RZA, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Method Man, GZA, Masta Killa, U-God, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck
9 November 1993 | Loud | 58 minutes
IN HISTORY
It’s November 1993. It’s a Tuesday and the temperature’s a bit cold, about 52°F around noon. The streets of New York City are buzzing, like they always are, but if you look closer you’ll see two different energies sprawling.
On one hand, the shiny jazz rap from A Tribe Called Quest just started irrigating every corner. This Tuesday, Midnight Marauders has been released. On the other hand, gangsta rap is all over, coming straight from the West Coast since N.W.A. released their groundbreaking debut Straight Outta Compton in 1988. Since then, it hasn’t stopped.
But a few blocks way,justacrossthe Hudson River in StatenIsland,something elseishappening. Theyall grewup in differentparts of the city, and nowit’sbeen a few monthssincethey’reworkingtogether,recordingsongsin a shittystudio.
They all know each other, some are friends, some others are family, but when you look at them it’s impossible to say which one is closer to whom ; just one big family. They go by the names of Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, known as Prince Rakeem (soon to be The RZA), Russell Tyrone Jones aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard (ODB), Gary Grice who prefers to be called The Genius (GZA), Clifford Smith (The Method Man), Corey Woods (Raekwon), Dennis Coles (Ghostface Killah), Eglin Turner (Masta Killa), Jason Hunter (Rebel INS, later known as Inspectah Deck) and Lamont Hawkins (U-God).
It’s 52 outside but the weather’s about to bit a whole lot colder, because this family just released their first LP. And it’s calledEnter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers ).
ENTER THE FAMILY
« This is not just another rap album with gangsta themes and gun smoke. [It’s] the manifestation of classic kung-fu type styles infected with the realities of ghetto life/death and strong, old school b-boy memories. »
In February 1994, the Ghetto Communicator explains in The Source how Enter the Wu-Tang is taking everything that made the Golden Era what it was in the 80s and turned its « incredibly hard, chest-pounding beats » into a dark and red-blooded matter.
Before the album’s release, people were already warned. The first single came out a year ago, featuring verses from the entire family (except Masta Killa who wasn’t officialy part of the Wu). Protect Ya Neck was all about demonstrating each MC’s power over a James Brown sample. All of a sudden, the boundaries of hip-hop reached disproportionate dimensions.
With its shouted ad-libs and choruses (« Clan in da front, let your feet stomp / Niggas on the left, brag shit to death / Hoods on the right, wild for the night / Punks in the back, c’mon and attract to what »), Enter the Wu-Tang felt way more than an invitation to join, it was a raw anthem finally putting words and beats on many stories left unheard.
FROM THE DARK
Mafia Assassination Attempt on ‘Fat Pete’ Chiodo Goes Awry, 1991, Staten Island, New York City, USA
« This record is harsh, but so is the world that we live in. For B-boys n’girls who come from the core of the hard, this is the hip-hop album you’ve been waiting for. »
The Ghetto Communicator, 1994
Sometimes compared to Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal Minded, Enter the Wu-Tang refuses easy beauty. Even on the most gangsta albums from the West Coast, you never meet such a minimalist and bare sound. RZA’s production realizes a tour-de-force. On some songs, the beat becomes almost unnoticeable and the raw dopeness only comes from the destructive flows from ODB, Ghostface and Raekwon. Your ears capture the words, the aggressivity and the wit while, somewhere, in the back of your head, RZA’s beats are working hard on your brain to turn it into a rave.
Because if each member grew up on different sides of the city, they all share common experiences. You won’t easily find reviews stating that Enter the Wu-Tang is a political album. Yet, everything about it is political. For an hour we enter a perspective. It’s 1993, cold outside and we walk the streets looking at what they look, hearing what they hear. It’s a grim horizon, but when you’re a family, the dark becomes your playground.
KUNG FU THEORY
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) by Liu Chia-liang
Punctuated by Kung-Fu flicks’ samples, Enter the Wu-Tang didn’t paved the way for the meeting between hip-hop and martial arts, it highlighted something that was already there. In the late seventies, movies like Five Deadly Venoms and Shaolin v. Wu-Tang were released in theaters. RZA saw a lot of them, and immediately fell in love. Behind the impressive fight scenes, the discipline and its non-Western point of view, there was something else in here resonating with the hip-hop culture : a feeling of unity.
