In the early 90s, RZA was busy assembling a crew of nine MCs from New York (including himself) with a plan for world domination. By the time the collective’s second group album “Wu-Tang Forever” smashed to the top of the US charts in 1997, transitioning out of what would be known as the “First Wave” of the Wu-Tang Clan, RZA the musician had vaulted himself straight onto any Mount Rushmore of hip hop producers. His vision of the capabilities and possibilities for several of his lyricists saw him reimagine hip hop music a couple of times over, spawn burgeoning sub-genres and remould the vocabulary of the scene. The term “Wu Banga” entered the lexicon for any track featuring multiple of RZA, GZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, U-God, Inspectah Deck, Masta Killa, Method Man and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard, not to mention numerous affiliates of which Cappadonna, today a paid-up member, was the most prominent. Using a base definition which includes at least three of the aforementioned figures on any track, I have attempted here to do right by what I would consider the ten most vital, powerful of the Wu Bangaz. In truth, you could do a follow-up list of ten more of a barely less certified quality, and maybe I will one day!
TRIUMPH
From Wu-Tang Clan – “Wu-Tang Forever” (1997)
1997’s “Wu-Tang Forever” was the commercial peak for the collective, a furious crescendo of hype ultimately dead-stopped by one of the first and biggest examples of prioritising bloat over bounty in the hip hop genre. The album’s lead single inverted that formula, infamously clocking in at almost six minutes with no hook and still generating the white hot radio energy which powered that very same promotion. Opening with yet another of the finest verses in the Inspectah Deck arsenal (and one of the Wu’s most unforgettable starting gun bars: “I bomb atomically, Socrates philosophies/And hypotheses can’t define how I be dropping these/Mockeries, lyrically perform armed robbery/Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me”), RZA launches a relentless, climbing orchestral payload which almost banishes any memories of the rickety beats which birthed his legend. Everyone except ODB, who briefly plays hypeman, is unchained on the mic. This is as savage but controlled an example you’ll ever hear of blowing up on your own terms, without compromise. It is a panoramic showcase of a group at the peak of the powers they would never quite recapture. To a man, the Wu’s finest mix testament with the wisdom of superior civilisations, referring incessantly to pestilence, warfare, slums and other contemptuously human delights, but never better summarised than when Raekwon’s voice is encompassed by static in another of those debatebly accidental studio watermarks he seems to magnetise so proficiently; “delegate the God to see God”.
GUILLOTINE (SWORDZ)
From Raekwon – “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…” (1995)
This towering cut from Raekwon’s glimmeringly crafted, certified-A classic “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…” is perhaps the most devastating of all Wu-Bangaz. The ominous, fluttering beat is signature First Wave RZA, parked equidistantly between the basement grinders he had specialised prolifically in and the new expansive atmospheres he was now mastering. The Wu-Tang tag is never as spine-tingling as when it opens this masterpiece; “allow me to demonstrate the skill of Shaolin, the special technique of shadowboxing”. Inspectah Deck sounds almost breathless to get on the track and then explodes all over it (“Poisonous paragraphs smash your phonograph in half/It be the Inspectah Deck on the warpath/First class, leaving mics with a cast/Causing ruckus like the aftermath when guns blast”), somehow leaving enough beat for Ghost, Rae and GZA to attack, and boy do they! This track enshrines the ultimate yield from RZA’s strategy of making the Wu’s elite rappers compete with each other for beats and studio time. Picking a best lyric from this is a thankless and indeed senseless task, loaded as it is with some of each MC’s finest quotables. Ghostface is at his stream-of-consciousness best, Raekwon richly details street life in another laureate-worthy performance (complete with that lubricious misspeaking of “stamina”, and when he declares “go to bat with 50 other niggas on the other side of the map”, the way his pronunciation rolls almost sends spittle flickering into the eardrum). Length-wise, GZA’s contribution is nearly an epilogue, but harnesses the magic of his “Liquid Swords” opus, hurling naught but poison darts, a clinic of flow and form. “The land of the lost/Notorious henchman from the North/Striking niggas where the Mason-Dixon Line cross”. Then we’re out. This is iconography on wax.
C.R.E.A.M.
