Wu Tang Clan - The Clan's Howl Terrorizes the West

Like a "Rashomon" handed down by the gunslingers of "Pulp Fiction" (or the "samurai" of "Kill Bill"). Black or white, like the two faces of the Tao. Like tonal music and hip-hop. Like the precepts of self-awareness (the Shao-lin of the far East and the Muslim-faith Five Percent Nation) and the perverse logic of the Staten Island "ghetto" (six of the Clan's eight official members have criminal records, there are FBI files on their alleged involvement in arms trafficking, and plenty of rumors circulate about less-than-alleged "dangerous" friendships with certain affiliates of the Gambino family). The principles of the Zulu Nation and the bottom lines of corporate business ("Cash Rules Everything Around Me").

When it comes to the Clan, every story has at least two sides. Every profile has its double. Every impression is hybridized by its opposite. The only thing we can be certain of is that the arrival of the New York group changed the world of hip-hop forever, vastly increasing artists' control and creative independence over their own careers and elevating the concept of the crew to a true collective communion of the aesthetic, the musical, and, not least, the business and multimedia dimension.

Blending ruthless slices of lived experience with literary references (the hardboiled school and the "noir color" of Mosley and Pelecanos, the comics of Miller and O'Barr or those of Marvel), cinematic ones (Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, the Leone/Kurosawa of "Yojimbo"/"A Fistful of Dollars," the famous Bruce Lee-style kung-fu films, the Shaw Brothers' swordplay pictures and the minor classics of blaxploitation) and musical ones (extended instrumental sampling in cross-fades, the episodic, conceptual cut of songs linked to one another in building a true audiovisual scenario, as happens with film soundtracks), their masterpiece, Enter Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), has over time risen to the status of the quintessential "hip opera" of the '90s.

Its successor, Wu-Tang Forever, rather than simply emphasizing and "popularizing" the stylistic legacy of the debut, marked the transition of street culture (and black culture) into a recording, synergistic, commercial phenomenon of a scale and nature unprecedented for the genre. This came with the launch of a merchandising operation so far-reaching as to rival the phenomena of white music (the Beatles, the Stones or even Kiss), a clothing line ("Wu-Wear"), and a genuine entertainment company self-managed by the group's members (kicking off an endless string of lawyers and management disputes) capable of ranging from music production to film and television, and even planning an entire line of video games (duly inspired by "boyz in tha hood" scenarios as well as the old martial-arts beat-'em-ups) for the Play Station.

A subliminal, winning brand that carried their recording dynasty beyond the ragged, uneven horde of the members' solo efforts (The W), proudly planted the flag of hardcore at the very peak of the rise of new-generation rappers and producers (Iron Flag), and proved stronger than losses (Ol' Dirty Bastard) and defections (U-God, Cappadonna) in crossing the finish line into the present day, thanks to the latest testament to an unusually coherent musical vision and style (8 Diagrams).

Scenes of life (and struggle) before the Clan: ⟦Q1⟧

In the beginning there was the Force Of The Imperial Master. Scanning through the telescope the Kantian dust of the New York scene, which by the late Eighties consisted mostly of reluctant nebulae, asteroids and meteors crossing paths and occasionally aligning, but more often colliding, around the few fixed points of the old school (Public Enemy, Rakim, EPMD, Schooly D, KRS One, Big Daddy Kane), we pick up the three founding members of the Clan: RZA "The Razor" (Robert Diggs), his cousin GZA "The Genius" (Gary Grice), and Ol' Dirty Bastard (Russel Jones), busy putting together a group whose very name sits at the crossroads between the Hollywood "feuds" of George Lucas and the "ascetic" inspiration of the Land of the Rising Sun.

The group's style is still raw (recordings from that period would later surface in the project titled "All In Together Now"), but thanks to the talent of its individual members it manages to catch the attention of a few industry heavyweights, including the massive Biz Markie, whose promises of a record deal turn out to be nothing but bitter mirages.

Though driven by fierce ambition and backed by a certain reputation on the imposing local scene, the crew dissolves amid the disillusionment and indifference of the major music networks.

Already nursing a well-earned contempt for "brothers who take advantage of other brothers," "the razor" and "the genius" are fully intent on fighting the ghettoizing fraud of a system that feeds on new American Bandstand-ready acts rather than sixteen-bar purists. Each on his own, in 1991, they finally land their long-awaited debut: two singles, "Oh Prince Rakeem" and "Oh My Deadly Venom" (a kind of novelty take on the most brazen black romanticism, in which his sarcastic streak and skill at splicing cuts already shine through), and an album, "Words From The Genius" — all of which pass equally unnoticed.

