Dirty's home in hip-hop was the Wu-Tang Clan, where--commercially speaking--NGE doctrine was part of the package, part of the plan. His cousin and fellow Five Percenter the RZA masterminded it on brooding solo walks around Staten Island, N.Y.: In order to conquer the world, Wu-Tang would have to be a world. Nine killer MCs pickled in late-night kung fu flicks, chess lore, Marvel comics, street life, weed cabbalism, and NGE slang eschatology--a hip-hop Middle Earth, with its own legends and grades of being. No other crew could match the sorcerous allure, the smoky Dungeons & Dragons vibe curling off those minimal Wu-Tang beats. "I lived in at least ten different projects," wrote RZA in The Wu-Tang Manual, "and I got to see that the projects are a science project, in the same way that a prison is a science project. ... And in comics, when a science project goes wrong, it produces monsters. Or superheroes."This, to me, was what was so great about the Wu. They created another universe, another mythology and then inserted themselves as characters. I think Only Built 4 Cuban Linx is the zenith of that ideal. For some reason, whenever I listen to that join, all I can think about is The Odyssey--it has this incredibly epic, sprawling, fantastical feel. And it's all layered to standard thug, urban, crack era shit. Think about a line "The first branch, the third leaf,Whoever want it, got beef\I politic, show love, crush those who dare creep..." It almost sounds like a spell, like an summoning or something.
This will not sound right--but Wu-Tang, to me, was what I always understood black geekdom to be. Karate flicks, Comic Books (but what about the Wonder Woman bracelet), cartoons (form like Voltron), wrestling (My style broke muthafuckin backs like Ken Patera) etc. They took all of that and then filtered through New York, and through the lense of urban black America, at large. It was a great time. If I'm lucky, one day I hope to write something that moves like Cuban Linx. One day--probably when we're all dead--that album will have its place in the Western canon.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
TNC, if you love that aspect of the Wu-Tang Clan, you would love the disturbing dystopian machine vision of Cannibal Ox ("The Cold Vein"). Not exactly the same, but comparable.
Still waiting for the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired rappers...
Thanks for sharing this. Hip hop is almost 100% impenetrable to me- my first barrier is that I can't make out the words, most of the time- the video transcript,for me:
mumblemumble yo yo mumblemumble yo yo mumblemumble word up mumblemumble nigger mumblemumble yo
This makes me realize that hip hop may not, in fact, consist of half the words being "nigger", "bitch", "yo", and "pussy"- it's just that those are the only words I can make out. And faced with that, why would I be interested? (not being from a social sphere where it was popular). But you give me a door- first off, a little translation, second, an interpretation, but most importantly, a recommendation that this bit might be worth my time. That's exactly what I need to form an appreciation.
So I know you think comments about how people don't like hip-hop are boring (sorry)- I just wanted to thank you for being a hip hop ambassador, it makes my world bigger and more interesting.
B&R,
I don't resent comments from people who don't listen to hip-hop. I resent comments from people who don't listen to hip-hop, and use that as a jumping off point to say the music is trash. Your point about it being unintelligible makes sense. half the stuff is in code, almost. At least the best half.
Bread and Roses,
I would get Wu's 36 Chambers before jumping right in with Cuban Linx. Just a thought...
Damn. You nailed what it was about.
Coming of age through those albums altered the way we thought about rap records, about our friends and cliques, about educating ourselves and reveling in the esoteric and obscure. They inspired new disciplines in some of us and were the best soundtracks to half-reading a sci-fi novel while blunted and riding the train that one could hope for. I was 16 when Enter The Wu-Tang dropped, 19 when Ironman effectively finished the saga. 5 albums, 3 years. Some day I hope they'll package it that way.
It's almost impossible to argue that anything in the canon is better than ...Cuban Links, but Liquid Swords is a close 2nd; moreover, each release (yes, including Tical) had its role. We were all influenced by that, the way to form installments in an epic narrative that, while it might've just concerned your crew, seemed to reach far into the territory of fantasy and spirituality the likes of which we had only experienced through film and literature before.
As a New Yorker, this line always stood out to me:
"Yo, africans denyin niggaz up in yellow cabs
Musty like funk, wavin they arms, the arabs"
Man...i just love these posts!! Btw, TNC, have you checked out afro-samurai?
The line that always got me was:
Stay tuned, word up, I hope to see you in June/
By the way, I seen your bitch, she was up in this cat's room/
Skeyed up, weed the fuck up, to top it off look beat up/
with two crack fiends huggin your seed up
The image those lines paint of "two crack fiends huggin your seed [child] up" is just so powerfully revolting to me, especially now that I got kids.
Ditto on the cab line. Man that record just is New York City summer 1995. Everything about it.
"Claiming New York was ancient Babylon/
Where the sky stays the color of gray like heron." (sic)
Not to expand this talk but to me Nas and the Wu went hand in hand back in those days. in a lot of ways Wu were the ones that made you imagine and nas was the one that made you really think. I still rememmber some of the best lines from "verbal intercourse" when nas and raekwon and ghostface went back and forth, classics!
Nas verse
Through the lights cameras and action, glamour glitters and gold
I unfold the scroll, plant seeds to stampede the globe
When Im deceased, by then the beast arise like yeast
To conquer peace leaving savages to roam in the streets
Live on the run, police paying me to give in my gun
Trick my wisdom, with the system that imprisoned my son
Smoke a gold leaf I hold heat, nonchalantly
Im grungy, but things I do is real it never haunts me
While, funny style niggaz roll in the pile
Rooster heads profile on a bus to rikers isle
Holdin weed inside they pussy with they minds on the
Pretty things in life, props is a true thugs wife
Its like a cycle, niggaz come home, somell go in
Do a bullet, come back, do the same shit again
From the womb to the tomb, presume the unpredictable
Guns salute life, rapidly, thats the ritual
Verse two: raekwon the chef
Perhaps bullets bust niggaz discuss mad money
True lies and white guys, we can see it through the eyes
Catch the most on tape, kilos disintegrate
Pyrex pots, we break, fiends lickin plates
In the building niggaz building, like little children starin
Them older niggaz aint carin
Sirens circlin fiends are lurkin in your baggage
Oh, ones gone now, what, smack him in his cabbage
In the woodwork, crack cells bubble like woolworths
In the projects, richest niggaz rockin all the real worth
Police questioning, rooftop cats invested in
Tradin in they lexus gss sendin messages
Two and two makes four, cristals crazily pour
Gun wars my crew phantom like swords
also How could i forget the beats!! the beats that got into you and made you just relax while puffing a L. God I miss those days
Love Linx, but curious why you'd place it over Liquid Swords, which to me is steeped a bit more in the mythology, chess, comics stuff that is uniquely Wu than the former, which -- though fantastic -- is has a bit more of the standard gangsta stuff. & c'mon, Ghostface on 4th Chamber, Life of a Drug Dealer
Raekwon on The American Dream
"All I want is my house, my gat,
my Ac and bank account fat.
