| Rating |
Summary |
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| n/a by www.sonicnet.com |
It's about as good a hip hop album as you will hear this year. Correction: Make that great.... It's hip-hop that plays to the streets and the suburbs with equal intensity, intelligence, insanity and integrity. |
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| n/a by www.cdnow.com |
All the big Wu dogs are here -- Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Raekwon, Genius, etc. -- and it sounds like they've been sharpening their skills like knives. They toss rhymes back and forth with the precision of a machine -- they're so good it's almost scary. |
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| n/a by www.ew.com |
The W forgoes innovation and simply revels in the Clan's strengths: the way their star rappers toss around rhymes as if playing catch; RZA's skulking, string enhanced beats; all those mystical hip hop words. |
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| n/a by www.villagevoice.com |
Filled with startling jump cuts and puzzling reverberations, The W is the best-produced Wu-affiliated album since GZA's 1995 Liquid Swords.... Eight years after their first single, it's a thrill to hear Wu-Tang sounding so unhinged. But it's also a pain in the ass. With nine voices, nine styles competing for your ear, even the most carefully crafted Wu-Tang album flirts with chaos, and the listener is left to separate milestones from mistakes. The W bursts with inspiration, but what does it all mean? You can't help wishing there was someone in charge. |
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| n/a by Rolling Stone |
The W is a sonic gestalt that exists somewhere between the Queensbridge projects and OutKast's Stankonia, down the block from Lee Perry's Black Ark studios, two floors below A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory. |
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| n/a by www.hob.com |
Even the ample cast of guests on The W seems less like a blatant attempt to boost its first week sales than simply a welcome attempt to add to its stylistic diversity. The result is something almost as rare as getting the entire Wu-Tang Clan together: a mainstream rap album that actually sounds like an album instead of a long-playing single. |
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| n/a by www.dotmusic.com |
The monotony that blighted 1997's 'Wu-Tang Forever' and the sluggish complacency of some of the Clan's myriad solo projects in the past three years is notably absent. There's a born-again urgency here, with the RZA reclaiming control of the mixing desk from his disciples and trying out a few new tricks to spike the usual routine of cinematic string stabs and virtuoso raps. |
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| n/a by www.q4music.com |
The W is largely a return to murky idiosyncratic form after 1997's filler-bloated Wu-Tang Forever. Weighing in at a svelte 60 minutes, it plays to the group?s main strengths: brutal hooks and scary ambience. |
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| n/a by www.vibe.com |
After being imitated for the last seven years, Wu-Tang Clan returns with another chamber for today's soft and silky rap. But don't get it twisted though. Despite their last album, Wu-Tang Forever, leaving fans uneasy, the Wu's third collective work, The W is crammed with nothing but Wu-bangas. |
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| n/a by Billboard |
"W" does have a few flaws, namely "Conditioner," which features Snoop Dogg and is the only track graced with Ol' Dirty's presence. Despite his trademark voice-cracking inflection, the Dirt Dog's verse sounds as if it was recorded over the phone, detracting from what could have been another Wu banger. |
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| n/a by www.newyorkmag.com |
The W is the sort of back-to-basics album that rock bands like the Who and the Rolling Stones used to make when they felt they were losing touch with their audience. It's capable but uninspiring -- Wu by Numbers. |
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| n/a by avclub.theonion.com |
Although roughly half as long as Wu-Tang Forever, The W is every bit as erratic and overreaching. If Forever was a great single album hidden in a messy two-disc set, The W feels like a good six-song EP nestled inside an uneven album that seems to take its cues from the half-assed weirdness of ODB's N**** Please. |
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