Following a script that blends urban legend with entrepreneurial pragmatism, the plot thickens at this point: one evening, like so many others, the three friends run into each other again purely by chance and, one way or another, decide to pick up right where they'd left off, plotting a new, final assault on the record industry — win or die trying.

RZA makes the fateful promise to the other two: if they bought into his revolutionary plan for economic, aesthetic and musical self-management, he would lead them to the top of the hip-hop world, with a gradual, proportional sharing of the profits and overall control of the whole operation.

Handling every stage of the musical process directly and in full, from creation to distribution (negotiated with a major label under strict terms), is as ambitious as it is forward-looking a goal, and it will make RZA, de facto, the leader, producer and spokesman of the new group.

The plan calls for recruiting the purest, most uncorrupted and most promising talents of the New York underground, in order to build a true collective: a tight-knit squad of fighters willing to march in a single direction.

The search covers all five boroughs, and it isn't long before the roughly same-age Method Man (Clifford Smith), Raekwon (Corey Woods), Ghostface Killah (Dennis Cole), Inspectah Deck (Jason Hunter), U-God (Lamont Hawkins) and Masta Killa (Elgin Turner) turn out to be the chosen ones. But first they need a moniker, a branded mark so distinctive it would wipe out any chance of imitation, leaving nothing but scorched earth in its wake: by filtering together the precepts of Eastern meditation, the legacy of militancy in Muslim political organizations such as the Five Percent Nation, the aesthetic of martial-arts films — chief among them "Shaolin and Wu-Tang" — and the urban mythology of the "black-Asian" warrior, as faithful to the code of the street as the old samurai were to Bushido, the maze of references and lineages is brilliantly cracked.

By the end of 1992, the Wu-Tang Clan is already ready to go into action.

“Enter the Wu Tang”: my Hip-Hop will rock and shock the nation…

The year of grace 1993: an entire contingent of American troops, sent to Somalia to settle the war between rival clans, is practically wiped out by local forces; serial killer Jeremy Rifkin is arrested for the murder of seventeen people in the suburbs of New York; Marc Andreesen develops the forerunner of World Wide Web browsers (Mosaic); the first genetically modified vegetable (the Flavr Savr tomato) hits the market. Bill Clinton has been in the White House for less than a year — a JFK with a few more rolls of fat and the ever-present scrutiny of the media — and his "new frontier" is the one made up of ghettos ostracized by twelve years of "Reagan-Bushism," of free healthcare and public schooling.

The revival of democratic ideology naturally runs through Hollywood, where films like "Philadelphia," "Schindler's List," "Carlito's Way" and "America Oggi" turn the critical blade on old and new social wounds alike.

From the weapon of criticism to the criticism of weapons: gangsta-rap has already headed down the road of sexy-dimwitted parody, Snoop Dogg's “Doggy Style”, or that of tragic, neo-romantic lyricism, Tupac Shakur; the world of hip-hop, already turned upside down by Dr. Dre's G-Funk, is ready for a new revelation, the definitive one. Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is the cornerstone of the '90s and the start of what would come to be called the East-Coast Renaissance.

Hence the imprimatur on at least two fundamental strands in the genre's subsequent development.

The first, in the short-to-medium term, is that of hardcore or street rap, a sort of east-coast counterattack to Californian gangsta rap, which would go on to find more faithful champions in figures like Onyx, NAS, Jay Z, Notorious B.I.G. and Puff Daddy. The second, looking further ahead, is a form of aesthetic and literary hyperrealism (which would find its greatest exponent in Eminem), a polyphonic, narrative and cinematic conception of the work, of the lyrics and of the mc's personality, manifested in the alternation of free direct and indirect speech, in the mediated interpretation of one or more alter egos. Doppelgangers and masks of every kind, dramatis personae the author can step into and out of at will, rising above mere chronicle and autobiographical detail.