It's going down like that."
[QUOTE Your point about it being unintelligible makes sense. half the stuff is in code, almost. At least the best half.[/QUOTE]
And that has always made sense to me- like punk, it's music for an in-group that's hostile to the outside, and creating your own private language is a great way to solidify your group and exclude outsiders. I wonder if that's another source of the hostility towards hip hop- we who are excluded don't like that (nobody does), so there's this sour grapes- "I'm GLAD you won't let me into your club, 'cause your club is all trash anyhow (even though I wouldn't know 'cause I can't get in)".
This isn't even really tangentially related, but I was wondering if anyone has done a "Culture of Honor" analysis of urban violence like Outliers recently (and other well before) did for Appalachia.
I'm not getting far with an initial search...
Those Wu joints are THE pinnacle of "nerd" rap. You got folks like MF Doom & the like but they can't hold a candle.
Thanks, this post just made my day. I can almost taste what it felt like back then in those pre-Giuliani days. I was 16, had the Wu, the Pharcyde, the LES wasn't filled with douchebags, and subway tokens were $1.25.
@ bread & roses:
Yeah, but the thing is, the music and the language don't exclude you: you exclude yourself (not you personally, the imaginary audience). That's the way any art form, at least any avant-garde art form, works; it says "here's a new way music, or painting, or language, can be - are you going to follow me there?" Wu Tang took the willing a long way down one particular very twisty road.
the LES wasn't filled with douchebags
Instead, it was filled with dime bags.
Beautiful, plump dime bags.
Ravioli bags, even.
wait... what's NGE stand for here?
@FosterKid, two great comments.
I dunno... maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see Wu as being "geeky." I mean, the stuff they talk about seems more nostalgic than nerdy. Were young boys really ashamed to be into comic books, superheroes and karate flix? Not where I'm from.
The Nation of the Gods and the Earths. Better known as Fiver Percenters.
An Ange. Where I'm from young boys weren't, either. That's the point.
The 36 Chambers was so groundbreaking I would have to put it above Cuban Linx, which is a clear #2 followed by Ironman, Liquid Swords and Fishscale in no particular order. Their ability to throw so many flavors into the pot produced such a delicious sound. If EP's slurred lisp and PMD's smooth delivery could be likened to an amazing plate of steak and potatoes, the Wu produced a 15 ourse tasting menu with a wine supplement.
Between the different styles and the ability to create this comic book/wresting/kung fu/chess/cartoon world inside of the gritty NY landscape, is why they are the greatest ever (the most recent album notwithstanding).
@zak- I hear ya- but it would have been harder for me than for T-NC, for example, because I never had the baseline of any of the words. Nobody in my social circle has ever said "word up" in my presence. Without Google and urban dictionary to gain a toehold, (not available in the day) I start far behind, just as those with no art background miss a lot of the specifically art-world references and arguments of any avant-garde art. T-NC makes me INTERESTED in gaining that toehold, which I love.
That article is great.
"Wu-Tang, to me, was what I always understood black geekdom to be."
White geekdom too, believe me. I know whereof I speak.
Ange,
I guess that's why it's geekdom instead of spaz-dom or freak-dom or dweeb-dom or dorkitude or other more specifically outcast categories.
Thank for this post, Ta-Nehisi. I was always a rock kid growing up, mostly because of my dad's impeccable British Invasion influence, but we always had a ton of motown around the house too. It wasn't until I heard "clan in da front" that I felt like hip-hop opened up as a possible musical world for me. It was the lyricism -- I'm a word guy and should've figured it out looong before that particular record, but the verses are on "clan in da front" blew. me. away. It had never occurred to me to expect a Geraldine Ferraro reference in anything remotely approaching pop music, much less worked into a punning riff on Ella Fitzgerald, etc. Once I figured out these guys were word guys, too, playing with language in such a verbally confident way, then it all made sense. I still get a huge goofy smile whenever i hear that track. The intro serves as a summoning and then "the wu is coming through, the outcome is critical..." and the rest is history.
Oops, forgot to add: as a D&D kid, the fact that these guys created a whole mythos and world to then inhabit (as you observe) made it all the freakin cooler for me to unpack. Great point.
God body beliefs just lent themselves to superhero shit. I mean, Lord Jamar said it: "master of civilization, god of the universe..."
It must be said though, The Wu knew how to disguise the 5% rhetoric by cloaking it in the mythology that white kids also could relate to. I recall getting into a heated argument with a friend of mine over my Brand Nubian and Lench Mob fandom, there were definitely white kids who were NOT down to hear that grafted devil business on a record.
I will never understand how Cuban Linx can get more love around here than Liquid Swords. GZA has chunks of Raekwon in his stool.
I want to echo B&R a little. I'm a music head & i do academic work on older forms of popular music, mostly but not exclusively African American developed & nurtured traditions: blues, soul, R&b, swamp pop, etc. I've avoided trying to work on hip hop because I think that the immersion that i'd need in order to do anything worthwhile, even to just not repeat obvious points made better elsewhere, would take more time than i could commit to. Part of that is that I didn't grow up with it really, coming of age as a punk rocker in the 1980s south.
the other thing tho is that it is culturally dense and, because of its continued relevance, demonstrated in a thousand ways, not the least of which is the content of these threads, the stakes are high. so maybe folks like B& R, & Me are excluding ourselves, but there are elements in the music and its cultural encoding that make that a reasonable choice.
which is why I love the music threads on this blog: much more culturally grounded than alot of discussions of music per se, & offering an entry way to somebody like me who's intellectual appreciation of the importance of hip hop isn't at all matched by any knowledge of where to find what in the music. I've read lots of critics takes on Wu Tang, because I could tell that they were important, and that there was something there, whether it pulled me in as a listener or not. but I've gotten more about what to listen for, where the plesures and the intricacies are, form Coates' article and this thread than from any of that.
