Raekwon has released The Emperor’s New Clothes, his first album in almost a decade.
Flanked by an all-star supporting cast including Ghostface Killah, Nas and Method Man as well as the Griselda trio of Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine and Benny the Butcher, the project has been released by Mass Appeal Records.
The project’s 17 tracks also come with the backing of an illustrious group of producers including Swizz Beatz, Nottz and JUSTICE League.
While he’s just released his first solo album since 2017’s The Wild, Rae has also said that the Wu-Tang Clan might still have more music in them collectively.
“Good question. I mean, we tryna get it together, you know?” he said. “Everybody’s spread out. Everybody’s doing something great in their life, so when it’s time for everybody to get in the room, it just seems like it’s the hardest shit in the world. But it ain’t like we don’t want to.”
He added: “And then you got so many minds. You throw a beat out and a n-gga be like, ‘I like that, I don’t like that.’ It’s hard. It’s real hard, but don’t count us out. Don’t never count us out.”
Wu-Tang Clan’s last official album arrived in 2015 in the form of the much-publicized Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, although only one physical copy was released.
Intended to emphasize the value of music in age of rampant piracy and low streaming payouts, the album was purchased for $2 million by notorious “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli, who was later ordered to hand over the record by a federal court after being convicted of securities fraud.
Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was then bought by the NFT collective PleasrDAO in a $4 million deal with the U.S. Department of Justice.