From a conceptual standpoint, RZA moves his rappers like characters in a film, each given a specific role and a distinct personality. Characters who tell stories, overcome obstacles, celebrate victories and wage a perpetual battle with themselves and the outside world, suffering its setbacks and absorbing its rules into a genuine code. Picture the scene: on one side the refined “swordsmen”, Ghostface Killah and GZA, with their intricate metaphors drawn as much from “black cultha” as from “pop cultha”, and their disarming ability to vary the metrical scheme within a single verse; on the other, the “gunslingers” Raekwon and Inspectah Deck, with their hard-boiled scenarios and a bleak, raw vision of existence, immune to both repentance and “gangsta” self-satisfaction; in one corner Method Man, the street jester, author of modern “griots” delivered in a husky, velvety, seductive flow; in the opposite corner Ol' Dirty Bastard, the wildcard, the sociopath, an unsettling allegorical mask somewhere between Stagger Lee and John Wayne Gacy by way of a homicidal clown; in the middle, RZA, the director continually issuing directives and proclamations from his mic/megaphone, the shahadah preacher, the grand musical vizier who, under his protective wing, introduces splendid supporting players such as the baritone-voiced U-God (in prison for most of the recordings) and the lightning-fast Masta Killa.

Hyperrealist and almost detached, lived in the third person through his most representative characters, exactly 130 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Clan paints a visceral, paradoxical fresco of the cultural condition of young Black men at the dawn of the '90s, caught between the remnants of a militant consciousness inherited from their fathers, the contradictions of literacy and welfare programs, brushes with the criminal underworld, the brazen praise of soft drugs, an anti-bourgeois stance (even as the new Black bourgeoisie steps into the world of music and business) and the fatalistic awareness that life in the ghetto is a dead end for their people.

Musically, the album effectively invents hardcore rap: RZA turns its obvious technical and production limitations (the album was produced, recorded and mixed in one of New York's cheapest studios, with vocal parts often recorded simultaneously by the various mcs, so that verse assignments were the result of genuine concerted “battles” among the eight) into a dense, dark, biting, corrosive sound, built on thunderous, sinister volumes, rusty beats as sharp as nails on an old crate of explosives, cut short by sudden jazzy inserts, Morricone-esque harmonies, worn-out funky loops basking in a bath of post-industrial acid, and almost raga-like Eastern digressions. The systematic sampling of memorable lines from martial-arts films, which sum up the Clan's philosophy in effective slogans, and the use of vocal skits, which relay uncensored foul-mouthed or jokey dialogue from “behind the scenes”, give the record an unprecedented work-in-progress structure, a sort of happening that is both open and controlled, at once atmospheric and narrative, gripping the listener like a sequence from a postmodern film score (bringing to mind the dreamy minimalism of Jarmusch, or a citational cut-up in the style of Tarantino).

“Bring Da Ruckus”, “Clan In Da Front” (featuring GZA alone) and “Wu Tang Seventh Chamber” are pounding, stark, essential anthems, enlivened by the vertiginous “pass the mic” dynamic and by RZA's subtle harmonic perversions (clashing sword sounds, piano chords, industrial feedback).

The richer, more elaborately arranged “Da Mistery of Chessboxin'” (with the whole Clan grappling amid the psychedelic coils of the sitar, pounding doo-wop, and gems from U-God: “Raw i’m gonna give it to ya with no trivia/ Raw like cocaine straight from Bolivia/ My hip-hop wil rock and shock the nation like the Emancipation Proclamation” and Ol' Dirty Bastard, “Here I go, deep this flow/ Jacques Cousteau could never get this low”), “Shame On A Nigga” (its meter built on a jazzy Thelonious Monk phrase, and a personal apotheosis for Method Man, Ol' Dirty Bastard and Raekwon) and “Protect Ya Neck” (their first single, their most old-school cut) set the stage for the brooding, cool-soul introspection of “Can't Be All Simple” and “C.R.E.A.M.” (the two tracks that would climb highest on the singles charts: the latter, in particular, darker, fiercer and almost noir in Raekwon and Inspectah Deck's rhymes, would even top the dance music charts).

A pulpy, ironic, feral worldview, that of the Clan, from which any reference to female figures is pointedly absent (so much so that some critics have read the jokey “torture” skit at the start of “Method Man” as a kind of homoerotic sublimation of repressed desire within the cloistered walls of the most run-down “blocks”), and which reaches its emotional peak in “Tearz” (a march for bass and Roland keyboard), where the fighter's sarcastic sneer and stoic indifference dissolve in RZA's verse, his delivery nearly breaking into tears as he recalls his little brother's murder, which happened, for trivial reasons, right before his eyes (“Memories on the corner of my mind/ Flashback I was laughing all the time/ I taught him all about bees and birds/ But I wish if wish I had a chance to sing this three words…”). Raekwon, for his part, will offer a cynical closing line: “Ater the laughter I guess come the tearz”.

