Nuthing ta F’ wit: Wu-Tang Clan’s greatest albums – ranked!

As hip-hop’s greatest group announce their final tour, we pick out the best of their LPs – from solo albums to a history-making, gamechanging debut. No longer ‘forever’? Wu-Tang Clan hint at breakup. Method Man’s second album is preposterously long, hopelessly uneven and features nine skits (one featuring a guest appearance by – uh-oh – Donald Trump). But make a playlist of the best 12 tracks – including Dangerous Grounds, Judgement Day and Break Ups 2 Make Ups – and you’ve got a minor classic.

As chaotic and scattered as its author’s life had become by the time of its release, Nigga Please is the kind of album that requires the listener to let go and submit to its bizarre internal logic: garbled off-rhythm rhymes and jarring sonic leaps from taut Neptunes productions to grimy RZA-isms and more. It’s a mess, but it’s never boring.

Teaming up with underground Boston duo 7L & Esoteric seemed to reinvigorate Inspectah Deck after years of diminishing solo returns. They deal in understated (and audibly RZA-influenced) boom-bap beats and richly entertaining battle rapping, while Method Man and GZA turn in superb guest verses. Nothing unexpected, but preposterously good, dirty fun nonetheless.

Released to a muted response – and currently unavailable on streaming – RZA’s left-turn into a keyboard-based and less sample-heavy production style deserves reconsideration. The concept makes no sense and the lyrics of Domestic Violence are indefensible, but its highlights shine very brightly indeed: the slinky Love Jones and My Lovin’ Is Digi, plus the killer NYC Everything, featuring Method Man.

If Masta Killa had released his solo debut in the mid-90s, it might have been acclaimed among the great Wu-Tang masterpieces. A decade on, the main criticism was that it was old-fashioned. That is not strictly true – see the synthy, dancefloor-focused Digi Warfare – but when it’s defiantly retro, it’s high-quality retro: pared-down RZA production underneath skilled and urgent rhymes.

Devotees of the stoner movie How High might disagree, but the Meth-Redman partnership never functioned better than on their collaborative debut. Rugged, straight-ahead beats, ultra-aggressive rhymes, a plethora of lyrical references to old school hip-hop – EPMD, LL Cool J, MC Shan, Run DMC – and the sense of two artists meeting at the top of their game.

The first Wu Tang solo album without an appearance from another member, but no matter: this is an underrated masterpiece, thick with lush, emotive soul samples (Holla is basically the Delfonics’ La La Means I Love You with Ghostface rapping over the whole thing, vocals and all) and abundant on-point rhymes.

Stripped back compared with its 27-track predecessor, The W still could have used a nip and tuck. That said, there is far more good than bad, and when it’s good – Do You Really (Thang Thang), Let My Niggas Live – it’s startlingly intense. Also, the relatively poppy Gravel Pit was the last truly incredible Wu-Tang Clan single.

Ghostface seemed willing to share the limelight here – he isn’t even on Assassination Day – but Ironman feels like a project distinct from contemporary Wu-Tang releases. The sound is dominated by 70s soul (Motherless Child presages Kanye West’s early “chipmunk” productions) and the lyrics consistently lash out.

Most sequel albums smack of desperation: an artist frantically trying to regain the form that made them special. But the sequel to one of the greatest Wu-Tang albums doesn’t shame the original. Its return to the crime empire saga is dazzling in scope, its production so strong that Dr Dre’s tracks are the weak link.

“Weak MCs – take me to your leader!” Overshadowed by his better-know bandmates, his debut solo album – thick with freestyle interludes – fully revealed Inspectah Deck as an intricately skilled rapper who blended underworld storytelling with a homespun philosophical bent. The guests are largely drawn from Wu-Tang’s fringes and the music – frequently Deck’s own work – slaps throughout.

You wouldn’t expect an album that, at heart, consists of kvetching about the music business to be so captivating. But RZA and Prince Paul’s Gravediggaz project turned their dissatisfaction into a series of lurid blackly comic slasher-flick metaphors set to dark, minor-chord soundscapes, helping to birth horrorcore in the process.

The epitome of late 90s hip-hop grandiloquence? Maybe. Wu-Tang Forever lasts more than two hours. Nobody is good enough to maintain your interest for that long – you could live without ODB’s dispiritingly titled Dog Shit – but Wu-Tang Forever is surprisingly focused, socially conscious, cinematic and worth revisiting (time permitting).

By far the most consistent member of Wu-Tang, Ghostface was making fantastic albums long after his bandmates’ quality control had slipped. There is nothing original about Fishscale’s crack dealer concept, but from J Dilla’s and MF Doom’s beats to the sophistication of the storytelling, the execution is magnificent.