#Wu tang clan videos update#
#Wu tang clan videos skin#
#Wu tang clan videos crack#

By the time Rae himself has dispensed “the witty unpredictable live shit” and left the intoxicating beat to ride out, it’s a bonafide Wu-banger. “I’ll be trapped by sounds, locked behind loops”, relates Ghost, and you can’t blame him for being mesmerised by the Abbot’s backdrop, a soaring juxtaposition of Black Ivory’s I Keep Asking You Questions (1971) and the Sweet Inspirations’ Why Marry? (1973). Opening with a Scarface sample of Tony Montana barking at Alex Sosa, Criminology is a typically cinematic cut from an album that perhaps rates as RZA’s most cohesive production package. None of which is to suggest that OB4CL, in reality a tag-team effort between Rae and Ghostface Killah, could ever be duplicated: the duo’s slang alone – a dense mix of everything from Five Percenter terminology to, er, idiosyncratic insults like “flowerpot head” – is as colourful as the plastic on the now legendary “ Purple Tape” edition of the album (itself inspired by the drugs practice of visually distinguishing one’s product).

#Wu tang clan videos crack#

5 Raekwon – CriminologyĪrguably the best of the Wu’s first run of solo sets, Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx was, upon its 1995 release, undoubtedly the most influential, popularising the crack narratives and mafioso aesthetic that would dominate east coast hip-hop in the album’s aftermath: Jay-Z took on the mobster role for his debut Reasonable Doubt, OB4CL guest Nas ran with the Nas Escobar alias bestowed upon him, and Biggie styled himself after Frank White from Abel Ferrara’s The King of New York.

#Wu tang clan videos update#

Instead he scores with his trademark unhinged personality – a grimier, more dangerous update of Flavor Flav’s court jester template – and a crazy, drunken style that staggers between fire-eyed urgency and barely there slovenliness. Whatever his adherence to the Five Percent Nation teachings favoured by the Wu and many of their hip-hop predecessors (the line “Ason, I keep planets in orbit” references both the rapper’s Five Percent moniker and the movement’s use of the sun to symbolise the black man, viewed as a personification of God), ODB is stretching it when he claims to “drop science like girls be dropping babies”. 4 Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Brooklyn Zooīuilt around an agitated sample from Bobby Ellis’s rocksteady staple Step Softly, the late ODB’s gloriously aggressive 1995 debut solo single finds him stepping anything but softly on the track.

Where earlier rap icons Big Daddy Kane and LL Cool J had come undone with their saccharine forays into romance rap, the Ticallion Stallion successfully showed us his sensitive side without taking off his Timberlands. And just like Meth’s relationship, the track (in both of its remixes: this version overseen by RZA which accompanied the heavily played video and the radio version handled by Puff at the top of his game) worked in the face of all obstacles.

#Wu tang clan videos skin#

With co-star Mary J Blige (who’d also lend her soulful pipes to Ghostface Killah’s All That I Got Is You the following year), offering a haunting interpolation of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s 1968 duet You’re All I Need to Get By, Meth pays tribute to the low-maintenance love of his life, a down-since-day-one type who still revs his engines ( “I got a Love Jones for your body and your skin tone/ Five minutes alone, I’m already on the bone”) and who‘s loyal enough to dress demurely if he’s ever incarcerated. Blessed with a husky, blunt-addled voice, agile wordplay and rugged good looks, the MC had spread his street-corner charisma liberally across Enter …, notably on his own, self-titled solo track, and this 1995 hit perfectly harnessed his rugged-yet-smooth appeal.

That Meth was the first member of the Wu to release a solo album – 1994’s The Tical – was hardly surprising.

Released in May 1993 on Loud Records after a DIY pressing the previous year earned the crew a Killa Bee buzz, the Wu’s opening salvo – featured on their instant classic album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) – was the perfect east coast antidote to Dre and Snoop’s crisp G-funk or, as GZA would put it, “the dirtiest thing in sight”.ģ Method Man ft Mary J Blige – I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need to Get By (Razor Sharp remix) With eight distinctive voices (an incarcerated Masta Killa had yet to sign up) ravaging an RZA track powered by that trusty trumpet glissando from the JB’s The Grunt, quotable lines abound, from Method Man’s playful Irene Cara impression to GZA’s bitter takedown of his unappreciative former label Cold Chillin’ and the wider music industry henceforth “a mountain climber who plays an electric guitar” was the de facto stereotype of the clueless A&R. From the second Inspectah Deck attacks his opening verse ( “I smoke on the mic like smokin’ Joe Frazier/ The hellraiser, raising hell with the flavour”), it’s easy to see why the clued-up radio caller at the song’s start is desperate for a repeat fix of the debut single from the mysterious, kung fu-crazy Staten Island crew.