Which is a long winded way fo saying thanks, y'all.
“Karate flicks, Comic Books (but what about the Wonder Woman bracelet), cartoons (form like Voltron), wrestling,”
T-N C, I know that you know details count in geekdom, so I have to point you back to Parker’s post and note that he refers to “kung fu flics” – Bruce Lee, Gordon Lui, Shaolin, Wu Tang, the Five Deadly Venoms, etc – and not “karate flics” – Sonny Chiba, then who?*
And on that note, fans should rent and Fanatics must buy the recently, re-mastered and re-released 36th Chamber of Shaolin (aka Master Killer) put out by Dragon Dynasty. The DVD boasts a pretty enjoyable commentary track featuring film scholar Andy Klein and…The RZA. (It all ties back)
In some ways their commentary is like this blog, people bringing their backgrounds, experience and points of view to a conversation, and, ideally, getting more out the exchange than they brought to it.
(* Am I petty to point this out? Perhaps. Maybe I'm still a little miffed about finishing my mission statement and going to post it just when you shut the thread down. That said, mine didn’t hold a candle to Romulus’ pure po-mo goodness.)
I agree with some of the others that Lighid Swordz is superior to Linx, and I also think it's a better example of the Wu mythology (starting with the cover-art). It even has what is in my opinion, Meth's best rhyme (Shadowboxin), and what may be (again in my opinion) the best rhyme in the history of rhyming, RZA on 4th Chamber:
"camoflouge chameleon, ninjas scalin your buildin
No time to grab the gun they already got your wife and children,
A hit was sent, from the President, to rage your residence
Because you had secret evidence, and documents
On how they raped the continents..."
--
As for ODB, I'll never forget meeting him on Jamaica Ave when I was in college. Pulls up in a Range Rover with no plates, but with a raggedy piece of cardboard with a plate number stuck in the rear window, to talk to a crowd of teenage girls . Found out he was arrested in the same truck the next day with a few vials of crack.
Poor ODB, he should've slowed down.
Why not write it as a story, or team up with an artist you like to make a Graphic Novel? I've never seen you on the mic, but I know you've got the writing chops to put together a killer West Baltimore superhero tale.
Liquid Swords and Only Built For Cuban Linx are pretty difficult to rate over one another. They're part of the same story. Summer and winter. Season 2 and Season 4.
I'd say that Liquid Swords is better lyrically, but the RZA's production on Cuban Linx is what really puts that album over the top.
"Nine killer MCs pickled in late-night kung fu flicks, chess lore, Marvel comics, street life, weed cabbalism, and NGE slang eschatology--a hip-hop Middle Earth, with its own legends and grades of being. No other crew could match the sorcerous allure, the smoky Dungeons & Dragons vibe curling off those minimal Wu-Tang beats."
This is just about the strangest, most wonderful sentence I've read in awhile. And I don't even know what the hell it's about.
Just to second an opinion...if anybody who's interested enough in this stuff to read these posts DOESN'T have the "Dragon Dynasty" version of "36 Chambers,"...what are you waiting for? Go get some. RZA is freakishly knowledgeable about Lau Kar Leung movies. During the commentary track, he keeps pointing out who actors in the background are and reciting their resumes. The movie's not bad either...
"Cuban Linx" is awesome, but I'm more of a "Liquid Swords" guy myself.
A friend of mine saw the Wu Tang Clam perform at some kind of Comic Book convention one time. So yeah, they are nerd rap. "Formin' like Voltron" and such. God Bless 'em.
All these mentions of Wu albums and no one brings up Supreme Clientele? I'd put it as the fourth best Wu album after their debut, Liquid Swords, and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. It's got some of Ghostface's best tracks ("One," "Apollo Kids," and "Malcolm"), and it's probably the best produced outside of "Liquid Swords."
My favorite Lyrical song from Wu has to be animal-planet on the legend of liquid sword, I don't think its produced by RZA, but please read the comparison of a Jungle to a Metropolis. This should be in textbooks in 50 years.
Welcome to the Jungle where the cat loves to scratch
The rat squeals
And the polar bear feasts on the blubber of seals
The pack of wolves be scheming on a bunch of gazelles
Where the leopards grab the wildebeest down by it's tail
You see the chimps they grow hemp they hustle and sling in trees
Elephants for security that move tons of leaves
The bluebirds arrest parrots that love to talk
or eagles that stalk fresh-water trout under the wing of the hawk
You see the vultures pick the pocket of whatever remain
In the brain we watch but a shadow of the lion's mane
Whose roar is loud enough to take the stripes from a zebra
He camouflage his bets and his spots of a cheetah
Shouldn't gamble with a cheetah and not expect to get beat
You silly goose you know he move fast on his feet
Now you're neck deep in depth with a bunch of lone sharks
So you move on a colony of ants with aardvarks, you see
Most of the everglades controlled by the gators
It was crashed by the crocs who came years later
See the locusts had swarmed with the bees
the tick moved with the fleas
The dragonflies and the wasps shared with the seas
The crab and the leeches sucked your blood flow
And they laugh like hyenas when they out to catch dough
See a million mosquitos from the West now
Carrying the virus that made the boars less wild
It's like the jungle sometimes
[GZA]
Out of fear of the deer watch for the eye of the tiger
The Clutch from the Cobra and the venomous viper
Boa-constrictors that cut your circulation
Mosts of their prayers die from broke bones and suffocation
The owls are private eyes that watch from the bark
Black panthers are the militant who strike in the dark
Porcupines had a rep' for sticking everything that moved
In areas that the rhinos and hippos approved
And the giraffe was a look-out for gorillas in the mist
And the bats use their sonar to guide and assist
Those pelicans who smuggle contraband for the whale
While the skunks spray the scent to keep the dogs off the trail
The scorpion set up a sting for sly foxes
that use stool pigeons just to keep them in the boxes
While the black widow laid a web for the bachelor
like daddy-long-leg and his hype man, tarantula
They both prey on grasshoppers beetles and flies
And they all become instant meals the moment it dies
What costs little, is a little worth
so some lose they lives wandering on the wrong turf
From birth they grow up walking the thin line
It's like the jungle sometimes
It's like the jungle sometimes
I've gotta concur with Jamie. "Cuban Linx" was bad, but "Liquid Swords" is straight unfuckwithable. So many years later and it still sounds fresh.
