HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) – Wu-Tang Clan

1993 was a pivotal year in hip-hop, with a grittier style of rap from the East Coast, taking a stranglehold to the game, a style, lyrically and sonically, that was grimier and heavier than it ever had been before. New York was obviously the birthplace of hip-hop and had run things in rap since the beginning but having some of its shine stolen by the killing grounds of L.A and the Bay Area on the West Coast, it was up to a more rugged approach back East that changed things back up, doing so in the hardcore way that personified the never say die attitude of the Big Apple.

This shift to an even harder style of hip-hop was typified by groups like Brownsville, Brooklyn’s M.O.P (whose 1993 single How About Some Hardcore summed it up) and Onyx from South Jamaica, Queens (whose riot inducing anthem Slam was a massive hit in 93 and brought moshpits into hip-hop with a remix of the track with New York hardcore titans BIOHAZARD). With that shift in sound and attitude, it was the perfect time for another New York group to come through and completely take over and it was from a group from Staten Island (aka Shaolin) and it didn’t get grimier and heavier than the nine man strong WU-TANG CLAN.

Having made waves the year before with the Protect Ya Neck single, the scene was set for WU-TANG to drop their debut, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and it blew up and blew minds with its rugged energy, dope rhymes and focussed creativity, garnering an army of fans in the process. That army of fans didn’t just consist of hip-hop lovers but a horde of fans of hardcore, punk and metal who were hungry for the harder side of rap and dazzled by the crews hardcore rhymes by all nine members and the head knocking beats by Wu-Tangs leader RZA.

Along with RZA, WU-TANG consisted of GZA , Ol Dirty Bastard, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, Method Man, U-God and Masta Killa and all nine MCs had many skills as lyricists, of which we can identity from start to finish, and would all go onto have successful careers as solo artists and as members of the group. Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) starts with the rabble rousing call to arms Bring Da Ruckus and it is immediately evident what makes this album beloved by so many and why it opened the group and hip hop in general to a new audience entranced by the hardcore imagery and attitude that WU-TANG gave.

Tracks on the album like C.R.E.A.M, Da Mystery Of Chessboxin’ and Method Man were all high octane and titanium hard rap anthems that still get regular rotation thirty years on and as Inspectah Deck aka the Rebel INS states on Protect Ya Neck, “The rebel, I make more noise than heavy metal”, it definitely rang true with heavy and alternative music fans. With each of the WU-TANG members being such gifted emcees and characters in their own right, it was like having nine lead singers in the same group and in Ol’ Dirty Bastard, hip-hop had its very own OZZY with legendary tales of hell raising from the very beginning. As well as Wu-Tang gathering music fans of a more extreme nature, heavy bands were also quick to embrace the hardcore nature of Shaolin’s finest.

MACHINE HEAD talked of their love of WU-TANG on MTVs Headbangers Ball and in interviews and when the band played at Donington in 1995, Robb Flynn dropped lyrics from the party starting chorus to the WU-TANG track Method Man during their rendition of A Thousand Lies at the festival while BIOHAZARD frontman Evan Seinfeld dropped Ol Dirty Bastards lyrics from Da Mystery Of Chessboxin’ into the start of Love Denied when they played Holland’s massive Dynamo festival in the the same year.

As WU-TANG grew bigger in the following years, their links with rock and metal grew bigger as the band toured with RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE and ATARI TEENAGE RIOT, playing at Lollapalooza alongside METALLICA, RANCID and SOUNDGARDEN, and it has to be said that WU-TANG live shows were and still are as rowdy and energetic as any hardcore or metal gig and they also had RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS’ John Frusciante play on a song. As Nu-Metal took over the world, WU-TANG were fully embraced there as well with Method Man guesting with LIMP BIZKIT on Significant Other‘s (1999) N 2 Gether Now and linking up with SYSTEM OF A DOWN on the Loud Rocks compilation, which had other match ups like Sick Of It All with Mobb Deep and Big Pun with INCUBUS, although listening to the WU-TANG/SOAD collaboration Shame and hearing Serj Tankian saying the N-word constantly is understandably problematic and you wonder why he was allowed to get away with that. All of those mixing swift the rock and metal world, only raised the profile of WU-TANG, but it all goes back to their debut album to see where all their grit and energy came from.

Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is not only a pivotal release for the group and hip-hop in general but also as an entry point for those who love their music harder as this album, along with another pivotal 1993 album in Black Sunday by Cypress Hill introduced a generation raised on metal and punk to a style of hip hop that came from a different place sonically and culturally but in terms of attitude and energy, they were exactly the same and Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) captured that feeling perfectly. With this album, WU-TANG CLAN announced to the world that they had arrived, and from then on in, it was a world they would go on to conquer, something they are still doing to this day.

Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) was originally released on November 9 1993 via BMG/RCA Records

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