By Odeisel
This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Wu-Tang Clan’s classic debut, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). The album left an indelible mark on the Hip-Hop landscape. The charm of 36 Chambers comes from its raw essence, with gritty, unpolished production. Old school elements (the Substitution drum pattern appears multiple times) and dusty, unfiltered mixing reflected the album’s grimy subject matter.
Earlier that year, Black Moon’s debut Enta Da Stage and its remixes made big noise on the East Coast, but Enter The Wu-Tang had far more reach. Many sites will hip you to the science behind it, from ODB’s drunken wails on C.R.E.A.M. to the anthemic Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin Ta Fuck Wit to the classic Method Man. But this is a little side story about my minute connection to the album.
City College of New York has a radio station 90.3 FM and they had a Hip-Hop show hosted by a cat named Lamel. Brand Nubian’s DJ Alamo and Big D the Weatherman were frequent guests on the show and I was a frequent listener. I won a contest and went to the studio and became an occasional visitor.
One of the records they played frequently was Tearz, featuring a cat whose voice I remembered from an old video We Love You Rakeem, and another guy Ghostface Killah. Two short stories, one about a dude’s little brother who got murked during a robbery and another cat, Big Mo from the shelter who caught AIDS from unprotected sex..
Tearz was the b-side to Protect Ya Neck and the group was called the Wu-Tang Clan. All I could think of was some karate movie shit, especially with the Shaw Brothers samples in the background. I used to call in for that record every chance I got.
The last guy was the GZA, whose voice I recognized as The Genius who dropped an album a few years earlier on Cold Chillin. My father, who was no fan of rap, brought that CD home along with Kid Capri’s Apollo album. I remembered his skills from a track called Life of a Drug Dealer and was further intrigued.
Eventually Lamel played both Tearz and Protect Ya Neck so much that everyone within the reach of 90.3 started calling in for the Clan. They became a real movement even though mainstream radio wouldn’t be caught dead playing them in the post-Chronic landscape. There was no melody to be found, even with the soul sample on Tearz.
The Clan must have either caught wind of it or had been on the show because a segment from Lamel ended up making the release. The next time you listen to Enter The Wu-Tang, that radio interlude after Protect Ya Neck is Lamel from 90.3. In the year following the release of Enter The Wu-Tang, the Clan became a bona fide phenomenon and their first wave of individual albums made instant legends.
I don’t know what happened to Lamel. I went off to college, I see Big D every so often on Twitter and the homie DJ Alamo hit me with tickets to that Reasonable Doubt 10th year anniversary concert back when I still gave a fuck about the Jiggaman. But every time I listen to 36 Chambers, I smile man.
Even though the exact version of the b-side Tearz didn’t make the album, that record and Protect Ya Neck set off that Wu revolution and freshman year, by the time everybody else was blasting the record, I had it memorized. I’d be humming the rhythm section of Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin Ta Fuck Wit every time we ate Chinese food. Enter The Wu-Tang would become one of the albums that touched off the second Golden Age of Hip-Hop. While it didn’t sell like hot cakes, the hood knew. The block knew. Wu-Tang was indeed nothing to fuck with.
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