Wu-Tang Clan, The Dream, Beanie Sigel and Gorillaz.

the music press

tue 12/11/2007

A collage of Wu-Tang Clan, The Dream, Beanie Sigel and Gorillaz.

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Legendary rap group Wu-Tang Clan returns with 8 Diagrams, a "terrific mix of classic Clan grime and enough new tricks to justify Inspectah Deck's claim that 'Wu-Tang keep it fresh like Tupperware,'" says Rolling Stone. England's The Guardian concludes that 8 Diagrams is “alternately great, unsatisfying and marked by the sense that not everyone in the Wu Tang Clan is pulling in the same direction.”
Atlanta singer-songwriter The Dream, who wrote two of this year's biggest hits – Rihanna's Umbrella and J.Holiday's Bed – debuts with LoveHate. According to Billboard.com, “the same elements that made ["Umbrella" and "Bed"] such irresistible hits are what make this singer-songwriter's debut so impressive: lingering melodies, plenty of 'ehs' and even a few 'ellas.'" Seattle's KSTW TV calls it a “solid effort," predicting it "will most likely see … mainstream success.”
Philadelphia's Beanie Sigel is back with his fourth studio album, The Solution. Nobody Smiling laments that the album “is a mixed bag of successful and ineffectual experiments for Beans” but adds that “there’s enough hard-body (hardcore) gun and shank bravado to satisfy the illest of thugs.” Defsounds.com says it's good but not great: “[A]s much as fans will get the urge to call this a classic, that title can never be given to this album release.”
Virtual band Gorillaz release a collection of outakes, demos and remixes titled D-Sides. Popmatters is pleasantly surprised at “how this set of song sketches and rejected ideas not only rivals its parent album… in terms of quality, but, in many ways, it absolutely surpasses it.” The standout tracks “are distinctive enough to make D-Sides more than just a collection of table scraps,” writes The Onion's A.V. Club.