And then Baby U, he a psychopathic, he a psycopathic killer
And then we got the Ol' Dirty Bastard, 'cus they ain't no father to his style
Ghostface Killah, you know what I'm sayin', he on some "now you see me now you don't"
And then the RZA, he the sharpest motherfucker in the whole clan
And the GZA, the G is the genius, he's the backbone of this whole shit
No top list will ever be perfect and different people will always have different personal opinions on what should be and what shouldn't be on it. RateYourMusic's top 100 is no exception. Being an amalgamation of different users ratings, I'd even go as far as to say that I doubt that there's any single person out there who could chalk their top 100 down into these few 100 records.
Don't get me wrong, they all definitely deserve the recognition (oh well, some less than others I guess), but there's a lack of variation and a close-minded view that's focused mainly on alternative forms of rock music, with Brittish progressive rock being the most dominant force and different kinds of alternative forms of rock music falling in behind. The most recent addition in terms of release date is Radiohead's 2007 release, In Rainbows, with records from this ongoing decade not coming in until somewhere along the 100-200 range.
So why am I talking about this during the review of The Wu-Tang Clan's most famous release? Well, because this is, at spot number 40, the highest ranked hip-hop record of this chart, and one of six that are on here. It's a shame seeing hip-hop fall into irrelevancy on this chart, despite being a mainstay alongside pop music in today's mainstream, having grown incredibly fast despite being a quite recent genre of music (if we see its time of inception as the 70's which I choose to do).
It's hard to find a hip-hop record from the so called "Golden Era" of the 90's that has the same iconic status as Wu-Tang's Enter The Wu-Tang. A case could be made for A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory or Nas' Illmatic but do they really reach the magnitude of Enter The Wu-Tang, the debut from the 10-man collective from New York?
The album starts of with the sampling of the kind of Japanese-centered samurai movies that came to be sampled throughout different iterations of the groups career, becoming something of a trademark and something that would be affiliated with the groups even when referenced through other kinds of media (I'm thinking of the scene in Kill Bill 2 when Uma Thurman watches the film that's sampled on Liquid Swords, a Wu-Tang sideproject).
Simple, repetitive boom-bap beats where the key to the groups instrumentals. It's something that they pull of flawlessly on some parts of the record and it's something that doesn't quite click with the different flows of the members of the group at other times. The opening track Bring Da Ruckus is centered around snapping fingers as a snare over an otherwise almost sterile beat and is probably the best example of when it doesn't work as well as intended. The snap-snare is something that returns on different tracks throughout the album, with different kinds of success at different times.
Beat-wise I find this album often times lacking. It doesn't achieve a lot with its instrumentals like its contemporaries (Illmatic, Ready To Die, Liquid Swords), and its strengths mostly lie in the talents of the rappers and in how influential the record came to be seeing to atmosphere, themes, rapping styles, even looking at the different skits and samples of the record.
However there are a couple of beats that still today sound just as unique and well done as they did back in 1993 when this was released. Beats like the almost Memphis-sounding Can It Be All So Simple with its smooth, laidback feel and the sampled female vocals stands out an incredible amount from the otherwise minimalistic, darker and more aggressive beats on the record. Outside of that one you have the iconic C.R.E.A.M. with the ghetto-sounding glossy piano, feeling heavily 2Pac and West Coast influenced, aswell as the low-key Shame On A Nigga or even Tearz.
Despite the fact that most beats aren't very strong on their own two feet, they still stand as influential and possibly quite original at the time. It's a style that has been replicated through the years which would come to leave the original ones sounding a bit worn and out of style which while unfortunately detracts from my enjoyment of them, doesn't detract from the credit that the group should get for them.
Enter The Wu-Tang and The Wu-Tang Clan's legacy is still an expanding story. While Enter The Wu-Tang might be the groups most well known work as the Wu-Tang Clan, most of their relevancy today comes from different kinds of side projects and solo efforts that would be made during the time after. Records like Liquid Swords, Only Built 4 The Cuban Linx, Supreme Clientele and Return To The 36 Chambers would come to be praised to an almost equally high level during the years to come.
The story of the Wu is still being written today as most of the members are still alive today, bar Ol' Dirty Bastard who passed away over a decade ago. While there haven't been a record that's quite been on par with their best works during these past few years, you'd still best believe that there might be a masterpiece left in a member or two, as most people are aware: Wu-Tang Ain't Nothing To Fuck With.
Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Wu-Tang Clan
7.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
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