It is rap music outside of this universe - a group with multiple nicknames rallying around kung-fu films, sampling forgotten soul songs and playing chess - and belonging to no time period, so it belongs to every time period. I discovered and grew to fiercely love the Wu-Tang Clan years after they swarmed onto the scene and detonated hip-hop conventions - and that’s always been sort of the legacy of the Wu, and specifically their bulletproof debut. I was an awkward teenage white boy trying to learn how to bring the ruckus I still don’t know how to do so, but I can name eight guys who do. I debated with friends who had the best verse on “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’.” I marveled at the lyricism of Method Man, and mourned the loss of Ol’ Dirty Bastard - at that time, just a few months deceased. I memorized lines, then verses, then songs, then every song. But every day and every night, walking to my friend’s place with a Discman in hand or driving to my part-time job at Quizno’s, I would pop on “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” and lose my mind.
Mainstream hip-hop had moved on a thoughtful kid named Kanye West was turning heads with his soul samples and thoughtful imagery. At that point, Wu-Tang Clan was three years removed from their uneven fourth album, “Iron Flag,” and no one knew when a follow-up was coming. I, like many others, discovered that they were nothing to fuck with years later - specifically, 11 years later, when a friend gave me a 2004 compilation album, “Legend of the Wu-Tang Clan,” that I wore out in my bedroom stereo and which required that I purchase the group’s origin story.
I didn’t enter the Wu-Tang on November 9, 1993, the date that “36 Chambers” was released.
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