Slightly disappointing conclusion of a music legend ...

The Wu-Tang Clan is for me without doubt the most influential and greatest rap combo of all time. After absolutely groundbreaking albums (especially their legendary debut) Start early / mid-90s they were with Wu-Tang Forever, which I think most monumental (Double) rap album ever, at the height of her work. What happened to the communities since the beginning of the millennium, it was said to satisfy. Therefore only the following: I love the Wu-Tang Clan, my expectations of a last album were but purely from the front no longer particularly high ...
What can you say about the album? I'd love to celebrate it right, but it has a total of too many weaknesses in order to really inspire can. Criticism of RZA's beats and musical orientation were even from one or another clan member heard loudly in the recent past. I had "Eight Diagrams" initially totally leave the left; it grew but then over the years with each listen with me. The latter is atmospherically but this clearly superior here I mean.
RZA's very successful work as a score composer really one notices him greatly. Finally over the time of the minimalist, bone-dry samples and beats; the dirty sound of earlier is largely passé. Instead, the album but really reached an extremely musical depth. In almost every track, for every verse coherent and successful variations.
A good example would be the opener "Ruckus in B minor", which has at least managed to "Monday Night Football". So is greatly slowed in GZAs Part of the beat at the beginning, omitted almost entirely at Raekwon; Masta Killas Part support it again slightly modified and very reduced. Whoever listens to the album carefully, can really discover an incredible amount of detail and subtleties within each track!
The problem in fact is that sooner so distinguishing hardcore style is missing due to these compositions of the clan. What the guys sooner burned on tracks with the simplesten loops and beats for a fire! Now everything sounds somehow much dignified - which also applies to the mic presence of MCS. Overall, they still rapping course pretty much everything today in hip-hop is successful, on the wall. You can tell the most but now their 40+ years of life yet, and that there a total of just lacks that certain something and the power of the past. Yet there is no real dropouts and Method Man just know me again to inspire. The problem of the album is partly due to me simply that it (unfortunately, alas!) Is not a single really rich track. Everything sounds as I said with great passion and love produces, but that certain something missing then unfortunately but at every track anyway.
"Felt" is somewhere in the right direction, remains at the end but just sort of something überdurschschnittlich. "Mistaken Identity", "pioneer the frontier" and "necklace" come in ancient Wu-Style therefore (especially the former sounds to me simply to "Liquid Swords" to), but can not really all of their earlier hits. "Hold the heater" and "crushed egos" sound for me to Wu-Tang Forever. Undoubtedly succeeded, but it is nevertheless "still cash rules" not quite at the level of, for example. Or "Visionz" to which I had to think here inevitably immediately.
A big drawback of the album will also the various hooks. During this time but then I liked getting better at "Keep Watch" and "Ron O'Neal," I would the chorus to "We will fight" Just wish only the beautiful English word "corny". On the other actually very successful title track I find the chorus somehow very inappropriate. He does not fit so in the rest of musical structure and bothers me already. No comparison however to the nasty "Miracle". The Hook acts as a single foreign body and would meximal should suffice as a "coherent" Interlude. Sounds cheesy Disney Love Song. Did not work for my taste! I really wish these guys would have the hooks easily again much more himself eingerappt / -brüllt like in the good old days (see "Hold the Heater" RZA !!).
"Preacher's Daughter" is really succeeded (especially Meths Part), but there is no comparison with "Heart Gently Weeps".
But not yet final "Wu-Tang Reunion". Probably the last Wu-track at all with such a promising name and then rapping all four (!) Man on the wacksten Beat Album !? That's really weak. Here one should at least try it again completely at the end to deliver a fat Posse Cut!

So overall, I have to hold: Many little things lead to the album for my taste as the last work of this legendary group the legend status can not be quite fair. Clear, which are 90 over and the Clansmen are also no longer in his early twenties. But somehow missing the entire length but somehow the decisive bit of roughness, power and passion; I can here really find a single track that really knocks me. On a Wu-Tang album !!

From the critics it was indeed mainly also received more mixed feelings. So be it, 3.5 stars - rounded up to four.
Wu-Tang Forever