The Wu is where it's at. What's so fricking cool about the Wu is that if you don't know what it's about, you just can't even fathom it. I know, because I when I first heard I didn't get it. I would be like, turn that shit off and pop the Pharcyde back in. But then I got a hold of the disc, listened to it a few times, and suddenly you realize that these ain't just a bunch of songs, this is a movie, and like the greatest movie ever, and you can't get enough.
Now I do agree that the Wu is nerd rap, but that's just an aspect of it. Nas is nerd rap, too, in the sense that the lyrics are sophisticated and require multiple-listens. But Wu is hardcore too, just like Nas. When non-heads heard "nerd rap" they're thinking Pointdexter and shit, and that's not what TNC means. What "the Wu is nerd rap" means is that it's hardcore meets D&D...
OK, TNC described it better than I ever could, but to non-heads, just picture a guy like Biggie who was from the streets and talked about street shit, but at night curls up with the Lord of the Rings books and martial arts movies, and when he goes to rap, he doesn't just change his name from Chris Wallace to Biggie Smalls and just give himself this outsized gangster persona, but rather creates an entire world, like Narnia or Middle Earth...
The first thing inductees need to learn about the Wu is that they are almost all from Staten Island in NYC, but in their own mythology the Island is called Shaolin, and instead of fighting hip hop battles with just mics or Mac-10's, they pull out the Wu Tang Sword...
Damn man, I ain't articulate enough to explain the Wu Tang, the shit is too original and sophisticated to just "explain"...you gotta experience it by listening to the records...
The first album is the best to me, Enter the 36 Chambers...
The one track that most exemplifies Wu Tang to me is Protect Ya Neck, because the whole crew gets down, but the whole album is sick, every track important....
I'm putting in a bid for "Wu Tang Forever" - not the best Wu album, not by far, but there's one disc's worth of grade A Wu material scattered over those 2 CDs, Deck's best rhymes, RZA's production jumped a notch and got totally goofy-crazy (why does that retarded hook on "For Heaven's Sake" work like magic? but it does), and, most of all, it was the moment when the Wu really hit the national consciousness in a big way - and when the whole rickety empire began to collapse under its own weight. The apex and the ending simultaneously.
I always thought the lyric was
"Africans denyin' niggas up in yellow cabs/
Musty like funk, waving they arms to A-rabs"
small distinction, but I liked how it highlighted that these cabbies felt more in common with Arab Muslims than with American blacks.
My best buddy and I used to argue about another line in "Incarcerated Scarfaces", and I can't imagine the double meaning escaped Raekwon (or, at least, RZA): "You got guns? Got guns too/What up son, duke/wanna battle for cash and see who sons who?" could've been "wanna battle for cash and see who's Sun Tzu?" I never bought it but my boy swore to it. That's the level of intricacy that, even if it wasn't there, was expected.
That was my favorite video btw.
Also, I love the Wu, but the five percent stuff is infinitely more embarrassing for hip-hop than the homophobia and misogyny, and a big reason why Coates putting rap lyrics on the same plane as Shakespeare or Tennyson or Homer is kind of pushing it.
Foulness:
I'm with you on Protect Ya Neck. I'm remembering how raw that video was too, although maybe that was the standard hip hop video format at the time, before everyone started poppin bottles with top models.
Another 36 Chambers over Cuban Linx'er. I think that album hit me the way you described Illmatic hitting you. Just blew my mind. I listened to it everyday for like two years at least. And the way they all really did form like Voltron on the full Wu albums was something that couldn't be replicated on the solos.
But the purple tape is the clear #2. Liquid Swords, I remember when that came out, certain dudes were really into it, like they'd just heard the truth and seen the light while a lot of other people (I'll admit including me) were more like really? I like it but I dont think Im there with you... CL and 36 Chambers I dont think anybody had that reaction to.
Right. Because Greek mythology is perfectly rational. Nothing embarrassing about believing in some dude who sits on a mountain and hurls lightning bolts and births children out the side of his and by raping chicks. Nothing at all.
Seriously. Have you read Beowulf?
Peace to Joe Lisboa, good to see you around these parts...we didn't experience this Wu shit until we got over our rockism around 18 or 19. Whenever the first J came our way probably.
Let me know if anyone wants the MP3 of ODB's "Don't U Know Part II," (that of "Part II coming up on the next album"). I just recently found it and it's one of the best things he ever recorded.
Knock 'em out the box, Coates, knock 'em out Coates...haha..
Knocked the man out with one punch like it was nothing...don't be dropping none of that Homer stuff on Coates and think he ain't coming back at you...
"Bo knows this
and Bo knows that
but Bo don't know jack
Because Bo can't rap...
The difference being that Greek mythology comes down to us from many hundreds of years BCE, when nobody knew anything, and Cuban Linx comes down to us from the depths of.... 1995.
The Wu Tang records are a brilliant evocation of a particular time and place, and the wordplay is obviously incredibly impressive, and while I won't claim to know much about music theory, I know some conservatory-educated jazz musicians who swear up and down that RZA is incredibly innovative, but when it comes to the lyrics, you are still ultimately talking about a group of semi-educated young men bragging about their prowess dealing drugs, shooting people, and having sex with women.
That's not to say that I don't think a lot of hip-hop is worthy of academic study, but it is a curiosity, whereas The Iliad, The Odyssey, Macbeth, Othello, etc. are building blocks of Western Society.
I wrote Beowulf.
Foulness captured it correctly i think...it really is a movie..or a series of movies. I remember the first time i saw Shaolin & Wu-Tang, Master Killer and all em'. It was like seeing the lyrics being played out in a series of wing-chun battles. Best thing about the Wu, absolutely. It wasn't simply about boasting the hardest or reppin' your particular set. These guys where telling a story of a world beyond our own. Hip-hop mythology was born.
Yo, you fourteen carat gold slum computer wizard
Tappin inside my rap vein causes blizzards
Do I like the kills for ice trife like botta digits
Gorillas injected with strength of eighty midgets
"you are still ultimately talking about a group of semi-educated young men bragging about their prowess dealing drugs, shooting people, and having sex with women."
And Homer wrote about WHAT exactly???
For a lot of us, Ofay, hip-hop is a lot more than a phenomenon worthy of study. It is one of the building blocks you speak of.
