Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers) - Wu Tang Clan (1993)

ideated from: My birthday looms, so I’m just serving up some comfort food this week. All stuff that lives rent-controlled in my head.

If there’s some kind of score for how important I think an artist is vs how often I have acutally written about them, I think Wu Tang is near the top of the list. It’s not just that there’s an entire universe of dirty, hazy, shambling beats and rhymes making up modern hip hop. There’s also the idea of using a crew to launch individual careers, keep similar sonic and visual branding, maintain a self-built mythology, and create whole new dimensions of what’s possible.

This first album is the manifesto, the source of all of this. It’s silly, dirty, scary, and raw. It might sound a bit clownish, but it had the impact of a 50-ton bomb on the rap game and nothing has ever quite been the same since.

The alchemy of so many different approaches, all of whom love some good wordplay and are trying to outdo everyone else, makes for a electric brew.

Tracks I Liked

Shame - one of the best rap songs of all time. fight me.

Da Mystery Of Chessboxin - another perfect mix of humor, skill, and sampling

C.R.E.A.M. - slowing down to be a little more serious

Bonus content: from (probably well past) the tail end of the “white dudes are allowed to say the N word” era, we have System of A Down’s killer version of Shame