Say what you will about the Wu. In fact, I will say something: their first album is one of the top five hip hop albums ever created. After that they put out various product from excellent, like Liquid Swords and ...Cuban Linx..., all the way down to piss-poor, like Bobby Digital and Heavy Mental. I have always said Wu-Tang Forever would have been a classic album if they had gotten rid of the dead weight like the first track and "Black Shampoo" and only put the one album's worth of outstanding songs on there. In fact, I may just create my own Wu-Tang Forever single-album using the power of CD burning technology.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Say what you will about the Wu-Tang Clan, but they are essentially marketing geniuses. Or were at one time. They branded themselves with the awesome "W" logo that my boy Don C has proudly tattooed on his arm. (In fact, can we get a pic of that, Mikey?) The used to have the perfect knack for releasing their solo albums: just when you were getting sick of the last one, they would crank out the next one. They did it like that for about 3 years.
But this song is exactly why they are genius, for two reasons. One, they get the most marketable of their MCs (yes, that includes ODB) and have him put out a very catchy, but dirty rap song. Dirty meaning grimy. But the real genius is the prelude to the song. Since the Wu was trying to pimp out their brand, they had to have a hook, and their hook was that they had 8 MCs, all (well most) talented, and they had this mystique about them. But since this was the single, it would be the most played of their songs at first. So what do they do? They run down all 8 members of the Clan right off the bat, so you know exactly who you're dealing with.
Anyone who knows this song knows the timeless intro of "From the slums of Shaolin, Wu-Tang Clan strikes again, the RZA, the GZA, Old Dirty Bastard, Inspektah Deck, Raekwon the Chef, U-God, Ghostface Killah and the Method Man..." And usually when any of us recite the eight members of the Clan, we do it in that order. Genius. (And I don't mean GZA.)
Clip is loaded when I click bang dang
A Wu-Tang slug hits your brain
J-U-M-P jump and I thump
Make girls rumps like pump and Humpty Hump
Wow, the Shaolin style is all in me
Child, the whole damn isle is callin me
P-A-N-T-Y-R-A-I-D-E-R mad raw I don't cry
Meaning no one can burn or toss and turn me
Ooh I be the super sperm
Chim chimmeny chim chim cherie
Freak a flow and flow fancy free
Now how many licks does it take
For me to hit the Tootsie Roll center of a break
Peep and don't sleep the crews mad deep Wu-Tang
Fadin motherf**kers like bleach
So to each and every crew
You're clear like glass I can see right through
You're whole damn posse be catchin em all cause you vic'd
and ya didnt have friends to begin with
3 comments:
Good to see the Wu finally make an appearence, although this track wouldn't have been my first choice.
B - I'll work on getting that pic. Also, help a brotha out. How do you add links in like the one you did ith "Doc C" where it would take you to my blog? I tried something in my most recent blog and it didn't quite work.
You did it right. The way you did the "Transformers" and "Tom and Jerry" stuff. Came out fine. You just have to highlight the words you want to turn into a link, then click on the picture of the globe with a chain link on it. Then just copy or type in the name of the site you want to link to. But your latest blog did it fine. What you want to do is get rid of the [li] tags that come before the links because they add bullets. Just delete those and republish it.
Rock!
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