It's fine to not be part of that world, but - as our host has asked above - that's not reason to dismiss it as a mere academic curiosity.
Plenty of jazz (let alone classic literature) was written about the three things you mentioned. I'm fairly shocked that there are still folks making this argument.
And Shakespeare wrote about what exactly?
Hamlet wasn't about sleeping with women and killing people? MacBeth wasn't about about killing people?
Shiiiiittttt.......
That isn't to say Wu Tang is Shakespeare's equal, but they are playing the same game, same game as Scorsese plays, same game Orson Welles played, same game Bob Dylan plays, same game Ben Johnson or Christopher Marlowe played...
I can certainly understand people thinking Shakespeare is better than the Wu Tang, but they are both entertainers who use fictionalize things to make their money...
Anyway, curious what advanced degrees Mr. Shakespeare got that made him more than semi-educated?
I always thought it was the latter.
"when it comes to the lyrics, you are still ultimately talking about a group of semi-educated young men bragging about their prowess dealing drugs, shooting people, and having sex with women."
Meh, sounds like Solomon to me.
"The difference being that Greek mythology comes down to us from many hundreds of years BCE, when nobody knew anything, and Cuban Linx comes down to us from the depths of.... 1995."
So, belief in gods who eat their children, heroes who sleep with their mothers, gods who kidnap their virgins and carry them into the underworld is more valid because, uhm, its older?
Look, there something to be said for the test of time. I agree Homer, Shakespeare, all of that win points because a great a story is, ultimately, timeless. Who knows if Wu will hold up in that way. But if they don't, it won't be because of their theology was "embarrassing."
"when it comes to the lyrics, you are still ultimately talking about a group of semi-educated young men bragging about their prowess dealing drugs, shooting people, and having sex with women."
Seriously, not to pile on, but the irony in this statement--especially the semi-educated part--is just dripping off the screen.
"And Homer wrote about WHAT exactly???"
It's not really clear exactly who Homer was or whether he wrote anything at all, since tradition holds that he was blind, and leaving that aside, whoever did put the Iliad and Odyssey down on the page for the first time was just pinning down a story that had been part of the Greek oral tradition for fuck knows how long. And yeah, there is certainly a lot fucking and killing contained within the two tales, but they are treated with a bit more subtlety than "niggas got to die, if they go I got to go," and the stories also deal with a lot of other universal themes and help us to understand Greek society.
Man, when Odysseus travelled to the underworld and talked to Tiresias, it was just like that time I saw this bad bitch with a switch and I had to step to her.
I guess Homer's naps weren't nappy enough, and his roots weren't rugged enough.
I still think "Triumph" is Wu-Tang at their finest. I know Forever is not getting a lot of love here, but that song has all the members doing what they do best. It also has Inspectah Deck's best verse ever...
What up, trevor! For the record, I wasn't passed my first J until my first year of law school, in the quad on the steps of the law library, in fact. But now that I think about it, the chronology makes sense.
I don't even know if I can add anything but appreciation for this thread....I remember grabbing the Wu Bring tha Ruckus Cassingle (you know, cassette-single) for like 50 cents out of some bin at a record store and it changed my life.
Also since we're quoting great Wu-Tang lines, I submit the following:
"So now we see him up in BoJangles,
Stranglin a forty ounce
With ten G's worth of gold bangles
Diamonds, what, all up in his face,
With his man's mace,
medallions the size of dinner plates"
So visual--"stranglin a forty ounce" and "medallions the size of dinner plates"
"So, belief in gods who eat their children, heroes who sleep with their mothers, gods who kidnap their virgins and carry them into the underworld is more valid because, uhm, its older?"
Because there was a whole hell of a lot less information available to the Greeks. We still read Plato and Aristotle even though they were clearly wrong about a lot of things, because it would be unreasonable to expect them to know more than they did. If they were writing in the 1990's and still saying some of the shit they did, it would be laughable, man. Ha! At least, that's what Yakub told me to say.
Again, I am a huge fan of Wu Tang and a lot of the solo albums, it's not like I am one of these tools dismissing all of rap or failing to acknowledge their artistry, I'm just saying, there is a line between the sophistication of Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth or Sunlight and The Grand Inquisitor. I'm sorry that this is such an outlandish statement here and I broke up your circle jerk. Maybe I deserve a ghetto beatdown like Juan Williams does.
"Look, there something to be said for the test of time. I agree Homer, Shakespeare, all of that win points because a great a story is, ultimately, timeless. Who knows if Wu will hold up in that way. But if they don't, it won't be because of their theology was 'embarrassing.'"
I was just using their theology as an example of one of the areas in which their sophistication is clearly lacking, I agree that it is ultimately a fairly minor part of their work, but it is exemplary of what I'm trying to get at.
"Anyway, curious what advanced degrees Mr. Shakespeare got that made him more than semi-educated?"
Please. Our very own Ta-Nehisi is a college dropout, it's not the degrees, it's the familiarity with like, the written word and history and grappling with topics a little more complex than exactly how many grams are in a kilo and how easy it is to remember, or how awesome your style is and whether or not you are something with which it is wise to fuck.
I'm not saying the Wu never do touch on topics other than gangster rap staples, just that they certainly do so with far less frequency than the works to which Ta-Nehisi is comparing them, and when they do it is often apparent that they are out of their depth, like when they reference 5 percent Islam in 1995.
I'd love to keep going, but I'm due back at Patmos in an hour and I gotta catch my flight.
I don't want to offend anyone here, but I don't see why Five Percent theology is any weirder than believing that the son of God was crucified for the sin's of man. Both groups have more info available to them then the ancient Greeks. It hasn't changed anything. I'm not even saying it should.
"I don't want to offend anyone here, but I don't see why Five Percent theology is any weirder than believing that the son of God was crucified for the sin's of man."
Don't worry, its not. And I certainly don't agree that the 5% shit is more embarassing than the homophobia in rap. But, shit talking shouldn't be discouraged in hip hop and football threads, and I think Ofay is holding his own. I especially liked this line...
"I'm sorry that this is such an outlandish statement here and I broke up your circle jerk. Maybe I deserve a ghetto beatdown like Juan Williams does."
"I'm sorry that this is such an outlandish statement here and I broke up your circle jerk. Maybe I deserve a ghetto beatdown like Juan Williams does."