From Wu-Tang Clan – “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” (1993)
In terms of appearances from Wu members, this is the leanest track on this list. With Raekwon and Inspectah Deck verses either side of Method Man on his regular hook duty, this could be a low key affair. However, once again, the elements involved combine to fashion something of grand import. Lifting the opening piano tinkling from The Charmels’ “As Long As I’ve Got You” was about all it took for RZA to craft one of the most haunting loops in hip hop history, although to call it haunting suggests a certain deftness of touch. As feathery as those keys sound, they sear into the consciousness of the golden age hip hop fan, just as deeply as Meth’s seemingly simple but endlessly repeatable chorus. Cash Rules Everything Around Me is the eternal manifesto of hip hop, a genre as assimilated by capitalism as any other and which continues to struggle every day with that identity. The motto is out of necessity rather than desire, as these two verses document the harsh reality of being young and black in a New York City of 25 years ago (Rae: “I grew up on the crime side/The New York Times side/Stayin’ alive was no jive”). Like Common’s madly underrated “Chapter 13 (Rich Man vs. Poor Man)”, the track evidences how to celebrate the acquisition of capital in a tasteful manner, even as a necessary condition of mere survival. Deck, pacing himself hard to let the message slam, gets the final word on one of the most instantly recognisable and truly iconic tracks of hip hop history. “Leave it up to me while I be living proof/To kick the truth to the young black youth/But shorty’s running wild, smoking sess, drinking beer/And ain’t trying to hear what I’m kicking in his ear/Neglected for now, but yo, it gots to be accepted/That what? That life is hectic”.
HEATERZ
From Wu-Tang Clan – “Wu-Tang Forever” (1997)
This may seem like a surprise inclusion ahead of some of the much-acclaimed tracks vying for a spot on the list, but one of only two productions not laced by RZA here is titanic enough to warrant inclusion on its own. The way his understudy True Master flips “Giving Up” by Gladys Knight and The Pips into a monumental, skyscraping siren, with a seriously understated bass throb, makes it sound more like it came from time itself than any studio; you can imagine it wailing out at the storming of the Bastille, the completion of the Pyramids and the assassination of Julius Caesar. There is an additional unique feel to this track on this list also, in that it features a stack of supposed undercarders within the Wu roster, with the exception of Raekwon, closing as it does with U-God and Wu affiliate Cappadonna. Rae still steals the limelight from a technical perspective, with a sublime display of assonance and internal rhyming (“Cream redeemers, name your God Ukarema/Shout out Medina, federaloes Noxzema/Me, jury cleaner, Million Man March screamers/Rae Cartagena, cut your joint, Wolverin(e)”; bordering on the surreal) although Deck runs him close by reaching for his preferred gunpowder. When it comes to overlooked tracks, this is one of the deepest of deep cuts. “Hot like Pop Tarts/Aim me at the charts!” is Capp’s calling card on this one.
WINTER WARZ
From Ghostface Killah – “Ironman” (1996)
I’ve singled out Inspectah Deck a lot in this piece, and every noose drop he releases across these cuts haunts Wu heads with the possibility of what might have been. Fanatical followers of the collective know that not one but two basement floods in the early 90s destroyed a significant quantity of RZA’s recordings, torturously depriving us of a planned First Wave Deck solo album. Even the title of his eventual, much-delayed 1999 debut “Uncontrolled Substance” screams classic, though the completely reworked material was not up to the standard. A dreamy exercise in alternate history though it may be, this is one of the biggest recording travesties in music to me, and it is hard to think that mythical album would have been anything but plutonium grade judging by yet another fireball verse here. “Chrome tones hear the moans of Al Capone/Gun-pow! to the dome and split the bone/Wig blown off the ledge by the alleged/Full-fledged, sledge RZA edge”. On his own solo tilt here and hot off his co-headline role on Raekwon’s seismic debut, Ghost is already at work cementing his eventual status as the Wu’s most prolific and celebrated lyricist. As Deck does, he makes masterful use of pausing (subtly; this is Ghost after all!) to cut lines in half and switch the rhyme schemes on this track, a technique of incredible poetic and aural value. This is all before Cappadonna snaps, searing home with the longest and surely most furious verse of his career, which makes up for a lack of technicality with sheer passion (“My repertoire is U.S.S.R./P.L.O. Style got thrown out the car/And ran over by the Method Man jeep” is a highlight). All this over a tingling, twisted, burrowing circus melody from RZA and drums which skitter and tick savagely over a blustering low end seemingly syncopated to the percussion by dark magic; elements which comprise one of my favourites of his productions.
