Culture

Wu-Tang Clan: From 36 Chambers to 8 Diagrams

by Jarrett Martineau | November 28, 2007 at 03:48 pm

731 views | 5 Recommendations | 1 comment

I've been a fan of Wu-Tang since I first heard their 'straight from the slums of Shaolin' (Staten Island) blend of kung-fu rap mythology, claustrophobic soundscapes, and narcotic hip-hop narratives back in 1993. But my enthusiasm for this disparate crew of hip-hop heavyweights has faded over the years, as the group's sonic cohesiveness has waned and their collective spirit has splintered.

Tom Brehain, scribe of the Village Voice's influential hip-hop music blog Status Ain't Hood, offers a seductive review of their new record, 8 Diagrams, that suggests a potential return to form for the Wu.

Under the guiding hand of RZA's mastermind production, it's a definite possibility -- and I'm encouraged to hear that they've abandoned the clichés of rap's current commercialism and embraced a twisted "a total immersion in weed-fried mythology and willfully obscure tangled-up black psychedelia."

Sounds promising...now where can I hear it?

8 Diagrams is about the millionth Wu-Tang album to start with a dialog sample from a kung-fu movie, but this one is different from those that came before.

[...]

8 Diagrams is full of dizzy musical left-turns: underwater Lee
Hazlewood guitars, riotous out-of-tune horn-stabs, thrilling ominous
spaghetti-western whistle-loops. RZA's bragged that "The Heart Gently
Weeps" is the first rap song with a legally-cleared Beatles sample, but
even with a guest guitar-noodles from a Chili Pepper and George
Harrison's son, the track still sounds like burbling mud. Only about
half the tracks even bother with hooks, and virtually none of them have
any recognizable structure at all. After a few listens, I've only just
begun to absorb the actual lyrics; the pure auditory experience of
hearing these guys going hard on such bugged-out tracks has been more
than enough to keep my brain spinning.