Nah, you just deserve a better argument. You can dismiss the convo all you want, but it's really artful dodging. The question remains as it was--Why is the Five Percent theology anymore embarrassing than any other theology? It's just that simple. Either you can prove that it is, or you can't.
Eh... I thought it sounded petty and ass-hurt. But I respect the rest of the post!
I could accept the argument a little more about other rappers, but I feel like Wu went so far beyond what Ofay's giving them credit for. They took our depressing circumstances and made them fantastical. They took "the black man is god" and turned it into mythology that white kids bought into. If it was so easy to boil them down into a base of 5% ideology they'd be Lakim Shabazz, they'd be King Sun, they'd be even Brand Nubian. But they weren't, and that's a testament to the fact that they conjured up The Odyssey for more people than they did God Body Lessons.
TNC,
This white boy from Queens couldn't agree with you more. Wu-Tang's poetry still stands up.
I'm partial to Liquid Swords myself.
Ahh the 90's...It was a good time for the Empire.
"Why is the Five Percent theology anymore embarrassing than any other theology?"
Who is the Paul Tillich or Soren Kierkegaard or Immanuel Kant or Descartes or Thomas Aquinas or Dostoevsky of Five Percent Islam?
As an atheist, I will certainly agree with you that Five Percent theology is no less true than any of the Abrahamic religions, which I would call slightly less absurd than Buddhism (I know nothing about Hinduism), but I have a much easier time imagining how a reasonable person could come to believe in some form of Universalist Christianity or liberal Judaism or more modern Buddhism than say, Scientology, or Mormonism, or Five Percent Islam. Would you honestly take Andrew or Ross as seriously if all their soul-searching posts about the nature of Christ were actually about the nature of the teachings of James109x?
Basically, any person acquainted with real academic thought can recognize that Joseph Smith or Abu Shahid 57.236Y were ridiculous charlatans given what we know in this era and what we knew when Joseph Smith was reading tablets out of a hat, but people who were born before, I don't know, the Renaissance (or a little later), get to use the same excuse the Greeks did with Apollo for Mohammed or Jesus or Siddartha or Vishnu or whoever else- it's unreasonable to expect them to have known any better.
As for more modern believers, I would agree that people who go to Oral Roberts university or Orthodox Jews burying plates or guys making their wives wear burkas have no cause to look down on Five Percenters, but for the more reasonable and doubtful religious moderates of today, I can at least see where they're coming from. There is a lot of doubt in which the believer can take refuge since we lack any real historical knowledge about a lot of what goes on in the Bible or Torah, Jesus could have said, "I am King Shit of Fuck Mountain," instead of, "I am come that they may have life," for all we know, so it's hard to definitively state that a more universalist reading of Christianity or liberal Judaism is outright wrong, although it gets thornier with Islam given the chauvinism and the trouble reconciling it with secularism. At least with a major world religion, there is the excuse of being raised with it. It's also pretty easy to take most of the Bible's or Torah's teachings as metaphorical anyway, you can be a Christian without believing in the physical resurrection of Christ, although Sarah Palin would be pretty upset with you.
Supreme Mathematics reside on another level, the level where thetans and tarot cards reside.
But please, continue to talk about my posts dripping with irony while contending that U-God could have held his own with Erasmus and Dante.
Arghh, I love this discussion, but can people PLEASE get off the emcees and understand that Hip-Hop is much, much, more than rap? The next time I hear a serious discussion about hip-hop that leaves out bboys, djs, and graff, imma have to strangle somebody. While yes, its easier to analyze lyrics than it is a dope set, do not confuse rap for the entirety of hip-hop. That goes out as much to Ofay as to everyone else. If you don't know jack about djing, then just say you are a rap head instead of a hip-hop head.
Rant over.
I apologize profusely, good sir, although I don't really think the discussion centered around hip-hop in general, but rather the lyrics of the Wu Tang Clan and whether or not Ol' Dirty Bastard is a Philosopher King and Shame on a Nigga is his Republic. And I did give credit to RZA's producing/composition, and admitted it was not my area of expertise. Also, I never called myself a hip-hop head.
Actually, I retract my apology. Instead, I want all of you to apologize for the fat white fireman on House of Payne.
Interestingly, the same objections as you're raising against the 5%ers were raised against Christianity when it began. Many Romans looked at it and thought "Who the heck are these guys? How could the true religion spring up now?". This is why Christianity still reveres the Old Testament, even with trying to reconcile the New and Old causes a whole mess of theological problems that have yet to be dealt with. There were strains of early Christianity that tried to eject Judaism, going so far as to claim that the god of the Old Testament was an entirely different deity than the one who sent Jesus into the world. Clearly that didn't work out.
Look at Islam. At one point it seemed radically new. Part of its draw came from the fact that it grabbed on to the other Abrahamic traditions as a way to reinforce its legitimacy.
All religions have to start somewhere.
Last but not least, have you seriously read the Illiad? Half of it is descriptions of some divinely buffed guy killing a whole mess of other guys. Usually by stabbing them in the nipple (seriously, I've seen a great sketch made out of that one fact. It's amazing watching a guy scream NIPPLE! at the top of his lungs over and over). Then another god gets pissy and retaliates by creating another psychotic killing machine. That's not to deny that there aren't important issues that come up in the Homeric works, but they were products of their time as well. And damn was that time ever violent. Given the places that rap emerged from, it's not exactly shocking that a lot of their narratives would be worked around violent themes.
I could go on, but it's time to take a break.
TNC,
Thanks for posting this. I'm curious what about what you'd say regarding the level of self-awareness the Wu had in creating this universe/mythology. As in, how seriously do they take themselves and their mythology? Like catholics or greeks? I've read some of the Wu-Tang manual, and at times, RZA seems like he means it, all the way down to the silly acronyms like PEACE (Protons Electrons Always Cause Explosion)
There's an article at flatmancrooked (http://www.flatmancrooked.com/archives/1053) about B.I.G. and Wu and how they relate to the literary world. The guy has something to say on this front. You might be interested.
Winslowalrob,
That is by far the lamest post of the day. Are you being serious? This is a very specific thread. Take your pet peeves somewhere else, you nerd.
