A fierce farewell: Wu-Tang Clan’s final tour makes stop in Vegas

It’s fight night in Las Vegas, and Raekwon is hyped.

“Popcorn spillin’ all on Liz Claiborne / Ghost had the fly Gucci mocks with no socks on / Seen Deion Sanders in the back with the phat fur on,” he rhymes on “The M.G.M.,” his words delivered with the force of a prizefighter’s fists as he captures the scene during a big boxing card at the titular casino back in the day.

The song is a rapid-fire duet between Rae and his longtime Wu-Tang Clan running mate Ghostface Killah, featured on the group’s 1997 magnum opus, “Wu-Tang Forever.”

Three decades later, the Wu’s Vegas run will come to an end right across the street from said Strip property, when their farewell tour stops at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday.

And what a run it’s been.

One of the greatest hip-hop acts of all time, the Wu hit the scene like an atom bomb with their watershed 1993 debut, “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),” a head-spinning, adrenalized fusion of nine distinct voices, ’70s kung-fu flick samples, Far Eastern mysticism and producer RZA’s equally foreboding and soulful soundscapes.

As far ahead of the curve as they were musically at the time, they were just as forward-thinking business-wise: When they signed to Loud Records as a group, they made sure the contract allowed each member to ink their own individual artist deals with other labels.

This has resulted in dozens of Wu solo albums over the years, some of which the group showcases during its performances.

With Wu-Tang Clan playing Vegas for the final time this weekend, here are five of their finest LPs to bone up on before the show:

GZA, ‘Liquid Swords’

In a 2014 study on the largest vocabularies in hip-hop by data scientist Matt Daniels, Wu-Tang elder statesman GZA ranked second, having employed 6,426 unique words in his first 35,000 lyrics (Aesop Rock topped the list). GZA’s nickname is “The Genius,” and he’s earned it: He’s arguably hip-hop’s greatest-ever autodidact, a known physics obsessive who’s lectured on the subject at New York University and MIT despite having dropped out of high school in 10th grade. His lyrical brilliance shines bright amid the dark sonics of “Liquid Swords,” where the wordplay is sharp as any blade. (“The liquid soluble that made up the chemistry / A gaseous element, that burned down your ministry,” he rhymes on “Duel of the Iron Mic.”) Not only is this the best of the Wu-Tang solo releases, it’s one of the greatest hip-hop albums of the ’90s, period.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard, ‘Return to the 36 Chambers’

It’s fitting that Richard Pryor is sampled at the beginning of Ol Dirty Bastard’s first album: Like that late, great comedian, this late, great MC blurred the line between the poignant and the profane, buttressing puerile humor with dead-serious undertones. What made ODB great wasn’t technical skill — his flow was borderline nonsensical at times, and he’s probably the only rapper to ever rhyme “Midol” with “Lysol” or “Nazi” with “Yahtzee,” as he does here — rather it was his ability to unleash pure chaos on the mic and somehow make it funny and fierce, catchy and compelling, endearing and enraged all at once.

Method Man, ‘Tical’

The debut from M-E-T-H-O-D Man was the inaugural Wu-Tang solo album and remains the top seller of them all, narrowly ahead of its 1998 follow-up, “Tical 2000: Judgement Day.” With his leading-man charisma, omnipresent, Staten Island-wide grin and exuberant yet gravelly flow — at times, it sounds as if someone took a power sander to his vocal chords — Method Man became the Wu’s first crossover star, underscored from the jump here with his hit collab with Mary J. Blige on “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By.” This is the solo album that the Wu tends to revisit the most live, along with …

Raekwon, ‘Only Built 4 Cuban Linx …’

“The Godfather” of Mafioso rap, the scalding, cinematic “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx …” even unfolds like a movie, with Raekwon billed as the star, Ghostface Killah his co-star and RZA the director. Raekwon’s choppy yet intricate flow chronicles underworld capers that hit like the hip-hop equivalent of an Elmore Leonard short story. The album introduced Rae and Ghostface as one of hip-hop’s all-time great tag-team duos. “We connect thoughts,” the former rhymes on album-closer “Heaven & Hell” as he trades lines with Ghost — and this is where that connection was cemented.

Ghostface Killah, ‘Supreme Clientele’

“It makes you want to stab your babysitter.” That’s how comedian Chris Rock once characterized the “Supreme Clientele” listening experience, counting the album among his all-time favorites. (So did Rolling Stone magazine in its 2020 Top 500, ranking it No. 403). Yeah, it’s that grim in places — see: ”Stroke of Death” — Ghostface’s imaginative, inimitable wordplay painting pictures as detailed as crime scene photos while still being wildly poetic. Powered by his bullhorn-loud voice and frenetic, overcaffeinated delivery, Ghostface possesses by far the deepest catalog of Wu solo albums. He’s the best — and this is his best.