Music - What happened to the one-hit wonders of the noughties?

Wu-Tang Clan - Wu-Tang Forever
Then : A year after Dr. Dre rewrote the blueprint for West Coast rap with 1992's The Chronic, Wu-Tang Clan did the same for New York hip hop with their still-revered debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Adored for

RZA 's gritty, atmospheric production and the huge cast of talented MCs who rhymed over his beats, it became an overnight classic. Follow-up Wu-Tang Forever, released four years later in 1997, was no less ambitious: a double album with a running time of 1 hour and 48 minutes (and a lengthy, six-minute lead single, Triumph, that didn't even have a chorus). It won a Grammy the following year, to add to the initial excitement its release provoked.

What changed: "Reunited, double LP, word excited!" ran the opening lines of Wu-Tang Forever's first song proper, Reunited. But it's a hardy soul who isn't slightly intimidated by the prospect of a two-disc album that's nearly two-hours long, and sprawling records split over separate CDs rarely stay either on rotation or in your memory for too long, no matter how strong the highlights. It was an exhausting album, as GZA seemed to realise on As High as Wu-Tang Get: "Yo, too many songs...

Make it brief, son, half short and twice strong." Also, Wu fatigue wasn't helped by the (admittedly fine) run of solo albums that members released in the years leading up to Wu-Tang Forever. In the four years between 36 Chambers and its follow-up, there'd been Method Man 's Tical, Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, GZA's Liquid Swords and Ghostface Killah's Ironman.

NB: Some info extracted from BBC