Five Percent-ism is a joke, yes, and a racist joke at that, but it's never really lessened the Wu for me. 36 Chambers, Cuban Linx and Liquid Swords, needless to say, aren't some sort of Five Percenter gospel records. It's not as if they expound on their idiotic theology. Some Five Percent terminology creeps into their lyrics and that's about it, and to the extent that happens it only enhances their work, just as their obsession with stupid kung fu movies enhances their work. More fundamentally, though, you don't listen to an album the way you listen to a sermon or political speech. Take the whole "the government gave black people AIDS" concept. Now coming from Jeremiah Wright, that was just straight idiocy. But coming from a rapper (from whom it often does come), the right critical reaction isn't to say, "wow, that rapper sure is uneducated," it's more, this is an artistic expression of the sort of paranoia that growing up around extreme poverty, mass incarceration, etc. can foster. Which doesn't mean that all such expressions are any good; Nas's latest album is in this vein, for instance, and it's garbage.
Chaucer was just as bawdy, Lawrence just as graphic, Whitman just as lusty, Shakespeare as violent, and Zola just as concerned with the street life.
Dante's Inferno is practically the first battle rhyme. All along Dante's descent into hell you find his real-life political opponents, who get ethered with vicious rhymes. Like most MCs, Dante wrote in the 1st person, and used allegory to describe his journey through hell.
The Wu Tang gave themselves new identities, and create an entire mythology to describe their adventures on the Island, better know as Shaolin. Dante's guide is Virgil, the Wu takes their lead from the Abbot, otherwise known as the RZA.
There's an argument to be made that a great hip hop album doesn't live up to a great play or book or poem. But it's not because of subject matter, and certainly not because of talk about the Five Percenters, which is no more or less based on faith than any other religion, the Wu's talk of Gods and Earths no more embarrassing than Dante's investigation of Christian purgatory, hell and afterlife. The argument has to be about quality and lasting importance.
Yes, it's a bit presumptuous to compare the everlasting importance of the Wu to Homer's or Shakespeare's, since those works have passed the test of time and hip hop's only been around for about 30 years, the Wu less than half that.
The only fair way to judge the Wu is against it's true peers, which to me is any art since World War II. And to me, the Wu's every bit as important as The Beatles or the Stones, or Jackson Pollack or Bob Dylan, or Citizen Kane or Raging Bull, or Beloved or Invisible Man or Cuckoo's Nest or Kind of Blue or What's Going On or any number of other works that are tops in their medium...
As for Whatshisname's diatribe about the lack of respect for DJing, he's right that DJs don't get the respect that emcees do, but with the Wu, every fan knows that it's the RZA that built the empire, and that he's a hugely original and influential producer, and every bit the equal of any Phil Spector or George Martin...
A masterpiece noteworthy as one of the first great works written in the vernacular.
MacBeth is the great forerunner of the gangster film.
Wu-Tang's the best rap group of all time! Yo, I'm gettin hyped just reading this...
7th Chamber, is one of their best, albeit, there are SO many to choose from...everyone just kills their verses on there...
"I'm raw, i'm rugged and raw!
I repeat, if I die my seed'll be ill like me
Approachin me, yo out of respect, chops ya neck
I get vexed, like crashing up a phat-ass Lex'
So clear the way, make way, yo! open the cage
Peace, i'm out, jettin like a runaway slave!"
Wu-Tang Forever! I'm bout to go play that joint...
Graf is only sometimes related to hip-hop. It's no coincidence that this 4-elements BS was handed down from guys who studied 5% and Freemasonry.
Gawd, reading this blog I realize how deep the cultural gulfs are in America. It is fascinating and depressing at the same time.
The opening bars of 36 Chambers or Cuban Links bring back instant memories of struggling thru Great Gatsby in high school and thinking, "this is the ghetto-est shit ever!!" So I'm agreeing with the Foulness on this one... and looking forward to our next discussion of the vernacular contributions of E-40 and political philosophy of Pac.
"White geekdom too, believe me. I know whereof I speak."
As someone who was completely enveloped in the Wu throughout high school, it blew my mind that when I started college (1998), every Nirvana/Radiohead listening white person I knew had 36 chambers.
TNC only posted Incarcerated Scarfaces for the Baltimore shout out.
Morphine chicks be burnin like chlorine
Niggaz recognize from here to Baltimore to Fort Greene
Also
"For barber-shop bloggers in the plaza..."
I appreciate what you did right there
Did rap make a gradual transition to the angry mode? I seem to remember that the Sugar Hill Gang sounded happy on their seminal hit.
Nation of Gods and Earths imagery is worse than the devil worship and Satanism found in Judas Priest?
Why should hip hop be ashamed when a whole lot of kids grew up listening to and imitating KISS?
Why should WuTang be more responsible for finding truth in NGE than heavy metal was for promoting Satanism? Bands used satanism as a marketing tool. Parents were alarmed, but had to be soothed by the fact that their kids weren't actually worshiping the devil, just listening to music.
Why the transparency there, but a refusal to understand when it comes to WuTang writing about the Nation of Gods and Earths?
"Why the transparency there, but a refusal to understand when it comes to WuTang writing about the Nation of Gods and Earths?"
If anything, I think the opposite is true. Most people that follow music take Wu-Tang more seriously than Judas Pries and KISS. Its pretty obvious that those bands were just playing a part.
Also, I don't think anyone is asking hip hop to be ashamed of the Wu.
I disagree, people filed lawsuits against Judas Priest because of the messages in their lyrics. Religious people spent plenty of time parsing the meanings of their lyrics and imagery, and recommending that their kids stay away from it. People who filled arenas and packed stadiums at sold out concerts are old enough to be running things now, but it's not like there's a glut of satanism in government or culture today.
Perhaps I should have said "hip hip should not be embarassed" instead of ashamed.
I am not arguing whether WuTang believed what they wrote about. I am saying that listeners have a history of using critical distance when judging the content of music. And listening to hip hop is no different.
Well the subject matter argument met with fail. And I don't think many people ascribing to 5% Islam would really call it a religion. It's the antithesis, has more in common with freemasonry and (gulp) scientology than orthodox Islam or Christianity. But I might be stepping into a can of worms here. TNC might be god body and I just don't know it.
I'd much rather talk about the broad non-religious influences of the NGE on urban/black culture, the civil rights movement, crime and rehabilitation...
Or we can compare and contrast the NGE and Zulu Nation. That'll be a touchy one for sure.
"I am saying that listeners have a history of using critical distance when judging the content of music. And listening to hip hop is no different."