Wu-Tang Killa Beez: the first swarm of solo works

The success of Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is slow, steady and relentless, eventually reaching number 41 on the Billboard chart and going platinum in 1995 (to date, total sales exceed four million copies). The W would leave an indelible, definitive mark on the genealogy and stylistic conventions of rap music through to the end of the Nineties. And it would allow individual members to negotiate prestigious solo deals: the gap between the Clan's first and second albums saw its main members embark successfully on a series of acclaimed side ventures (“the greatest winning streak in rap history”), all released under the Clan's banner (the web of featured guests and collaborations is extremely tight) and produced/supervised by RZA. The most commercially successful (number 4 on Billboard and a Grammy Award) is Method Man's “Tical” (1994), which recasts the rhythmic texture of Enter Wu-Tang in a dance-pop key; the most critically acclaimed is Ghostface Killah's “Ironman” (1996), still considered the best “off Clan” album of all time. Among the others: the reckless Ol' Dirty Bastard on “Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version”, which pushes the lyrical and musical content of the mothership album to hardcore extremes; Raekwon's “Only Built For Cuban Linx…”, which brought the caricatured, criminological tropes of “mafioso rap” into vogue (so much so that the Clan's members rebranded themselves “Wu-Gambinos” for the occasion) and, with its emphatic, orchestral, classicizing production, already hints at the stylistic evolution RZA had in store for the Clan's second record; equally steeped in dark references to New York's organized-crime underworld is GZA's “Liquid Swords”, although in his case it wasn't a debut. Also worth noting is the release of “6 Feet Deep” (1994) by Gravediggaz, a project pairing RZA with Prince Paul, Frukwan (of Stetsasonic) and Poetic, a cornerstone of the horrorcore subgenre (Natas, Triple Six Mafia), marked by grand-guignol atmospheres, slasher-movie samples and heavy-handed emphasis.

Cash still rules: “Wu-Tang Forever”

The product of a lavish budget, by then befitting their acclaimed status as “rap superstars”, and of expansionist ambitions worthy of a multinational corporation, the blockbuster Wu-Tang Forever (a double album running over two hours) descends on the hip-hop world with the roar of a battleship in full war footing. Although an experiment of this kind had already been attempted the year before by Tupac with “The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory” (1996) and then echoed by Notorious B.I.G.'s “Life After Death” (1997), neither had come anywhere close to a display of such sweeping proportions.

Musically, the record is a genuine personal tour de force for RZA, who reworks the distinctive traits of the first album (the explanatory samples from kung-fu films, the narrative continuity between tracks, the caustic, booming beats) while vastly expanding the range of arrangements (from sixties soul to acid folk, from crypto-Morricone-esque minimalism and the orchestral grandeur of John Williams to the cinematic suspense of Bernard Herrmann and Howard Shore) and the layering of instrumentation (sung parts, string and horn sections, flangers, acoustic guitar arpeggios, synths and mellotron).

In other words: from hardcore to pomp-core. A compositional vein that is often baroque, dizzying, overblown, expressed in long, purely instrumental codas, analog edits and sudden restarts that leave little time to tell where one track ends and the next begins. An elegant turn toward often triumphalist, eclectic, self-satisfied tonalities, which on one hand make the songs accessible even to those with little familiarity with rap's minimalist foundations, but on the other, aided by their ostentatious polish, often end up smothering the group's more street-level, roaring soul.

The greater metrical scope available to the various mcs leads to a substantial, careful redistribution of contributions, benefiting above all the "supporting players" U-God and Masta Killah (as well as the debut of Cappadonna, the ninth "unofficial" member of the Clan), while the lyrics, even denser and more virtuosic than in the past, are focused chiefly on the self-glorifying celebration of those who, after a long apprenticeship, know they've now reached the peak of success, without neglecting autobiographical glimpses and violent snapshots of ghetto hell captured from different angles, depending on the characters' point of view, as in a Spike Lee film.

While observing the contradictions of their city from a millionaire's suite at the Plaza, the Clan's men are keen to bear witness to the integrity of their roots, the transience of worldly glory and the relativity of moral judgments. And they do so through daring juxtapositions, free associations, fragments of current events, sports and crime news, memories blending irony, boasting and introspection, as well as a heavier preaching streak inspired by the teachings of the Five Percent Nation (especially in RZA's spoken-word sermons, like the opening "Wu Revolution" or the intro to side two).