In Kung-Fu movies, « a marginalized character or group has an injustice done to them by a powerful ruler or group. To get revenge, the marginalized use their anger, determination, and martial arts to dethrone […] the powerful ruler or group. This postcolonial understanding was so common that in many Black households, a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. Could often be found hanging near a poster of Bruce Lee » [1]. On Protect Ya Neck, GZA raps against his older label that betrayed him, stating that now they are broke because they misused his talent. On this song, GZA uses family as a power of unity to fight a common enemy, here the music industry : hip-hop done in the Shaolin style.
STORIES WE TELL
RZA said his fantasy was to create a « one-hour movie that people were just going to listen to » [2]. That’s exactly what happens when you listen to ODB on Shame on a Nigga : « Murder, taste the flame of the Wu-Tang / Rah! Here comes the Tiger vs. Crane / I’ll be like wild with my style / Punk – you play me, chump, you get jumped / Wu! Is coming through at a theater near you. »
Ultimately, Enter the Wu-Tang became a monument because of how honest the MCs were about their life. On CREAM, Can It All Be So Simple and Tearz, each of them recount experiences they had. They talk about childhood, violent neighborhoods, alcoholic fathers, about the crimes you had to commit if you wanted to make it out in one piece. And even with fictional stories, such as the death of RZA’s brother on Tearz , the Wu manages to paint reality.
« I guess a lot of people in ya / I guess they can feel the realness you / They could feel the vibe / And I think hip hop, that’s what I be tellin a lot of people / A lot of record promoters and a lot of artists / I mean it’s like, it’s music you gotta touch and feel ». On the outro Conclusion, an unnamed interviewer summarizes the experience.
FOCUS 1 : VISUALS - CAN IT BE ALL SO SIMPLE
Over a sample from Gladys Knight & The Pips’ The Way We Were, this is the first time in the album that Raekwon and Ghostface address their younger years. The music video begins with slow camera moves showing today’s streets plunged in the dark, with a bunch of seemingly threatening silhouettes hanging around.
And as soon as RZA’s production becomes smooth, tender images from the past arise, confronting the MC’s (here Raekwon) with what could be their former selves. But even if the song is filled with nostalgia, the lyrics are very down-to-earth. Raekwon remembers when he was « ignorant and mad young, wanted to be the one / ‘Til I got Blaow! Blaow! Blaow! ». A few shots are showing Raekwon performing in front of a simple store on a parking lot with his friends. Nothing fancy, just their neighborhood.
That’s what makes this music video so special. It’s made without any artifice. And you don’t need any if you want to bond over common experiences such as childhood traumas.
FOCUS 2 : LYRICS - C.R.E.A.M (CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME)
“I grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side
Stayin' alive was no jive ”
This is probably one of the most famous lines in any hip-hop albums. All of a sudden, Raekwon plunges us into his life when he was a kid. The change of perspective is immediate. People who are used to reading the New York Times and passively looking at photographs of the crack epidemic in Staten Island’s Park Hill are finally travelling behind the curtain.
But here Raekwon’s world isn’t called Park Hill, it’s « Shaolin land ». Like RZA, movie theaters became for Raekwon the perfect escape out of the New York Times’ pages. And from the movies was born a fantasy : to master martial arts, and if not with his fists, he surely could do it with his words and spirit.
But beyond the fantasy lies reality. With « a young youth, rockin’ the gold tooth, ‘Lo goose / Only way I begin the G off was drug loot ». Just a few words and you understand why selling drugs was the only way to earn a livin’ in this neighborhood.
But when you hear Raekwon’s rapping, he’s now far from that dreadful past (or so it seems). And here we are, facing a man’s past and present at the same time, understanding in the blink of an eye how a man whose world promised him nothing became one of the most talented artist of his generation, and beyond.
THEIR LEGACY
Commercially, publicly, critically, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) will forever have a seat at the Pantheon of music. Its almost never-before-seen dark sound opened the door for newcomers such as Mobb Deep and The Notorious BIG. Even later, ASAP Mob, Odd Future and others can all call themselves disciples of the Wu-Tang Family.
And whether we’re talking about GZA, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah or the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard, they all have released groundbreaking solo records – most of them masterfully produced by the one and only RZA – that keep influencing hip hop as a music scene and as a culture.
Touring with Nas around the world to celebrate the 5O years of hip hop in 2023, the Wu-Tang Clan keep their legacy as vibrant as their music was back in the nineties so the family and their memories never die.
[1] Michael Blum, The Wu-Tang Clan and Cultural Resistance, 2021
[2] RZA interview by Jason Gross in Film Comment, 2008
[2] RZA interview by Jason Gross in Film Comment, 2008