Enter the Wu-Tang: 30 Years of the Most Iconic Rappers Ever

Today in New York City is officially Wu-Tang Day, by Mayor Eric Adams’ decree.

The Empire State Building, one of the most famous structures in the world, will be lit up all day in black and yellow like the logo of the legendary nonet (tentet if you count Cappadonna), colors they share with Batman. Except Batman isn’t real, and these superheroes are. It’s impossible to overstate the widespread cultural effect of the Wu-Tang Clan but let’s try. I’m gonna call them the single most iconic export ever produced by the genre, which turned 50 this year, and I’m also gonna claim that this honor is unlikely to be surpassed.

The most recent closest attempt was OFWGKTA (d/b/a Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) over a dozen years ago, a group-cum-movement that produced major stars (Tyler, the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, Frank Ocean, my adored Syd of the Internet and by proxy, their guitarist Steve Lacy, their only associate to hit number one on the Hot 100). But even if those enfants terrible were still working together, which they’re mostly not, the footprint of their branding didn’t extend far beyond colorful, pranksterish DIY videos. Tyler’s got his annual Camp Flog Gnaw festival and Odd Future starred in a short-lived, absurdist sketch comedy show on Adult Swim, Loiter Squad. That was about it before they went separate ways. The awesome, scripted Hulu series about Wu-Tang Clan, An American Saga, made it to three seasons. And those spanned 2019 to 2023 about a group that started three decades ago.

 

VIDEO: Wu-Tang: An American Saga Season 1 trailer 

Chappelle’s Show lampooning the group’s merchandising ubiquity was so funny because it’s half-expected that RZA really would debut a Wu-Financial firm. Even without being a household name and an unforgettable W symbol drawn on countless desks and school books, the very act of staying both remembered and cool for 30 years in a genre of ruthless turnover is unheard of.

It’s the all-encompassing nature of the group — I mean clan — that brought the world-building vision of the ever-expanding Marvel universe into real life long before Hollywood risked billions on the MCU. Comic books, martial arts, gangsta mythology, a supergroup of nine rappers (like Voltron, as they famously likened themselves on their debut), the vision of Robert Diggs and several friends, family members and even onetime rivals simply wanted to combine everything that people (admittedly mostly young men) thought was dope.

Sometimes this manifested itself in half-joking, KISS Koffin-style greed (behold the medium banger “Wu Wear: The Garment Renaissance”), though diehards remain happy to continue buying limited-run reissues that include everything from trading cards to chess sets. Many fans and several group members lament the existence of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin as the ultimate nadir of RZA’s hubris, but I think it rules: an elaborately packaged art object (that box!) containing two CDs with literally only one of its kind in existence, which has already made a fantastic, perfectly Wu-Tang-style journey in its eight-year lifespan, complete with supervillains (disgraced pharma mogul Martin Shkreli), alleged heroes (if that’s what you wanna call NFT collectors PleasrDAO, who currently own the museum-worthy artifact), and the U.S. government, which seized it along with Shkreli’s assets. It doesn’t matter if the music sucks (and I bet it doesn’t), it’s about the mythmaking; Cher guests on it.

By 1997, Wu-Tang Clan had already made more than enough great music to justify naming their full-group sequel Wu-Tang Forever. Every single solo album from their first wave has a cult of its own, and that’s over half the Clan: Tical, Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, Liquid Swords, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Ironman.

Today we celebrate Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), a universally renowned debut album that plays like a greatest hits. There’s no singing or R&B hooks or even samples of a former popular hit on it. Nas’ contemporaneous classic Illmatic, by comparison, sampled Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature,” from the most famous album of all-time. The Clan reveled in their underdog status; if they were gonna have hits, they would have them on their own terms.

“Wu-Tang Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit,” the star-making origin story “Protect Ya Neck,” the spotlight-stealing “Method Man,” the instantaneous catchphrase-generating “C.R.E.A.M.” did not sound like hits because they imitated any existing models for chart success. They sounded like hits because nine dudes in knit hats and winter coats from Staten Island were bellowing them at you in unison, a walking party wherever they go or whatever stage they hit. No matter if their beats consisted of eerie snatches of upright bass (“Clan in Da Front”) or a few lopsided piano notes (“Method Man,” “Shame on a N****”) or dusty slices of vintage soul that resembled the most mournful sound in the world in RZA’s hands (“Can It Be All So Simple,” “Tearz”). They wanted to make hip-hop more like the movies in every way, so it’s fitting that they rapped over what sounded like old film scores.

Then you’ve got the X-Men-evoking lineup of the rappers themselves, most of them born stars. First and foremost: rest in peace, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, comic relief extraordinaire, whether he was singing exaggeratedly off-key (“oooh baby I like it raaaw”) or bragging about the shitstains on his drawers immediately after confessing he got gonorrhea once in his very first verse, track two on the debut. His antics made a goofy sidekick like Flavor Flav seem tame, from cashing a welfare check on camera to bum-rushing the 1998 Grammys during Shawn Colvin’s acceptance speech (couldn’t have picked a more lukewarm target, tbh) and declaring famously that “Wu-Tang is for the children.” But he was a beloved, influential MC; pioneered the good-girl/bad-boy archetype of R&B/rap teamup hits with Mariah Carey on the number-one hit “Fantasy,” which forever allied those two genres on the charts. That may have been the total opposite of Wu-Tang’s gritty noir-punk, but smearing off-key grime on otherwise smooth pop smashes is perfectly on-brand.

