Nobody else in hip-hop – not Dre, not El-P, not Kanye – has achieved anything comparable, before or since. To mastermind one objectively insta-classic hip-hop album is impressive RZA banged out five of them in two years. First up, in November 1994, was Method Man’s debut album, ‘Tical’ in March 1995, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s ‘Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version’ in August 1995, Raekwon the Chef and Ghostface Killah’s ‘Only Built For Cuban Linx’ and finally, in November 1995, GZA’s ‘Liquid Swords’.Įach album was markedly different from the other three, and yet they all shared enough stylistic DNA – martial arts aesthetics, abstracted soul samples, god-tier rapping, recurring Wu catchphrases – for them to form a cohesive, cultish whole. Give me five years, and I promise that I’ll get us there.’” Which – fair play – is exactly what he did, by masterminding, producing and guest-rapping on a breathless run of Wu-Tang spin-offs, all arriving within months of each other and each more acclaimed and astonishing than the last.
“I said, ‘I want all of y’all to get on this bus. “I used the bus as an analogy,” RZA told NPR. RZA asked for unquestioning trust and loyalty from his bandmates, in order that he might execute the most ambitious hip-hop game plan ever devised. RZA and his eight Wu-Tang bandmates – Method Man, GZA, Ghostface Killah, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Raekwon the Chef, Masta Killa and U-God – were just warming up. And that’s what Wu-Tang was: a home-cooked meal of hip-hop.” “If you keep eating McDonald’s, you gonna get sick,” explained RZA during a 2013 NPR show celebrating 20 years of ‘Enter The Wu-Tang’. Bored by the glossy production and pop-radio pandering that pervaded hip-hop at the time, RZA had opted to march as far as he could in the complete opposite direction – and rap fans’ ecstatic reaction to the Wu’s lo-fi griminess validated his instincts entirely.
Masterfully executed by rapper-producer RZA, the album was hip-hop’s ‘Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols’ – a wilfully raw, artfully aggressive statement of intent that instantly made everything in its vicinity seem bloated and old hat. If ‘Protect Ya Neck’ got the hip-hop world’s attention, Wu-Tang Clan’s debut album, 1993’s ‘Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)’, cemented them as the most game-changing rap act since Public Enemy emerged in the mid to late ‘80s. It sounded – still sounds, in fact – completely bat-shit mental.
It was simultaneously rougher and more technical than anything that had preceded it a chorus-free juggernaut of jagged beats, esoteric slang and freewheeling flows, all filtered through an impenetrable martial-arts mythos. Produced by Wu-Tang mastermind Robert ‘RZA’ Diggs on a scraped-together budget of just $300, released independently and accompanied by a scuzzily lo-fi video, ‘Protect Ya Neck’ landed on hip-hop like a demolished tower block. This December marks the 25th anniversary of ‘Protect Ya Neck’, the debut single by nine-strong New York rap collective Wu-Tang Clan.
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