4TH CHAMBER
From GZA – “Liquid Swords” (1995)
It’s probably better that we don’t know which circle of the underworld RZA had to reach down into, and what he had to do to gain access, in order to resurface with this beat. Talk about the sum of its parts. Every sound on this beat flows together irresistibly, creating a chaotic, densely sinister tapestry, from the writhing keyboard, the stomping bleeps, that Halloweenish central melody to that jack-knifing riff of static which pulsates up and down viciously. It is mirrored every inch by the line-up of all-stars on the mic, who each turn in performances so supercharged that the drums may constitute a sample of the very corpse of hyperbole thumping down on the lawn, so difficult is it to convey the absolute wizardry on display here. GZA even fires off a punning one line encapsulation of his producer’s entire oeuvre; “RZA shaved the track, niggas caught razor bumps”. This may well be the perfect Wu Banga; certainly it contends for the very pinnacle of all that is the hip hop genre as an artform and philosophy. “Liquid Swords” is quite possibly the strongest lyrical album of all time, with GZA exemplifying a style so surgical and economical that it seems gleaned from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” more than a study of any MC. Look at some of these thunderbolts he fires off; “disciplinary action was a fraction of strength/That made me truncate the length one tenth”. “Watch me blow him out his shoes without clues/Cos I won’t hesitate to detonate a short fuse”. Killah Priest, who contributes one of hip hop’s best ever tracks to the album (the legendary “B.I.B.L.E.”) also appears here alongside Ghost (“Ironman be sippin’ rum out of Stanley Cups”) and RZA himself, turning in one of his own most biblical verses (“the Ebola virus, under the reign of King Cyrus/You can see the weakness of a man right through his iris”). There’s little justice to be done to the track other than by hearing it.
DA MYSTERY OF CHESSBOXIN’
From Wu-Tang Clan – “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” (1993)
Especially when combined with its instantly iconic video, this is as game-changing a track as is contained on the group’s colossal debut album. The flickering, otherworldly production, modelled on martial arts scores, such a critical tenet of RZA’s sublime aesthetic (brilliantly displayed by employing sword swipe sound effects as editing on the video version), is eye-of-the-storm perfection ripe for him to unleash his elite crew onto. The result is a slaughterous, marvellously exciting canvass of meticulous rapping which profoundly displays the diversity of RZA’s lyrical direction of the group. Ol’ Dirty Bastard shines here in his distinctly oddball way (“Rappenin’ is what’s happenin’/Keep the pockets stacked and then hands clapping and/At the party when I move my body/Gotta get up and beeeeeeeeee somebody!”), as does Masta Killa’s abstract sermonising, Ghostface’s high-intensity breakneck braggadocio (“Speaking of the devil, psyche!/No, it’s the God; get your shit right/Mega trife, and yo, I killed you in a past life” or alternatively “Yo, nobody budge, while I shot slugs/Never shot thugs/I’m running with thugs that flood mugs”), Meth’s soon-to-be-signature cameo as a hypeman on steroids, the grit-strewn authenticity of Raekwon, the chainsaw-precision of Inspectah Deck (“Don’t talk the talk, if you can’t walk the walk/Phoney niggas are outlined in chalk”) and even the dastardly flow of the oft underrated U-God. Long before Burial managed to ensnare the very essence of the London Underground with his Stendhal syndrome-inducing, night-dwelling beats, this track was the sound of the darkest of New York Subway corners, the underground rocketing into a hyperrealist mainstream. It is a challenge for anyone to articulate the black mass of atmosphere, ability and visionary conceptual formation encased within this track, even a quarter of a century later.