 

VIDEO: Wu-Tang Clan “Protect Ya Neck”

Next are Raekwon the Chef and Ghostface Killah, formerly archnemeses turned partners in rhyme who became very different true-crime writers. Rae’s higher-pitched delivery begat more precise, linear storytelling, especially on his “Mafioso”-oriented Cuban Linx album and its highly appraised sequel. Ghostface begins as a tough guy in the shadows on 36 Chambers and blooms with a frantic, stream-of-conscious eye for detail and no-bullshit beats (with a taste for vintage soul) that made him the Wu’s most accomplished rapper. He was on a winning streak that lasted longer than a decade, not just on celebrated monoliths like Supreme Clientele and Fishscale but also underrated castoffs like More Fish and the breathtaking Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City. He’s the member who earns the most comparisons to James Joyce, et al. with his own code words and impenetrable metaphors.

Method Man gets his own six-minute showcase for a reason, and it’s the same reason he and fellow stoner Redman got to star in buddy movies like How High and a short-lived sitcom called Method and Red together (not to mention his more solid turn as Cheese on The Wire). He’s the group’s foremost translator of all this inside baseball into salable fame. He doesn’t rap in riddles, you can generally tell when he’s talking about getting high or getting horny, and he held his own on a top-ten hit duet with Mary J. Blige. If RZA’s the director, Meth is the marquee name on the movie poster. It’s no surprise he was the first to get his own solo spinoff; he’s the first one you’ll recognize. M-E-T-H-O-D Man.

 

VIDEO: Wu-Tang Clan “Method Man”

RZA would be a god if he simply stuck to producing; his soundscapes may be the most influential in all of rap until we shift from the boom-bap era to the Dirty South’s trap takeover with cheap, sharp 808 drums predominating. That’s still a very long reign. But he’s also an underrated mic presence, with his unforgettable speech impediment and abstract spiritual leanings. His kaleidoscopic multimedia vision, retroactively classically trained theory and mysterious allusions to Islam and religion are the heart and soul of the phenomenon he dreamed up. And even if more traditional gangsta fans didn’t bite for a trippy, psychedelic effort like 2008’s 8 Diagrams, it’s one of many great works that deserve their due thanks to his oddball aesthetic.

His cousin GZA, the Genius, is even more of an intellectual, the most Zen of the group; there’s a reason it’s his Liquid Swords reissue that contains the chess set. The calm in the eye of the storm, he deserves credit for making such beloved work with one of the least flamboyant personas in the Clan. It’s GZA who popularizes the most metaphysical and mysterious aspects of the group, the stuff that would be easy to make fun of if he wasn’t behind so much of what makes their music endure.

 

VIDEO: Wu-Tang Clan “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F Wit”

Could I go on? Probably; Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa and even Cappadonna are all formidable rhymers who deserve their flowers from Wu scholars even deeper than me that can distinguish their more obscure personalities. But even if they weren’t marquee players, an ensemble with six arguable leaders is astonishing, unprecedented, unsucceeded. Every single one of them has made a good solo album, though. Uncontrolled Substance, Golden Arms Redemption, No Said Date, and The Pillage are admittedly not reinventing the wheel. They don’t have to; they already invented it. They’re thrilling, mood-sustaining installments of a comic book you already subscribed to.

I know I’ve barely talked about the music, because it’s hard to view the Wu-Tang legacy as merely music. But inspiring people to party to mood music is just one of their many achievements. Turning rap into mood music, period — the old film playing on the TV in the background set to beats while you go about your day and tune in when the moment strikes — that’s a big part of what they did for me anyway. I’d argue that goes along way towards turning hip-hop into a lifestyle, something you can listen to at work and not just in the club. But that makes them sound dull and they’re anything but.

Wu-Tang Clan breathed new life into rap that nobody knew it needed. They expanded its creative boundaries into countless new precincts that tapped into all kinds of new potential; MF Doom’s stoned, free-associative bars and comic-villain persona couldn’t have existed without them. Or Jay-Z’s sly, unexpectedly funny dealer talk. Or Kanye’s widescreen, chipmunk-soul opuses before he turned into a pumpkin. Without the Looney Tunes-esque torture skit that precedes “Method Man,” you don’t have Eminem’s hyperactive cartoon violence. Or Odd Future’s irreverent fatwa against the tasteful and respectable rap orthodoxy.

 

VIDEO: Wu-Tang Clan “C.R.E.A.M.”

The group’s empathy is undervalued as well; for possibly their single greatest moment, proceed directly to Ghostface’s tear-stained monologue on “I Can’t Go to Sleep,” from 2000’s gorgeous The W, the same year RZA contributed a wonderful soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Ghost’s tales are especially gripping and emotional; the regret and quaver in his voice would come to define one of 2023’s most powerful MCs as well, fellow New Yorker billy woods. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to claim that this group alone extended hiphop’s life by a few decades. So let’s celebrate on this highest of high holy days, Wu-Tang Day.

I didn’t even press myself to come up with a more clever kicker for this: Wu-Tang Clan still ain’t nothing to fuck with. They rule everything around us.