Wu Tang Clan - Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers)

Hilarious story. At check out the nice lady struck up a conversation about the records i was buying, and asked who this was. I said Wu Tang Clan. She said never heard of them. Now, when i tell you it took every fiber of my being to not deadpan reply "they ain't nothin' to fuck with," i mean i found new fibers i wasn't even aware were contained in the tapestry of me to strain in the process. Which reminds me, i sadly did not acquire Carole King's Tapestry or Queen Latifah's first album, and i deeply regret not being made of money. As it is, i managed to get out of there having only explained that they were a rap group. 

Sufferin' smorgasbord, Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers) is a fantastic Golden Age of Hip Hop album. It has everything, king fu movie samples, radio promos, dick jokes, spelling Method Man's name, ODB being ODB. 

The mystery of chessboxing is of course why anyone would willingly get punched in the face while trying to play chess, but i suspect they were merely using it as a metaphor and that the surviving members of Wu Tang Clan are exactly as confused as everyone else with regard to it now being an actual thing that people pay money to watch happen. Sweet science my ass, i protect not only my neck, but also my beautiful bearded face at all times. I am midly vain, i know this. 

It is one of those albums you have to warn your parents about because they're very sensitive and impressionable, but if you just calmly explain that sometimes real people use "naughty" words, and it's ok to just let them float by on the breeze without much concern, they'll probably come around. Sometimes it helps to point out that you don't have to agree with every thought your brain produces, and albums are pretty universally not dangerous. Yes, even albums you don't like. I like this one a lot, though. 

Tons of serendipitious numerology, 9 members, 4 chambers of the heart, 36 of the 108 pressure points being deadly, you get the idea. What's more important in terms of cultural significance is that this is an album of humor. Extremely dark humor from an alien urban world where violence and discrimination are the norm. This is battle rap, trash talk, minimalist hip hop, an album about how making the album and building a future for yourself are intertwined. 

What stands out, at least for me, is that it is a group of friends collaborating and hyping each other up in a world that at best doesn't care about them and at worst wants them dead. Granted, i'm partial to lofi aesthetics anyway, but here it's an integral part of what defines the album in terms of taking all the bits and pieces of shared experience and building something from it as opposed to dwelling in the misery. 

Fair amount of debate as to whether this is Gangsta Rap or not, 'but i'd say no. It's certainly hardcore, hyperbolic reality rap, but unmistakably Golden Age. I do however have to agree with critical consensus, this is not a mainstream album that speaks to something more tangible than other mainstream albums, this is a definitevely underground album that rips a hole in the mainstream and stretches the definition to encompass itself. Some say Enter The Wu Tang singlehandedly defined East Coast Hip Hop as the counterpart to West Coast Gangsta, and no sane person could claim to hear this as anything but definitively New York, but i'm me so i like to just say it's freakin' awesome and tell you to enjoy the rest of your weekend. They aren't really a clan or a gang or a crime syndicate, that's just how society at large liked to pigeonhole any group of friends in the early 90s. If you can't beat 'em, adopt personalities derived from old kung fu movies and invent an elaborately eclectic mythos to play around with. 

I suppose we do have to talk about the 5 Percenters, an offshoot of Nation of Islam founded by Clarence Edward Smith. Not technically a religion, and formed from Smith's disagreement with considering Wallace Fard Muhammad a divine messenger, the RGE are still often lumped under the epithet of Black Nationalism, and completely feared by pasty skinned ignoramuses who most likely consider Rosanne's Rainbow Conspiracy a great feat of intellectual prowess. It doesn't help when your philosophical way of life was founded by a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic (SPK immediately springs to mind) who believed every person is his/herself God. Not a god, but the one true God fractured like a broken mirror across all the humans on earth (big Tool vibes on that one). That's of course a gross generalization, but i am an outspoken critic of exclusionary ideological narratives as a beneficial definition of personal identity anyway, so always keep my bias in mind. The point is that i see this concept people call "black nationalism" as a logical and completely human reaction to the inherent normalization of "white nationalism" in mainstream institutional society. All of our institutions are founded on the exclusionary principle of excellence, privileging similarity over difference. Mainstream culture in the US is itself absurdly childish and naive, amounting to nothing more than similarity=good, different=bad, good=win, bad=EXTERMINATE! That's dumb. 

Anywho, if we're looking at the central philosophical conjecture of the 5 Percent Nation, there is certainly something completely compelling in the idea that 85% of the population are brainless sheeple, 10% are the wealthy elite who enslave that mass population, and the remaining 5% are the poor bearers of true enlightenment whose mission is to educate and illuminate the masses as to the true nature of reality. Compelling. 

Erykah Badu is also a 5 Percenter, so it might be highly rewarding to revisit Baduizm from that perspective. My point is, at the end of the day we're all just people, and i personally think it's much more intellectually rewarding to seek out, analyze, and ultimately celebrate what makes each of us unique, rather than blindly taxonomizing people into one stereotypical box or another. 

Sometimes that means you have to unfriend people who adamantly refuse the concepts of diversity and inclusion. Not all of the people living in your brain are going to get along, and you just have to wish them well as you politely escort them off the premesis. 

As albums go, Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers) is definitely a great one and you should totally go check it out. Just don't forget to warn your parents about the lyrics, some of them are explicit as advertised.