Well it happened, it's been many listens, several years, and an honest complete lack of faith in it ever changing, but change it has. I've finally clicked with this album at long last. And it's not the kind of click where I'm "oh geez! Why didn't I see it before duh!", it's the kind of click that was hard fought and leaves me knowing just how difficult an album this was to work out. It remains a tough listen and one that I don't blame people for giving up on as I did, not that this changes my grade or recommendation. After all I don't sit well with the idea of punishing an album for being hard to enjoy, so long as it is actually rewarding to struggle over. It sort of highlights the inevitable subjectivity in music brought on by our personal experiences and even personal surroundings, some people get this right away, others fight with it, and because it's the successor to perhaps the most beloved rap album of all those diverging results become all that more radicalized. Those who want and try to hear it like Enter the Wu Tang will fail and be bitter, like me. It's not that album, at all, and it's not any of the solo releases seen between. It's not an immaculate studio project like Liquid Swords, overseen pitch perfect by RZA. It's messy and raw, and no, it doesn't fall into de-facto immaculateness like Enter. It IS messy and raw and shows with every twist, I mean double albums are by nature going to rarely be shimmering airtight works, but the very fabric of Forever ripples with an almost mixtape like feel. 100 degrees of energy is filed into this, but the result is left frayed and more simplistic then it could be. The trick is learning to love this almost primordial Wu ooze, it takes a deep real appreciation of bare bones hip hop that makes it an 80's throwback in spirit, these beats don't get by on bells or whistles, there are few hooks to speak of (and the few there is aren't very memorable), the thump of the drums and the polyrythym is your friend, if you do know how to love just the thump and polyrhythm. It's advanced stuff, for those either naturally well versed in hip-hop or those who have gained that insight and have the patience to put aside the unavoidable preconceptions that ride in with a sophomore album of this sort. When you do, it's a huge messy self-indulgent monolith of pure rap music that you will want to get diabetes from ingesting like the fat kid in us all.
By: Zephos