Clan in Da Front.

It’s been 20 years since 36 Chambers.  Enter The Wu-Tang, the landmark release from a group of nine rappers from all corners of NYC’s Staten Island, hit the streets in 1993.  No one had ever heard anything like it before.  As a young hip-hop-hater with little respect for the genre, this is the one album that broke through, grabbed me and opened my eyes.

I was a rock-and-roll kid, the fiercely passionate kind of fan that thought my taste in music was the only one that mattered.  If you didn’t believe that The Who invented punk rock, that Led Zeppelin set the stage for hard rock, and that The Beatles were the best thing to ever happen to music, then I summarily dismissed your taste in music.  I adopted the absolutist view that “rap is crap,” announcing it to anyone who’d listen and even going so far as to scrawl it on my desk and binder during my middle-school years.  In my immature, undeveloped mind, I was fighting the good fight for the side of rock and roll.  Like the crusaders before me, I was determined to convert the heathens and heretics, so that they too might see the light.  I sincerely believed I was looking out for their interests, that getting them to understand why The Rolling Stones were so great would be doing them a favor.  Yes, it was unfair and presumptuous; I was naïve and haughty.  But then, at about 14, I began to accept the fact that other people listen to what they want for the same reason I listen to what I want -- because they like it, plain and simple.

My college roommate, freshman year, can be credited for really exposing me to hip-hop music and, in particular, the Wu-Tang Clan’s debut album.  Looking back, I think what initially compelled me to listen, to give rap a shot, was the drums.  I was an aspiring drummer (a rock drummer, of course) and the repetitive drum-patterns that characterized hip-hop were easy for me to follow and to practice; they let me get comfortable with the coordinated movement of my four limbs.  It started with ?uestlove and The Roots but then, with “the blast of a hype verse,” Wu-Tang hit me.  The beats, bookended with bits of dialogue from old kung-fu movies, were built on smooth-old-soul samples but had a rugged, raw quality that really caught my ear.  Naturally, the lyrics began sinking in. 

The Wu-Tang Clan (from left): Raekwon, Masta Killa, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, GZA (crouching), Inspectah Deck, U-God, RZA.

Part of what made Enter The Wu-Tang so appealing was its lyrical content, and the rappers who wrote and spit those lyrics.  Never before had a rap crew counted nine dudes as members.  That these nine dudes each possessed a unique vocal style, both in terms of voice and delivery, was what made the whole thing so fresh.  For example, “Bring Da Ruckus” opens with the high-pitched, hyper-active Ghostface Killah.  He jumps on the track, “tough like an elephant tusk,” tacking a syllable to each two-four snare-crack.  Before too long though, Raekwon busts in, presenting a gruffer, more ominous tone and aura.  Inspectah Deck comes next, with a densely layered flow, followed by GZA and his punchy, metaphor- and simile-laden rhymes.  And each song on the record was like this!  Each rapper took his own quick turn and brought something different to the table (perhaps most notably in the case of Ol’ Dirty Bastard), making the reference to Voltron on the interlude near “Can It All Be So Simple” all the more apt. 

The verses were at turns aggressive, boastful and violent -- all hallmarks of the hip-hop that would follow and be commercially successful.  However, the album wasn’t all about guns and drugs.  Harsh tales of hood-life and laments about growing up in low-income, high-crime housing projects were sprinkled throughout.  And none of them seemed really exaggerated.  When Deck rapped on “C.R.E.A.M.,” that “it gots to be accepted, that what?  That life is hectic,” I believed him.  And at 18 years old, in a dorm room, I felt him.  To a sheltered kid who grew up in suburbia, in one of the whitest states in the country, 36 Chambers was like entering a whole new world.  From the foreign slang to the shockingly gruesome and explicit lyrics, from the realistic (at least to young, uncultured me) skits to the outsize personalities, from the kung-fu-blaxploitation aesthetic to the artfully arranged and constructed beats, I was beyond intrigued.  I was hooked.

Enter The Wu-Tang opened my mind to hip-hop.  Before, I was closed off, like the shorty who “ain’t trying to hear what [Wu’s] kicking in his ear.”  Foolishly, I had judged an entire genre before even giving it a chance.  I soon dove in, consuming material from The Roots, OutKast, Eminem, Souls of Mischief and the Hieroglyphics crew, Dr. Octagon, Common and many, many others.  Also, I suppose it goes without saying that I dug into the solo projects of the entire, extended Wu-Tang Clan.  These were the days of Napster, when a dorm-denizen with a high-speed internet connection could sample hours of new music on a whim.  So I did -- “I got with a sick-ass clique and went all out;” I was “out for the gusto.” 

But still, all praise is due to Wu-Tang.  Twenty years ago, nine rappers (some of them real-life cross-town rivals) came together to put their stamp on hip-hop, changing it and the music industry in the process and eventually shattering my senselessly-erected walls.  And to this day, 36 Chambers is influential -- you can hear echoes of it on all sorts of contemporary stuff.  It still resonates, it still moves and inspires.  Hip-hop-heads and critics alike still respect it.  NPR, a bastion of self-satisfied, white-bread media, even applauds it.  Indeed, as ODB would famously shout on the album's 1997 follow-up, “Wu-Tang is here forever, motherfuckers.”