{"id":41775,"date":"2025-07-23T19:14:14","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T19:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/23\/raekwon-chefs-up-some-raw-classic-new-york-rap\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T19:14:14","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T19:14:14","slug":"raekwon-chefs-up-some-raw-classic-new-york-rap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/23\/raekwon-chefs-up-some-raw-classic-new-york-rap\/","title":{"rendered":"Raekwon Chefs Up Some Raw Classic New York Rap"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n\tHip-hop is no longer solely youth culture; it\u2019s just culture, with cross-generational scenes full of artists intent on capturing their era\u2019s zeitgeist. But Raekwon<\/a> The Chef\u2019s latest solo album, The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes<\/em>, was unquestionably tailored for the 35-and-up hip-hop heads who descended upon Madison Square Garden to see the Wu-Tang Clan<\/a>\u2019s possible final hometown show last week. There are no stunt features or out-of-touch Gen Z reaches here, just a 17-track dose of raw, New York City hip-hop.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs I noted in my show review,<\/a> Raekwon was one of the strongest pieces on the Wu\u2019s chessboard during their MSG farewell concert, sustaining his energy throughout the show and cutting clearly through the crowd with his husky baritone \u2014 his performance bode well for the album he namechecked multiple times that night. He was also fresh in more than one way, spending the first half of the show wearing a red Gucci apron, which was so stylish it should end up in a hip-hop fashion exhibit one day. The piece, alongside his Wu classics, symbolized his status as one of hip-hop\u2019s original luxury drug rap connoisseurs. Before Rick Ross<\/a>, Roc Marciano<\/a>, Clipse<\/a>, and a slew of other artists beloved for Scorcesesque valorization of the drug trade, Rae and Ghost were United.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRae knows exactly what his place in rap history is on The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes<\/em>, his eighth solo project, and first in eight years, following up 2017\u2019s The Wild<\/em>. His previous LP was his first to feature no Wu members, and showed him (mostly) honing in on what made him great. The same is true here.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s a master swordsman, in recent years belying the energetic mic presence of his early work with a slower, more deliberate cadence that sounds like the audio embodiment of the \u201ccan\u2019t speed him up, can\u2019t slow him down\u201d observation bestowed on NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. On \u201cBear Hill,\u201d \u201cThe Guy That Plans It,\u201d and \u201cDa Heavies,\u201d the three songs on the album where he appears solo, the production is disparate, but his presence feels the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tHe has a knack for painting street landscapes in his rhymes, with a tinge of the flowery vocabulary shared by a generation of older East Coast scribes enraptured by films like Dolemite<\/em> and Super Fly<\/em>. \u201cThe Guy That Plans It\u201d is classic Raekwon, an abbreviated, vivid crime caper of a street tussle (though I wish he didn\u2019t need to say \u201cqueer\u201d to fill in his \u201c-eer\u201d rhyme scheme).<\/p>\n

\n\tHis mic persona is unmistakably New York City; he\u2019s one of the few who can sell a phrase as fragmented and vague as \u201ca certain walk with a special bop\u201d from \u201cOpen Doors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd throughout the project, the bars are delivered with a technical precision that could see him holding his own in a cipher of any age. Elsewhere on \u201cOpen Doors\u201d he rhymes, \u201cThey call me Louis Gas Pipe, I\u2019m like the mafia\u2019s worst kid\/Bentley bicycles, ten pistols, a slick bid;\u201d it\u2019s impossible not to want to know more about Mr. Gas Pipe in the land of \u201cShattered dreams, lonely pharaohs\/Who rid\u0435 across the Verrazano Narrows.\u201d Hollywood should stop rebooting the same movies and pick a verse from this album to expand into a script.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe album has a slew of features but unlike on junctures of his next-to-last solo FILA<\/em>, which had oblong collaborations with ASAP Rocky and French Montana, the Emperor\u2019s New Clothes<\/em> features fit the festivities. Several of Rae\u2019s Wu comrades are on the album. Inspectah Deck is technically precise, but sounds a step slow over the sinister beat on \u201cPomogranite.\u201d Ghostface Killah<\/a> is solid on his three appearances, most notably \u201c600 School,\u201d where he, Raekwon and Method Man commandeer a Swizz Beats beat and show off the chemistry that made Wu-Massacre<\/em> a memorable project from the Clan\u2019s later years. It\u2019s the kind of moment that reminds one of Junior Soprano talking to his nephew Tony about an old school crew of hitmen on the classic mob drama: \u201cThey may be old, my little nephew, but those dogs can still hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tNas impresses on \u201cThe Omerta,\u201d with a verse that ponders religion but has some questionable conclusions on the nature of the Dutch\u2019s relationship with the Lenape people. The verse\u2019s last third might spark some side-eyes, but the Mass Appeal co-founder (the company distributed this album) sounds hungry. Raekwon delivered with his own inspired verse demonstrating that he knew the stakes of matching their previous track record. Benny the Butcher<\/a>, Conway the Machine<\/a>, and Westside Gunn<\/a> also feature on energetic standout \u201cWild Corscians.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s Westside Gunn\u2019s presence that exemplifies the one thing keeping The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes<\/em> from reaching its full potential: the production. In 2022, Gunn expressed an interest in executive producing a Rae and Ghost album, and hip-hop heads have been clamoring for what that would sound like. On Rae\u2019s new album, only frequent collaborator Frank G shows up on the project with multiple production credits. It feels like a more streamlined beat selection process could have been the best move, and few would have been better than Gunn, who\u2019s credited with helping inject indie rap with golden era-quality sonics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tWhile only \u201cDebra Night Wine,\u201d a shaky interpolation of The Syncophonic Orchestra\u2019s \u201cQuasimodo\u2019s Marriage\u201d (sampled by Just Blaze for Beanie Sigel\u2019s \u201cWhat Your Life Like Pt. 2\u201d), is an outright misstep on the album, and there are some impressive beats, few of them stick after the initial listening. The beats do enough to keep your head nodding, but Rae\u2019s lyrical effort deserved some face-scrunching chops and soul loops you can\u2019t get out of your head.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, it\u2019s a strong effort from a rap OG who embodies the 52-year-old Malice\u2019s recent assertion<\/a> on aging in rap: \u201cEither you got the talent or you don\u2019t. You could be old, you could be young. If you ain\u2019t got it, then you don\u2019t have it.\u201d At this point, the spectre of 40-plus year-old rappers isn\u2019t a new or distinct phenomenon. It\u2019s no longer a trackless frontier, but a bustling environment with defined thoroughfares. Any east coast artist looking to age gracefully can follow Rae\u2019s path.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hip-hop is no longer solely youth culture; it\u2019s just culture, with cross-generational scenes full of artists intent on capturing their era\u2019s zeitgeist. But Raekwon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":41776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}