So we move from the most self-indulgent, solemn, lavish tracks like "Reunited" (with their first chorus sung entirely by soul backing singers), "For Heaven's Sake" (on the dark, unmentionable sides of success), the more stripped-down "It's Yourz", the mega-single "Triumph" (which would prove a massive hit without conceding anything to commercial clichés: a war-movie-style climax lasting almost six minutes, nine verses, one for each member including Cappadonna, and not a single chorus or repeated line) or the orchestral, almost divinatory "Heaterz", to the never-dormant street-level belligerence of tracks like "Cash Still Rules" (its fierce disillusionment soothed within a soft synth-soul fleece), "Little Ghetto Boys" (introduced by a skit in which the guys snort cocaine and are chased by a policewoman; where stories of poverty and oppression mix with references to the Gambino family and mafia style, while metallic, incisive beats merge into an orchestration worthy of the Moody Blues), "The City" (Inspectah Deck's one-man show, inspired by scenes of urban guerrilla warfare, a harmony chased by almost klezmer-like violins) and the relentless, grating "Severe Punishment".

Elsewhere, social themes ("A Better Tomorrow", about the Black prison population and the partial demystification of the gangsta lifestyle, bitterly summed up by U-God as "cause the good die young and the hard die first") mix with heartfelt lyrical and musical tributes to the forefathers of the old school ("Older Gods", the twin tracks "Bells Of War" and "Duck Season") or to themselves ("Deadly Melody", featuring another future affiliate, Streetlife, is a goldmine of samples drawn from "Enter Wu-Tang", from which it also borrows the signature "pass the mic" trading of verses). Otherwise, "Impossible" is an effective summation of the contradictions and ambitions running through the whole album, a track blending RZA's declamatory fervor, anti-Reagan barbs, celebration of success achieved, a closing sermon against firearms (by Raekwon), Tekitha's soul vocals and even a sample lifted from Beethoven's "Pathetique".

In "Maria", on the other hand, the feminine universe makes its first appearance in the Clan's imagery, though still in a caricatured, half-serious, half-comic way, a hodgepodge of foul-mouthed stories worthy of a Gerard Damiano porn flick, stirred up by Ol' Dirty Bastard, who can give full vent to his insatiable satyriasis on the following "Dog Shit", a gem at times almost pow-wow-like, scarred by a stinging theremin lifted wholesale from William Castle's films; and, last but not least, the extraordinary collective odyssey of "Hell Windz Staff", driven by a raga/acid-folk arpeggio.

In addition: a girl-group-style track sung entirely by Tekitha, "Second Coming", and a U-God solo, "Black Shampoo", suspended between exploitation-flick sexy-soul and Black romanticism with explicit nods to Barry White, which come across more as classy divertissement than mere filler.

Wu-Tang Killa Beez part 2: the saga continues

Forged in the media crucible stemming from the tragic events and the presumed East-West feud of 1996-98, Wu-Tang Forever achieves even greater success than its predecessor, selling 650,000 copies in its first week and debuting straight at number 1 on the Billboard chart (the latest estimates credit it with roughly 8.3 million copies sold overall). The album successfully concludes the "five-year plan" devised by RZA, who from this point on inaugurates a collective management of the Clan's interests, progressively opened up to the other members and their most trusted collaborators.

At the same time, an ever-growing volume of products (musical and otherwise) tied to the "Wu" brand hits the market. The Staten Island collective is by now a multi-sector enterprise generating staggering revenues worldwide.

A mixed-fortune season thus opens, marked by a second round of solo works: "Supreme Clientele" by Ghostface Killah, "Tical 2000: Judgment Day" by Method Man, "Beneath The Surface" by GZA, "Bobby Digital In Stereo" by RZA, "Nigga Please" by Ol' Dirty Bastard, "Immobiliarity" by Raekwon, along with the debuts of U-God, "Golden Arms Redemption", and Inspectah Deck's "Uncontrolled Substance". All of them assisted by RZA's disciples, 4th Disciple and Mathematics, or by outside producers like Trackmasters and the Neptunes, and released between '99 and 2000. Productions that were sometimes blessed with considerable audience success (Meth and Ol' Dirty) and critical acclaim (Ghostface) but which, for the rest, paid the price of excessive overexposure and a slight dip in popularity for the artists tied to the Clan.

But it's also a season marked by an unbroken string of legal troubles, connected in particular to the self-destructive behavior of Ol' Dirty Bastard, who, through accusations and provocations, waged a fierce and senseless duel with police and courts, managing to get himself locked up about ten times in the space of a year on the most varied charges. Legal problems that, in some cases, extended to the entire Clan organization, as when, in 1999, they were investigated by the FBI on suspicion of running an arms-trafficking operation between Staten Island and Steubenville, OH, charges that were eventually dropped for lack of evidence.

