eMusic Review 0
Enter The Wu-Tang is the Velvet Underground & Nico of ’90s hip-hop a glorious muddle that made it safe not to merely color outside the lines but to scribble in the margins. Like a punk-rock response to Dr. Dre‘s baroque gangsta-pop arrangements, the raw-no-trivia Wu-Tang Clan emerged from out of nowhere at the tail end of 1993 or seemingly out of nowhere, as their home borough of Staten Island hadn’t contributed much to rap beyond the pillow-soft Force M.D.’s. Hip-hop was becoming lush enough to sample the THX woosh, but Wu-Tang producer Robert “RZA” Diggs was dead-set on keeping it ugly, borrowing dust-worn VHS clips of kung-fu flicks. The Wu was equal parts cinema and free-association mind-bending poetry and skits that detailed drug sales, crime narratives and blood on the hot concrete so the sonics had to be grimy, lo-fi, flickering, grim, real. The sound of their drums alone, rusty thwomps mutated by distortion, would push once-popular rollicking James Brown breaks into the old school, setting the gnarled tone for a half-decade of New York rap. And, oh yeah, there were nine nine! phenomenal MC’s without a bit of deadweight in the bunch, each one with style as… read more »
