Black History Music Pt. 27
In celebration of Black History Month, the Ear Candy Update intends to celebrate landmark recordings by black artists that have shaped the collective consciousness, mentality, and sense of cool the world over. Next, Wu-Tang Clan's "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)."
This is hip hop's Avengers assembled. Each member is fully capable of standing alone, by why do that when it's so much more fun together?
This is what happens when a practical joke among enough people to field a baseball team goes too far. This baseball team is loaded with charisma, style, and enough lyrical dexterity to murder Shakespeare in a rap battle. That's not a joke. The research is in.
Disregard all previous expectations about hooks and smooth production. This is just straight bars. It's purposefully grimy and completely informed by Kung-Fu flicks. Track after track, verse after verse, these lunatic, Kung-Fu loving, MCs turned hip hop upside down on its ears, ass, and neck. Nothing sounds like them - before or since. They stand together as the single most unique group in history, never duplicated or even imitated. It's so dense with lyrics and super-stylized Staten Island slang one needs an annotated dictionary to piece this together.
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once defined prose as "words in their best order," and poetry as "the best words in their best order." According to Tom Moon, hip hop could then be described as the "best words in their best order over the best beat." If that is indeed the case, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) ranks in the all-time canon as a kaleidoscopic masterpiece that leaves me dizzy with excitement after each listening.
This is what happens when a practical joke among enough people to field a baseball team goes too far. This baseball team is loaded with charisma, style, and enough lyrical dexterity to murder Shakespeare in a rap battle. That's not a joke. The research is in.
Disregard all previous expectations about hooks and smooth production. This is just straight bars. It's purposefully grimy and completely informed by Kung-Fu flicks. Track after track, verse after verse, these lunatic, Kung-Fu loving, MCs turned hip hop upside down on its ears, ass, and neck. Nothing sounds like them - before or since. They stand together as the single most unique group in history, never duplicated or even imitated. It's so dense with lyrics and super-stylized Staten Island slang one needs an annotated dictionary to piece this together.
"En garde. I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style."Upon many, many, MANY listenings, this is really classic, early hip hop updated for a modern era. In the plainest terms, it's wall-to-wall battle rhymes, bragging and boasting, and storytelling.
"Started off on the island, AKA ShaolinOr...
Niggas wilin', gunshots thrown, the phone dialin'
Back in the days of 8 now, making a tape now
Rae gotta get a plate now
Ignorant and mad young, wanted to be the one
Till I got (Blaow! Blaow! Blaow!) felt one
Yeah, my pops was a fiend since 16
Shooting that 'that's that shit!' in his bloodstream"
“Merciless like a terrorist hard to captureThough each member of the Wu was largely unknown at the time, each attacked the microphone with their own identifiable character. Each flow, each unique rhyme scheme, arrived on the steady current of RZA's characteristically dark production. Music writers around the world are contractually obligated to use the word 'grimy' when describing it. Make no mistake, there's a sophistication in it. It's shockingly simple. Why take away from the fireworks these MCs were capable of spitting?
The flow changes like a chameleon
Plays like a friend and stabs you like a dagger
This technique attacks the immune system
Disguised like a lie, paralyzin' the victim
You scream as it enters your bloodstream
Erupts your brain from the pain these thoughts contain
Movin' on a nigga with the speed of a centipede
And injure any motherfuckin' contender”
The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once defined prose as "words in their best order," and poetry as "the best words in their best order." According to Tom Moon, hip hop could then be described as the "best words in their best order over the best beat." If that is indeed the case, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) ranks in the all-time canon as a kaleidoscopic masterpiece that leaves me dizzy with excitement after each listening.
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