Yeah, I agree with that statement. I think I was talking about something different. And when I talk about people not taking KISS or Judas Priest's lyrical content seriously, I'm talking about people that actually pay attention to music, not right wing religious freaks.
I'm sure Mastah Killah spends his free time reading Percival Everett and wondering about the categorical imperative, and I totally remember when Dante shot one of his bitches because the ho ain't trick enough. It's all the same! RZA used to fuck her while she ministrate, but it made her hyperventilate, it was just like the way self-knowledge was dealt with in Oedipus Tyrannus. I'll always remember the time Hamlet put bombs in bottles of champagne. Chaucer was vulgar, Wu Tang records are vulgar, therefore they are the same! It all makes sense now! Whether or not a work of literature actually comments on the violence present within it or puts it in any sort of context is irrelevant! The Godfather is no more sophisticated than Wu-Gambinos. I remember when Michael turned to Sonny and said, "Enter the entity, my vicinity
Is three hundred and sixty degrees of humidity." Man, that was profound.
Ofay,
You've jumped the shark. Please stop now.
Love,
Stacy
"You've jumped the shark. Please stop now."
Quoted For Truth. You're not even trying to argue in good faith.
Wait, the Godfather really is no more sophisticated than Wu-Gambinos. Maybe even less so.
http://www.lyrics007.com/Raekwon%20Lyrics/Wu-gambinos%20Lyrics.html
Seriously? What am I missing. I am genuinely curious, this is a sincere inquiry, even though I have apparently jumped the shark. To me, Wu-Gambinos is what The Godfather would be if 85% of the movie was Michael driving up to the head of each of the five families and telling them how ragged his style was.
I understand that it's not exactly a fair comparison, since it's a 4-minute song vs. a 3-hour movie, which might be the crux of why we seem to be arguing past each other. I mean, I would certainly agree with anyone who said Wu was more worthy of inclusion in the canon than I don't know, the Beatles or Johnny Cash or whoever. I think Ta-Nehisi seems to be arguing that Wu transcends pop music and lands on the same plane as great works of literature, so probably the best comparison would be straight poetry. We're really arguing that Inspectah Deck is on the same plane as Langston Hughes?
I apologize if my glibness puts people off, but no one seems to be seriously engaging the argument, instead pointing out the INCREDIBLE IRONY present in me pointing out that Raekwon the Chef is not exactly James Joyce, because hey, since I do not have a PhD, it must be totally out of bounds for me to point out the intellectual shortcomings of people who take Supreme Mathematics seriously, as though the onus should be on me to establish my intellectual bonafides when no one is arguing for the inclusion of Ofay McCrackerson in the canon, they are arguing for the inclusion of Ol' Dirty Bastard. You have been dismissive of any challenge to your theory from the beginning, TNC, so don't accuse me of not trying to argue in good faith.
Like, are there similarities between Dante and battle rap or Macbeth and gangster movies? Of course. Is Odysseus yelling at Polyphemus similar to calling someone out on the mic? Sure, but that and similar episodes are like, 3% of the Odyssey.
Just because doesn't mean they contain the same level of insight. Wu Tang music is fun, but are you honestly saying it's consistently thought-provoking?
I think you guys are hiding behind the fact that rappers use alter-egos and create characters to make it seem like they are as distinct from their personae as Robert De Niro is from Travis Bickle, which is what I was trying to illustrate with the idea of Mastah Killah going home and reading Percival Everett. Now, for all I know, he actually does read Everett in between watching Bergman movies and listening to Mahler, but if that is the case, there's certainly no indication of it in his lyrics. The RZA didn't use all his money to take some classes at Howard, he used it to make a fully bullet-proof car and a bullet-proof suit. Don't get me wrong, I love him for it, but I don't see his lyrics as a source of enlightenment, whereas I do see that in say, Ta-Nehisi's book, or Saul Bellow's work, or The Wire. I don't disagree with any of the reasons TNC listed in the original post that make Wu-Tang great for him, I just don't see how that makes them truly great literature.
These guys are not David Simon writing about Stringer Bell and the drug trade, they're like Avon Barksdale sitting in on one of Stringer's community college creative writing classes explaining how tough he is, albeit in an incredibly interesting and creative fashion. Maybe Wallace is there helping him with his transformer toys, I don't know, but the point is they lack the perspective and wisdom you guys seem to attribute to the Wu.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4829782
Again, I love this man, he is obviously a fascinating character, but I cannot believe people in this thread would compare him to Ralph Ellison.
A good friend turned me on to the Wu back in our freshman year of high school (93ish), and I'm grateful he did. We had more fun and got into more trouble than any group of white, suburban teenagers had any business getting into, and it was a great soundtrack for that period in our lives.
But what's great about the Wu, specifically 36 Chambers & Forever, is how timeless the music is. It was great back in the day, and it's great now. So much hip-hop is just pop with a "black" feel to it, and that's unfortunate for real hip-hop artists. (For instance, Nelly had his moments and was fun to listen to, but, come on; it ain't art.) That timelessness is what we need more.
Sometimes I'll be rocking some Wu in the car, with the windows down, on the way home from work; the car isn't a Ferrari, but it's not exactly a clunker, and we live in a very diverse neighborhood (read: lots of gentrification going on). I have to wear a suit to work most of the time. When I stop at a red light, sometimes I forget that a white boy with serious, old school rap blaring out of the windows is probably a comical (and perhaps disturbing) sight for some of the neighborhood kids.
I've gotten a few looks, and occasionally I wonder if anyone is insulted that they have to learn how about "glock bursts" and "master[ing] the trick just like Nixon" from a 30 year-old white bman in an Acura, but screw it. If I'm passing on the gift of the Wu to these kids who are stuck with Lil John and Kanye West as their "hip-hop" idols, it's worth it.
Thanks for this post. I really enjoyed it.
My take on 5%: like comics, like all art, like all religion isn't exactly about what it's ostensibly about. There's this sub-meaning that is the real meaning.
The idea that "the black man is god" is about coming to believe in yourself. The "black man" is figurative. It's also a move away from the preacher-flock mentality of some churches. It's like "Believe in yourself. Don't get caught up in that church bullshit. Don't get caught up in trying to be accepted and don't let anyone bring you down. Know yourself and believe."
I'm white, FYI. And the biggest Wu fan of all time, unquestionably. ;)