All in all, Iron Flag is the catchiest and most satisfying album since the Wu-Tang Clan’s debut. You can hear the confidence right away – it was only released in December 2001 but the opening track, “In The Hood,” references the Twin Towers pretty boldly. The flex continues on the next track, “Rules,” which insists that 9/11 wouldn’t have even happened if the Wu were in charge of the city. That same sense of defiance also extends to the album title and cover, which features the posses mimicking Joe Rosenthal’s Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.

This confidence percolates through the entire album, which is unique in the Wu’s catalogue. Released only a year after The W, it plays in part as a summary of their three previous albums. RZA returns to the gritty sound of Enter the Wu-Tang on “Radioactive (Four Assassins),” the string-drenched atmospherics of Wu-Tang Forever on the title track and the moodier blaxploitation vibes of The W on “Uzi (Pinky Ring).” RZA is in classicist mode here, taking stock of his greatest moments as a producer before jumping off the deep end with the lavish experimentalism of 8 Diagrams.

Yet Iron Flag is as much a juncture and departure as a retrospective. For one thing, RZA only produces six tracks (including all of the above). The rest are helmed by True Master and Mathematics. They’re both Wu-Tang regulars but unlike RZA they deliberately thwart the group’s typical sound, especially with the submerged piano on True Master’s “Y’all Been Warned” and the sparse funk of Mathematics’ “Rules.”

There are also some big personnel changes here. Ol’ Dirty Bastard is out and Cappadonna only appears fleetingly on a hidden track (apparently he was airbrushed out of the cover photograph). Replacing ODB’s clown persona is Flavor Flav on “Soul Power (Black Jungle)” while Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes also add cameos to the mix. For every classicist sequence that sounds indubitably Wu-Tang, there’s one when the sound grows more expansive – when the collective seems on the verge of modulating into a concept.  

What makes Iron Flag so remarkable, then, is its sheer cohesion. All three of the previous albums were characterised by sprawl in one way or another. Enter the Wu-Tang was an esoteric tapestry that split the difference between songs, fragments and cameos, Wu-Tang Forever was a double album (and you really felt it on the second disc) and even the brevity of The W was offset by a series of skits and interludes that are entirely absent here. Instead, Iron Flag is confident in its ability to pull back from grandiosity, resulting in the leanest album in the Wu’s entire catalogue.  

For all that the collective is dispersing, this honed precision evokes a core of brotherhood that’s arguably even more affecting than anything on the second and third albums, especially since the Wu tone down the Five Percent Brotherhood stuff, which makes it all feel more inclusive too. It doesn’t hurt, either, that several of the key members were reaching the top of the game in 2001, especially Ghostface Killah, who had just released Supreme Clientele.

The second half might drag at times but still, Iron Flag reminds me a bit of The Blueprint – not so much in its sound as its general slickness, the confidence in production, vision and flow. I think of driving hip-hop as a West Coast phenomenon, an LA-centric outlook, but “Chrome Wheels” is as good as anything from Dr. Dre or Tupac in its pure ecstatic automotive flow. A pivotal album between classic and late Wu-Tang, one of their most rewarding, expansive and focused statements.