thread for crowley's wu tang clan opinions and stories

droid

Well-known member
Finished the U-God book yesterday. The first two thirds - mainly about growing up in various projects, drug dealing and prison - is very good. The last third which covers Wu stuff not so great though there's a few entertaining stories. Not too much in it about the music which is a touch disappointing.
 

version

Well-known member
"One story we had was we all was -- even when we was on the road we was still f*cking around, smoking dust and all that sh*t," Rae said. "Some dudes still had habits that was just habits 'cause we was associated with that kind of crowd of n*ggas. Like I said, for every Wu-Tang member, he has his own entourage. That's why we was always so deep. You got nine brothers, you may know ten dudes and you may know eight and you know six, you may be with the normal three that you with, he come with 12. That's 60 n*ggas right there. So everybody had their audience of dudes they ran with. At that time, we was around RZA's crew of dudes. These n*ggas was just hooded out, whatever whatever... One night we was all in the room smoking dust just, 'Boom, boom, boom,'" he continued. "Dust is like that embalming fluid. So we in there blowing. Why me, Dirty, RZA, a couple other brothers from the hood, I think we wound up doing like 900 pushups that day, apiece. We all was just getting on the floor getting it in. Some n*ggas was at like 1,200. We smoking dust, amped up, like, 'Yeah, yeah, c'mon!' I think Dirty did about like 1,100 that night. I did about 950. Mind you, I never did that many pushups in my life. I did so many pushups that Goddamn day that I wasn't even dusted no more. I wiped that sh*t right out my body... That was some sh*t. Dirty, he was an amazing individual. That's one of the memories I can remember 'cause he was the one that was definitely amping everybody up."
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
"Liquid Swords" seperate your feelings from the album people, who else took anything from Liquid Swords other than the idea that all Wu-Tang do is rap about numbers, kung fu movies, and wizard shit?

Wu-Tang were my Kiss, you know, they were my superheroes.

we never got an actual opinion from crowl. i want a full 15,000 word essay documenting your life experience with wu tang. a classic downfall story as you tell us just what they meant to you, all that they offer and then open up to us about the dark years of disillusionment. go album by album. chonological order. no getting sidetracked. just spill your heart out.
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
it's always sad thinking about the people in the 60's who really believed it. there's a quote in the book electric eden where robin williamson says he really thought that money wouldn't exist in 18 months. ever since that time we've never had a culture that believed in itself. all subcultures since knew that 1) they were self-contained, they weren't going to change anything and 2) that they were time limited, that they were fads that would last for a few years before something else came along.

but with wu though... it's hard not to get that feeling like it was supposed to mean more. how can it all have ended wtih rza making 2nd rate tarantino films, method man being a modern day cheech and chong and the gza giving ted talks about chess? wasn't it supposed to be more than that?
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
The weird thing about the world and rappers is we refuse to admit that they're carnies and Wu-Tang has magnificently been blessed by this.

There's something I wanted to say more in response to barty but the post vanished on me so another time.
 

luka

Well-known member
this is something i dont adhere to. i think the carny thing is more ambiguous than that.
i don't think it is a question of authentic/inauthentic. true prophet of the one true faith/charlatan.
 

luka

Well-known member
sometimes people act as entrypoints for something else.
wu tang did that. but capitalism distorts the purpose of these interventions and makes puppets out of the people who were only ever conduits at any event. they have to ventriloquise that moment again and again as penance.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I don't necessarily mean carnies in a sort of vindictive tone of victimology for those who interact with them mind you. They could easily be that (and to some extent, they are hucksters) but I mean more the sort of paradox that they're bound to their characters that should be so blatantly Characters.

It's sort of like the classic Tupac myth where people say he was a normal, rational person but then he played Bishop in Juice and was destined to become that human every minute of his life. People are able to understand that even Method Actors eventually revert to the human being that is playing these characters. DeNiro is not the Mob Boss, Ian McKellen is not the seer, etc. However rappers are inherently tied into notions of authenticity that should be easily dispelled by the fact that they are characters. Slick Rick for example, is a deliberate performer of cartoon roles. The Story Teller, the happy go lucky kid up to no good, etc.

Wu-Tang is astonishingly this because they're Juice Crew fanfiction: Rza is supposed to be Marley, Meth is supposed to be Kane, ODB is a cirmacula of Shante & Biz, Ghost and Rae are sons of G Rap. Likewise, Gza is the prodigy, the whiz kid the way that Craig G and young Tragedy was originally presented which is more directly linked when you remember his Cold Chillin era. It's that ancestry of the Juice Crew that I mentioned way back to Craner long ago in that it's deliberately presenting these rappers as a character, the way you would a Professional Wrestler (Gza gets this, he has the Ken Patera reference, all of Wu-Tang are kids raised on the Bruno Sammartino era of superhuman wrestlers as cartoon tropes) or a circus performer.

Luka's right in crediting it to Capitalism because I have sort of had a large amount of confusion and disdain as to how it's most prevalently the 90s rappers who became addicted to their roles and broke down so massively that they refuse to go away and become civilians the way stars of the 80s eventually did; and it's that their successes are now addictions and punishing their conscience. Capitalism has broken their identities so the persona is the being to some extent.

Still likewise it's baffling that their audience refuse to separate it for Gza especially. You only need to listen to him to know it's a cartoon pseud and why would you rather the cartoon in the spaces where the real thing is appropriate? It baffles me.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Luka's right in crediting it to Capitalism because I have sort of had a large amount of confusion and disdain as to how it's most prevalently the 90s rappers who became addicted to their roles and broke down so massively that they refuse to go away and become civilians the way stars of the 80s eventually did; and it's that their successes are now addictions and punishing their conscience. Capitalism has broken their identities so the persona is the being to some extent.

It isn't capitalism, it's ego. Ego gets solidified through praise - praise feels good, great, brilliant, amazing. It's a downfall of most artists, and probably most shamans and priests and whatever too. The persona has been the being since before money invaded.
 
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