Oooh, “The W”, is back in tha muthafuckin’ hood

Having survived the Millennium Bug and unaware of what 9/11 would bring. The year 2000 is a significant date, a watershed, a turning point in the evolution of rap music. On one hand, there's the fullest recognition yet of its commercial potential, courtesy of MTV and the record labels most oriented toward the mainstream; on the other, the overexposure of its melodic components, at the expense of its rhythmic and conceptual ones, achieved mainly by assimilating danceable harmonies: Caribbean, Jamaican, Latin American and neo-pop.

There's the improbable success of Eminem ("The Marshall Mathers LP", 2000), the ne plus ultra of the cinematic hyperrealism pioneered by the Clan and a "white trash" and working-class offshoot of hardcore (in line with the Detroit tradition), and the mixed-race rap (rock, soul, funk), progressive and intellectual, of Mos Def ("Black On Both Sides", 1999). White singer-songwriters increasingly use it as a bolstering backdrop for their troubadour-style syncretism, while groups that transcend it head toward the avant-garde and abstraction: the "digital hip hop" of Antipop Consortium ("Tragic Epilogue", 2000), the eccentric arrangements and hybrid structures of Aesop Rock ("Float", 2000), on the verge of breaking out, the dreamlike, minimalist take of cLOUDDEAD and the cybernetic, industrial one of Cannibal Ox.

In the eye of this aesthetic and commercial storm, the Clan imposes on itself a rather impressive self-discipline. True to its own style, giving up flights of fancy while deftly dodging the risk of repeating itself.

The W works out a strict musical diet compared to its predecessor's "will to power": raw, knotty, jazz-oriented in the vein of reportage-like, crepuscular atmospheres, free of any overloaded, declamatory emphasis. Not a "return to the 36 Chambers", then, but a mature, essential, reflective album. And yet another great showing from RZA, who grinds out street vestiges, jazz-hop cadences, unprecedented samples (among others Albert King and the Electric Prunes), gems of Stax Soul (on "I Can't Go To Sleep" "Sir" Isaac Hayes himself steps in), more skits and fewer sung choruses, further blurring the conceptual scaffolding and the interaction among the various mcs/characters in order to grant them greater thematic and expressive freedom, a different breathing space for the collective epic. On this front, unfortunately, we must note the near-total absence of Ol' Dirty Bastard, who at the time of recording was locked up in California for a parole violation, and who would record his only contribution using the phone inmates use to talk to visitors.

The gap in inventiveness and personality is filled, more than by the decent addition of Cappadonna, by four top-tier featured guests: Nas, Red Man (already credited, alongside Method Man, on 1999's "Black Out"), Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes. It's the first time the Clan has opened up so massively to outside collaborations.

The quality of the album remains high nonetheless: standout tracks like "Careful (Click, Click)" embrace the unexplored without forgetting what they know best, between glitchy glimpses over Morricone-esque backdrops, street recrudescences (so much so that the song's video was banned for inciting violence) and blaxploitation-style interludes; "Gravel Pit" (with Meth Man and Ghost unleashed), acrobatic soul-jazz driven by constant shifts in tempo and tone, perhaps one of the best tracks ever, "Hollow Bones", soft and sensual, with a sample of Syl Johnson's defiant "Is It Because I'm Black", "Conditioner", a sumptuous reclaiming of the loop from "Tearz", with Snoop Dogg and Ol' Dirty Bastard (extraordinary!) lounging on the beat like an adorable pair of pimps.

There's no shortage of nods to the distant past, "Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)" (the only collective battle track on the album) and "Let My Niggas Live" (with the verbal violence of the Raekwon/Inspectah Deck pairing crowned by Nas), nor to the more recent one, the solemn, orchestral "I Can't Go To Sleep", with its conscious, pacifist spirit, bolstered by an almost trip-hop backing track and a great "political" verse from Ghost, who retraces the deaths that have dotted the recent history of the "American system", and "Do You Really (Thang, Thang)".

Far less convincing, on the other hand, are the rasta/reggae-leaning efforts of "One Blood Under The W" (Masta Killa's first solo turn) and "Jah World", both featuring Jamaican singer Junior Reid.

