There\u2019s something grimly appropriate about Raekwon titling his eighth studio album The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes. Not because the album is some grand misstep, but because it drapes itself in legacy\u2014ornate, heavy, and familiar\u2014and feels more invested in preserving a myth than reimagining it. It\u2019s the work of a rapper taking great pains to show he still has \u201cit,\u201d while quietly admitting that he\u2019s not quite sure what \u201cit\u201d even means anymore.<\/p>\n
The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes feels plush, with the kind of ornamental detail\u2014like Swizz Beatz\u2019s epic orchestral flourishes on the \u201c600 School\u201d\u2014that you might expect from a late-career legend with something to prove. But the album is rather conservative in its refusal to deviate from the safest possible version of the rapper\u2019s established aesthetic. Every proper song here could\u2019ve comfortably dropped in from 2005. <\/p>\n
The album\u2019s sequencing, aside from four laborious skits, is clean, and Raekwon\u2019s voice still carries that grainy, ageless gravity that few of his peers can summon. But after an eight-year gap and endless teasing of Cuban Linx III, this feels less like a statement than a finely pressed placeholder. While not exactly phoned in, The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes displays a persistent thinness\u2014a lack of urgency or much in the way of surprises. Across 40 mostly passable minutes, Raekwon doesn\u2019t so much expand his catalog as he does curate a legacy in real time.<\/p>\n
Ghostface Killah shows up multiple times and effortlessly steals the show with his deranged, Joe Pesci\u2013in-a-Scorsese-film energy, while Nas, whose Mass Appeal Records released the album, delivers a stately verse on \u201cThe Omerta.\u201d But none of these guest appearances pushes Raekwon beyond the call of duty. In fact, they feel like a familiar cast assembled to remind us that this is Important Rap from Serious Rappers.<\/p>\n
Even the beats\u2014mostly boom bap with light soul flourishes\u2014do their job without ever risking alienating anyone who still believes the best hip-hop was made roughly three decades ago. \u201cBear Hill\u201d glides on a loungey loop; \u201c1 Life,\u201d which starts off gesturing at industry critique before condemning \u201cthe devil\u2019s in the back by the screens,\u201d drowns under producer J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League\u2019s smothering gloss; and \u201cThe Guy That Plans It\u201d flips a Marvin Gaye sample into something majestic but bloodless. <\/p>\n
Raekwon, to his credit, is never off his pen game, but he\u2019s locked into one gear and one only. On \u201cWild Corsicans,\u201d a gritty mafioso throwback with some muddily mixed drums, the Chef drops eight bars that mirror Conway the Machine and Benny the Butcher\u2019s verses almost beat for beat, both in style and substance. Even Westside Gunn, who appears for an even briefer spot than his Griselda partners, stays within the same lane. Again, there are no curveballs to speak of, just midtempo muscle memory dressed up in velour.<\/p>\n
Of course, fans of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx know that Raekwon was never about musical stunts\u2014he\u2019s more about coded slang and smoky nostalgia\u2014but that opus had gravity and narrative momentum. It was even a little bit chaotic. The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes is solid enough, and it\u2019ll certainly look great next to your purple tape boxset. But as the title implies, it\u2019s hard not to feel like everyone involved in the album\u2019s making was too polite to admit that a seasoned statesman just wanted to stitch together old duds and hoped that they would still flatter.<\/p>\n
Score:\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0Label: Mass Appeal \u00a0Release Date: July 18, 2025 \u00a0Buy: Amazon<\/a> Since 2001, we’ve brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we\u2019re committed to keeping our content free and accessible\u2014meaning no paywalls or fees.<\/p>\n If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon<\/a> or making a donation<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s something grimly appropriate about Raekwon titling his eighth studio album The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes. Not because the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-7942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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