The decision to give a hip-hop album, namely Genius/GZA's 1995 masterpiece Liquid Swords, the Don't Look Back treatment raises an interesting question: how will a concept that involves faithfully re-creating a classic album fare in the field of live hip-hop, where rappers struggle to faithfully re-create a single song? The answer comes within minutes: it won't.

Once described by Chris Rock as "the Songs in the Key of Life of rap" (although Songs in the Key of Lurking Death would be more apposite), Liquid Swords was the most intricate, ominous and chilling album to emerge from the ranks of the Wu-Tang Clan during their mid-90s glory days. Its power resides in its subtlety, but that was the first casualty of the predictably dire sound quality. Every line was bellowed, every sample muffled, every beat bullyingly loud.

Thus the imposingly gothic Gold lost its horror-movie choir and grinding, homicidal synths, while the comfortless soul chorus of Cold World was recreated with all the stealth and sensitivity of a football chant.

As a rap show, it was solid enough, beefed up by sidemen Killah Priest and Dreddy Krueger and a closing medley of Wu-Tang hits, but it was sold as something much more than that. GZA, a likably unpretentious MC in a plain black hoodie, was keen to assert his everyman credentials: "Fuck all that celebrity shit. I'm just like you." But that is the problem. The man who loomed so compellingly out of Liquid Swords' shadows 12 years ago wasn't like us at all.