Flag Of Our Fathers

The W confirms the Clan's staying power, with excellent reviews and solid sales (double platinum in the US and Canada). But at this point, going against the meticulous planning shown up to then, RZA decides to immediately release a follow-up to their recent effort. "Iron Flag" is their strangest and most controversial album: released in December 2001, almost simultaneously with the solo efforts of Ghostface Killah ("Bulletproof Wallets") and RZA himself ("Digital Bullets"), with no lead single video and no promotional fanfare, it consists of just thirteen tracks (barely fewer than The W, of which it almost seems like the "B-side"), a number well below the hip-hop average of the time. The album would turn out to be the least commercially successful of the saga (687,000 copies) and would mark the financial collapse of their first personal label, Loud.

Musically too, the new work proves highly heterogeneous, housing different souls that often clash with one another, as if the group were once again torn between celebrating their roots and keeping pace with the new phenomena of the 2000s (under the aegis of one of the era's most prominent producers, Trackmasters). A dichotomy that also shows up in the lyrics, which oscillate between a renewed social consciousness, a troubled embrace of post-9/11 (anti)patriotic stances, and the proud challenge thrown down to younger generations—the defiant gesture of someone who fears being overtaken by new waves and seeks solid ground, a steady buoy amid a tide of sounds in which he struggles to recognize himself.

RZA's production sounds less sharp and less tightly controlled than usual, the vocal contributions often inconsistent in quality and tone, and the audiovisual thread on which the Clan's adventures are normally built feels thinner, almost faded into the background (there are no skits, no instrumental interludes, and even the film quotes are kept to a minimum).

The songs, however, are far less disappointing than one might think, and the commercial failure certainly doesn't correspond to a drop in compositional quality: without Ol' Dirty Bastard and Cappadonna, and without anthems on a par with their glorious past, the group still manages to carve out killer tracks like "Rules" (a patchwork of self-references built by scratching old samples from the first album, a celebration of New York pride after the WTC tragedy, explicitly evoked in Ghostface's lines, “Who the fuck knock our buildings down/ Who the man behind the World Trade massacre, step up now! / (…) America together we stand, divided we fall/ Mr. Bush sit down I’m in charge of the war”), "Soul Power (Black Jungle)", an old-school backing track streaked with funk and loaded with blaxploitation references, elevated by the appearance of Public Enemy's Flavor Flav ("Remember me? I'm the man who told you to fight tha power"), a group explicitly paid tribute to also on the splendid "Radioactive (Four Assassins)", which otherwise recalls 36 Chambers, with its mighty beats, martial-arts samples and acidic industrial colorings.

The tracklist is rounded out by carefully measured melodic concessions ("One Of These Days", an ante-litteram "in tha club" setting, ideal for the gangsta "shoot(er)-outs" of Raekwon and Inspectah Deck, "Chrome Wheels", with the wall of synths borrowed from RZA's "digital orchestra" on "Bobby Digital In Stereo", "Dashing Reasons", a close relative of some of Dr. Dre's work) and soul-soaked street graffiti, perhaps a touch less incisive than usual ("In The Hood", with an afro-ragamuffin chorus, "Uzi – Pinky Ring", on old-guard pride and defending one's turf, and "Babies", a gallery of gruesome ghetto stories framed by a jazzy rhythm and danceable counterpoints).

Killa Bees Part 3: even the bees are squabbling among themselves

Thus begins the longest period of apparent calm and détente in the Clan's history. In reality, far too many tensions are smoldering beneath the surface. Between late 2001 and early 2002, the third wave of solo works is announced: Cappadonna's debut, "The Yin And The Yang", GZA's "Legend Of The Liquid Sword", Method Man's "Tical 0: The Prequel", Raekwon's "The Lex Diamond's Story", Ghostface Killah's "The Pretty Toney Album", Inspectah Deck's "The Movement" and Masta Killa's "No Said Date". Sales confirm a downward trend: Ghost's and Masta's records receive excellent reviews but sell far less, Method Man's sells well but is panned by critics and later disowned by the artist himself in a dispute with Def Jam.

But it's only in 2004 that most of the unresolved issues come to a head: while RZA completes the soundtrack for the two volumes of "Kill Bill" (a citational, postmodern epic, an extraordinary work that will lead him to grapple with the music of Sergio Leone's films and to virtually collaborate with some of his idols, like Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrmann), Method Man and Red Man become the stars of a Fox sitcom and later of a film, "How High" (directed by one of Bob Dylan's sons, Jesse); U-God leaves in open conflict with the group, accusing RZA in particular of unfair financial treatment and of having deliberately hindered his solo career; Cappadonna departs with the official reason of "not feeling respected like the other original members" (in reality, the split seems to stem from the discovery that his manager, Michael Caruso, was an FBI informant: stuff not even an episode of "The Sopranos" would dream up).

