I don’t really know how long you would want to keep up a charade for the sake of your music if you so passionately considered it an expressive art form, a medium through which your life unfolds, but perhaps your life is a lie. Maybe you haven’t really shot a guy and tossed his body in a ditch since you were much younger. Maybe you’re Grandpa glued to his rocking chair telling the same sorry tales of regret and violent misery, trying to forge a path into their little blooming hearts. Hello Raekwon, I have a message for you: put up or shut up. Or rap about something else, you’re a withered flower buried under a bed of potent roses. Constantly making claims with these strong verbs and death threats, but I saw you at Hammerstein Ballroom last Christmas and if you really brought out ODB’s mother on stage to tell us to keep our faith, what are you still doing on the streets? Oh right, that’s not you, that’s your limousine. I appreciate your tribute to Ol’ Dirty (Ason Jones), without a doubt the finest lyrical moment of your career so far, but why smudge up the plaque, talking about cooking up the same *** that murdered him? Are you sadistic? It’s tough to love you Raekwon; one minute your flow puts any rapper to shame on
Black Mozart and the next I’m ***ing bored. Couples get divorced for less than that. I gotta make that money no matter what I do? How many times can you spout the same tired ghetto philosophy? Hey, don’t get all angry because I’m using your new album to channel my problems with gangsta rap. What would the difference be if I called out anyone else? You’re not going to listen to me anyway, your too busy rapping about nothing, the gangster Larry David resting comfortably in the palms of Ghostface Killah and Method Man as one of Wu’s most notable voices and ugliest mugs.
You remind me of every other radio-hop rapper when it comes to your records – wow, that’s a great single or three, but why does everything else finish before it's even done? Why is Ghostface beating you out on your own songs? Yeah I already know what it do, and I must be a fool if I’m gonna let you do it to me again. How can you be the same guy who recorded
Baggin’ Crack? I’ll probably be playing that song over and over in my head for months. And these beats ain’t nuthin’ to *** with either, but the problem is I could make a ten page list of other rappers who could kill
Surgical Gloves like it never lived. Whats that I hear, a wannabe Jim Jones? Copying a copy-cat? You used to be better than that. Your invitation to Jadakiss just goes to show your disregard for rhythmic quality, haha, just leave it to the dee jay. It’s pretty gross to hear fine tunes like
Canal Street stuck in the mud. The good parts of “Linx II” are those honor roll minds with Neanderthal buddies grasping at events of the past (in this case cheesy Kung-Fu film samples and the same delivery you delivered in nineteen-ninety five) to make their inadaquete presence feel justified. “I’m gonna give you one of them OLD Raekwon crime joints”, got that right. But to even have an average rating in the first place, you did
something right. The soulful criminality of
Catalina, or the album’s real beginning,
Cold Outside are prime examples of a rapper with heart and skill. It’s great to hear GZA/Genius make a clever comeback amidst the butchered Queen hook on
We Will Rob You which made the album sound alright until you had to rely on Busta Rhyme’s ill vibe to save one of Dr. Dre’s best ’09 beats embarrassment. The record has your name branded on the cover, what did you steal it? Every fantastic moment of this so-called best rap of 2009 happens when you aren’t rapping. Bizarre, would you agree? But certainly not as weird as the fact that there are eight good songs on a twenty-two track.
To summarize I hope you got the point already. Violins and horns do not make excellent music on their own, you don’t seem to fully understand the importance of execution and as a self-proclaimed drug dealer shouldn’t that discipline be under your belt? I’ve heard you climax:
Baggin’ Crack and
Black Mozart are two of the best performances you’ve recorded in forever and if this routine keeps up they’ll probably stay that way. I don’t want to have to get stoned to enjoy Wu-Tang’s music anymore, I think it’s time the dynasty took a turn for the better or shut down shop. I still have “The W”, all I need to get by.