WU BANGA 101
From Ghostface Killah – “Supreme Clientele” (2000)
If we consider “Wu-Tang Forever” to be transitionary between the phases of the Wu-Tang catalogue, then this is the only Second Wave track strong enough to make my final cut. It is the de facto seal on Ghostface Killah’s second solo opus, the only of the Wu’s sophomore gambits to live up to the legend of its preceding album. Laced by Mathematics, the wintry beat is smooth like caramel, cooked up as if by some suave-ass aurumancer. Only GZA seems to outshine Inspectah Deck in his individual appearances throughout this article; “no surprise, double disc touched five/Those elements kept environments colonised/With the high-flying, death-defying flow like the rebel/Right there but you’re one light year from my level”. Ghostface’s signature storytelling is at its comedic and observational finest here. “Slapped the pastor, didn’t know Pop had asthma/He pulled out his blue bible, change fell out his coat/Three condoms, two dice, one bag of dope/Oooooh! Rev ain’t right!” Raekwon is busy dropping only luxurious gems, while with Masta Killa it’s all about the usual change of pace and the critical enunciation; “Kicks to your face/Shots to the body that shake like the bass/I’m Ghostfaced up, military styled down”. Chronologically this is the last track on this list, and you would have to search very carefully beyond Ghostface solo joints to find Wu collective cuts of this calibre again.
WU-GAMBINOS
From Raekwon – “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…” (1995)
This is one of the most towering contributions to the Wu-Tang mythology, and edges the preceding track on the same album, the also staggering “Ice Cream”, for that very reason. This monumental, apocryphal track, as much as any on the album, sent Mafioso shockwaves reverberating across the genre, pulling even Nas into its gravitational pull, so that when the one album legend returned to try to follow up “Illmatic” a year later he was referring to himself as Escobar and detailing the high risk, high reward lifestyle in similarly granular depth. Looping, skeletal piano fresh from RZA’s lab provides the launch pad. Method Man flaunts his sixth sense for serious ear candy; “who come to get you none/They want guns/I be the first to set off shit, last to run/Wu roll together as one/I call my brother son ‘cos he shine like one”. Unforgettable. His style was very often the most graspable of the Wu MCs, with that buttery smooth flow which seemed effortless, and every other couplet here is hype-worthy. This is before a stacked line-up of Rae and Ghost, RZA and Masta Killa turn things out. Any self-respecting Wu head wants to hear RZA on his own shit spitting “the grand exquisite imperial wizard, or is it?/The RZArector come to pay your ass a visit/Local biochemical, universal giant; the black general/Licking shots at Davy Crockett on the bicentennial/At the millennia two thousand/ Microchips, two shots of penicillin goes up your adrenaline”. Let’s let the lyrics speak for themselves.
PROTECT YA NECK
From Wu-Tang Clan – “Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” (1993)
The quintessential Wu Banga. RZA’s production is dank, dirty, utterly filthy, jarring back and forth with the aid of the outstanding use of blasts of sonic sqwauk to cover up curses, even on the album version (the rare unedited cut would become known as the “Bloody Version”), making it a rare example of a clean version which arguably hurdles its unsullied counterpart, if only for its contribution to the track’s Bomb Squad-esque wall of sound. Only Masta Killa is fully absent, and only Masta Killa fails to grace the track with jewels. A countdown of the ten best lyrical moments from this song would inherently involve stiff competition for inclusion, and might even come out entirely constructed from GZA lines (“First of all, who’s your A&R?/A mountain climber who plays an electric guitar/But he don’t know the meaning of dope/When’s he looking for a suit and tie rap that’s cleaner than a bar of soap”). Inspectah Deck drops a lyric which crosses over so hard that I once heard Jon Gruden on Monday Night Football paraphrasing it to describe Antonio Brown! “Terrorise the jam like troops in Pakistan/Swinging through your town like your neighbourhood Spiderman”. The track is packed with catchphrases like ODB’s; “Shame on you when you stepped through to/The Ol’ Dirty Bastard straight from the Brooklyn Zoo!” Vocally the whole thing sounds remarkably natural, in appropriately sharp contrast to the twisted shards of the bombed-out aural metropolis which fancies itself a beat. The entire composition is head-spinningly dense, especially as it locates the Clan prior to any of their solo breakouts. The track really distills not just this collective but the whole hip hop genre down to its purest form, with the basement production, the never-ending carousel of battle-ready verses, the sheer white-knuckle excitement of an entirely new constellation of artists who seem to have emerged from the creative womb as fully-formed soon-to-be legends. There are few tracks as visceral in any of the canons you may care to group this cut into.
Roads To The North 