Then, as always happens in these cases, tragedy courts the absurd: on November 13, 2005, two days before his thirty-sixth birthday, Ol' Dirty Bastard is found dead in the Clan's recording studio, from a heart attack following a heroin overdose. And so one of the greatest rappers of his generation departs, a pivotal figure in the Clan's rise, a man afflicted by a severe form of sociopathy, worsened by substance abuse, who in his final years, in a painful blurring of art and life, had ended up confusing his stage "mask" with real life.

It's a terrible blow for the Clan, perhaps the hardest in ten years of their career, so much so that the collective response from the Staten Island warriors is slow to arrive. And while individual projects continue and multiply (Ghostface releases "Fishscale" in 2006, Method Man "4:21...The Day After", Raekwon announces a follow-up to "Only Built 4..." that will never actually be released, Masta Killa and Inspectah Deck release "Made In Brooklyn" and "The Rebellion" respectively, and even a posthumous Ol' Dirty album comes out under the apocryphal title "A Son Unique"), the fifth Wu-Tang record seems ever more distant. Then, in December 2006, the turning point: Wu-Tang Clan sign a one-album deal with SRC. It will still take more than a year, and several delays, before seeing the fruits of it.

8 Diagrams: Wu’s back to the future?

Direction, stability and prediction. That is, in fact, exactly what the theory of the eight diagrams (passed down to them via the inevitable kung-fu film, "Eight Diagram Pole Fighter") represented for the ancient Chinese. The album is meant, at least in intent, to mark a reconciliation with the Clan's most authentic ethical, aesthetic and sonic roots. A reversible journey through space and time, blessed by favorable astral alignments. The Big Bang of Wu-Tang, fifteen years on, arriving at precisely the moment when, according to RZA, "hip hop needs it most." Which, in practical terms, translates into: minimalism that is at once brutal and elegant, few departures from the concept's script, and tight narrative calibration between individual flourishes and the collective development of a soundtrack. In short: a shorter leash around the necks of his thoroughbreds. Even so: the willing reunion of the original lineup (with the prodigal return of U-God and Cappadonna, and the ghostly appearance of Ol' Dirty on an outtake from the first album) doesn't rule out further disagreements and clashes, which will be behind the album's inevitable delay and the lack of cohesion in some of its parts (Raekwon and Ghostface, exasperated by constant changes in arrangement and disappointed by a production approach that, in their view, fails to capture the essence of the "Wu-sound", will go as far as announcing the seditious intention of making, in the future, an album without RZA; a title will even circulate: "Shaolin Vs Wu-Tang").

The formula behind this “back to the future” move still proves the soundness of its calculations amid the lean, tight grooves of “Take It Back” (an old-school cut built entirely on subtraction), “Get The Out Of Your Way Pa” (flowing between funky bass lines and ghost notes on the ride) and “Windmill” (with the barely intelligible sample of the Tarantino-esque “Bang, Bang” sung by Nancy Sinatra). Nor are there any shortage of Wu-Tang manual-style anthems: the cinematic numbers “Rushing Elephants” (Bernard Herrmann), “Unpredictable” (John Barry-style spy-sound) and “Wolves” (Morricone-esque, featuring George Clinton). Exquisite is the “Campfire” intro (built on the choir kindly provided by Curtis Mayfield), as is the sprawling, enveloping soul-jazz of “Stick For My Reaches” and RZA's slam-pop solo on “Sunlight” (pure B-movie elegy).

The nostalgic effect and the ineffable aura of 36 Chambers surface only on “Life Changes” and “16th Chamber”, a dedication and a posthumous tribute respectively to the old warrior Ol' Dirty Bastard. All very dignified. Even so, the illustrious and superfluous supporting cast (John Frusciante, Erykah Badu, George Clinton, Sunny Valentine and Danhi Harrison, son of George) pays tribute to the lavish promotional fashions of the post “8 Mile” mainstream, irreparably spoiling the potential of a track like “While My Heart Gently Weeps” (whose Beatles reference soon descends into nu-soul treacle) and “Starter”, a sumptuous RZA arrangement smothered by a chorus that even R Kelly would balk at. All to the partial detriment of the urgency and tightness that underpinned the group's first (and best) albums.

In 2008 came Wu: The Story Of The Wu-Tang Clan, a greatest hits collection accompanied by a documentary celebrating 15 years of their career.

A year later the Clan successfully took part in Raekwon's Only Built For Cuban Linx... part 2 project.

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