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Musically, my definite favorite is RZA. In terms of lyrics, they all have something interesting to say.
RZA had a flood in his Jersey mansion many years ago and lost over 200 beats. This was around the time that the Wu started making their solo albums. I would have loved to hear those beats.
'97 Mentality is one of my favorite RZA productions.
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
RZA had a flood in his Jersey mansion many years ago and lost over 200 beats. This was around the time that the Wu started making their solo albums. I would have loved to hear those beats.
'97 Mentality is one of my favorite RZA productions.
Yes, I knew he lost a lot of stuff at some point, but I thought it was in a fire. I really liked his soundrack for the film Ghost Dog (where he also has a small but very cool cameo role of a Plainsclothes Samurai :-).
or you could have just said...."Wu-Tang is for the children!"
Maybe my previous response wasn't clear. I mean, yes, they have that slogan for the right reasons too (besides for selling T-shirts :-), but that is a minor part of what Wu Tang is. There is far more to it, for anybody. WTC are by no means naive or specifically child-oriented. If people take WTC as "naive preachy old stuff" compared to contemporary gangsta rappers glorifying crime in the worst possible ways - that puts the matters exactly upside down. Belief in crime as the way of solving problems is ultimately something on a level of a toddler throwing a tantrum (or a 23-year old mental toddler throwing a tantrum with an assault rifle), and the unsurprising outcome of criminal behavior (among both criminal kids and criminal adults) tends to be NOT any form of "cash rules everything", but getting killed for $20. In addition to WTC being for children by way of implied messages, WTC stuff is also incomparably more mature than gangsta rappers.
I am not aware that WTC anywhere depict money worship, drugs, crime, and other elements of gangsta lifestyle as meaningful goals in life (while gangsta rappers idolize all of such things). WTC look at all of that with dead detachment, and show (in the implicit ways in which good artists give life to ideas) that the only things which really matter are in your head.
I am from the 80's school of Hip Hop. Never really got into WuTang or anything 90's really.
WuTang like Brand Nubians and Poor Righteous Teachers are into the 5% thing. Most people don't really know what it is. I took a lot of time studying it and I actually agree with many of their principals but obviously not all.
WuTang raps about the Gods and Earths and Mathematics Etc. Not everyone will get it and to be honest not everyone thinks it works musically.
I love Brand Nubians because they did it with funky beats " One For All ". Even PRT had a decent album. WuTang was mucho hype ....Rakim Big Daddy Kane EPMD Kool G Rap and Polo could rip those guys new "holes" with one spit into a microphone.
I am from the 80's school of Hip Hop. Never really got into WuTang or anything 90's really.
WuTang like Brand Nubians and Poor Righteous Teachers are into the 5% thing. Most people don't really know what it is. I took a lot of time studying it and I actually agree with many of their principals but obviously not all.
WuTang raps about the Gods and Earths and Mathematics Etc. Not everyone will get it and to be honest not everyone thinks it works musically.
I love Brand Nubians because they did it with funky beats " One For All ". Even PRT had a decent album. WuTang was mucho hype ....Rakim Big Daddy Kane EPMD Kool G Rap and Polo could rip those guys new "holes" with one spit into a microphone.
Your Rolling Stones is my Sex Pistols
How old are you? I was 9 when Brian Jones died (my Stones-obsessed babysitter was a teenager), and was 19 when Sid Vicious died... so, am equally on the page with the Stones or the Pistols :-). I got acquainted with Wu Tang actually only around 2000, when I spoke with someone about general awfulness of hiphop, about which I (as a passionate blues fan, and even a jazz fan to the extent to which I can understand it :-) completely failed to comprehend how any normal person could listen to it (I mean to hiphop). Then this someone recommended that I check out Run-DMC and Wu Tang Clan. Well, Run-DMC were still making me want to plug my ears and crawl out of my skin. But regarding Wu Tang, I was actually positively AMAZED :-)... what do you know... :-).
How old are you? I was 9 when Brian Jones died (my Stones-obsessed babysitter was a teenager), and was 19 when Sid Vicious died... so, am equally on the page with the Stones or the Pistols :-). I got acquainted with Wu Tang actually only around 2000, when I spoke with someone about general awfulness of hiphop, about which I (as a passionate blues fan, and even a jazz fan to the extent to which I can understand it :-) completely failed to comprehend how any normal person could listen to it (I mean to hiphop). Then this someone recommended that I check out Run-DMC and Wu Tang Clan. Well, Run-DMC were still making me want to plug my ears and crawl out of my skin. But regarding Wu Tang, I was actually positively AMAZED :-)... what do you know... :-).
Old enough to remember when My 3 Sons was still on TV and The Gong Show rained supreme.
For me the music stopped after the 90's in regards to Hip Hop. People started talking more than rapping. The production was weaker IMO and less creative.
The Dirty South sound saw an uptick in quality IMO then the modern day stuff has an interesting groove to it. I call it the Sizzup sound due to the slow dragging beats. Sizzup I think is the cough syrup some guys drink to get high and make this music.
However nobody really blows me away in Hip Hop for years now.....
Listening to Red Alert and Mr. Magic Mixes on Youtube instead.
Old enough to remember when My 3 Sons was still on TV and The Gong Show rained supreme.
For me the music stopped after the 90's in regards to Hip Hop. People started talking more than rapping. The production was weaker IMO and less creative.
The Dirty South sound saw an uptick in quality IMO then the modern day stuff has an interesting groove to it. I call it the Sizzup sound due to the slow dragging beats. Sizzup I think is the cough syrup some guys drink to get high and make this music.
However nobody really blows me away in Hip Hop for years now.....
Listening to Red Alert and Mr. Magic Mixes on Youtube instead.
Sorry, as I mentioned, I am not normally interested in rap, and don't know anything about it except that I generally don't like it at all, other than Wu Tang. Normally the repetitive samples in the background of hiphop beats irritate me beyond measure, but in case of Wu Tang, they are a real music, and build the characteristic Wu Tang "foreboding" atmosphere. I also like their lyrics which are a clever puzzle with an incredible number of pieces, and their commentary on criminal ghetto culture which they clearly find to be a mixture of pathetic despair and dark comedy, rather than something to dumbly look up to and glorify like gangsta rappers.
Regarding Five Percent, as a 60 year old mainstream white woman I obviously wouldn't know much about a secretive religion-like black nationalist society, I only know what I read in The Wu Tang Manual written by RZA (now that you mention Gods & Earths, I seem to remember from that manual that Earth in Five Percentism symbolizes a woman, right? - so, I probably said it wrong in the initial post that the Old Earth mentioned in C.R.E.A.M was a wise old guy - more likely a wise old woman) - so anyway, I am white and not religious, but what I find positive about Five Percentism in Wu Tang is that it gives Wu Tang a seriously positive moral backbone. For example, in "Protect Ya Neck" when RZA says "yo, chill with feedback, Black, we don't need that... it's 10 o'clock, ho, where the f*** is your seed at?" - it indeed is a solid upright voice of sanity: why get violently worked up about some ridiculous nonsense, and why aren't you ashamed for not even knowing what your children are doing at 10 pm?
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