A Better Tomorrow should have marked last year’s 20th anniversary of the hip-hop crew’s debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), but intra-Wu relations stymied its release. Friction between top Wu dogs RZA and Raekwon now resolved, the reunited Wu effort sounds a lot better than the bickering suggested. There’s kung-fu fighting and sampled film dialogue, and their old school tag-team roll is present on tracks such as Mistaken Identity, while a sample of the late ODB leads the charge on the emblematic Ruckus in B Minor. Nothing here sounds contemporary, but it’s all accessible, and the likes of Crushed Egos (big shouty chorus, nimble organ-haunted verses) sound as good as back in the day.
