built 4 Cuban Linx is one of those once in a lifetime albums that just can never ever be duplicated for so many reasons

I wish when Raekwon would’ve started working with DJ Muggs and let Muggs produce some of his albums like when GZA worked with Muggs for his Grandmasters album

All that said, Raekwon is a great emcee and RZA in his prime is arguably the GOAT hip hop producer