Laith
Color me a little surprised, I am mixed on this book. This is a macro look at the group's history, but please disabuse yourself of the notion that this contains tales of Wu escapades and secret projects. You would think that a book about musical legends written by an author who was not only embedded with the Wu at the height of their fame, but was also one of the first columnists to write for The Source would have had a lot more stories about the group to relate. That's not what this book is, this is a music focused retrospective of the "core" Wu-Tang discography.
I want to establish some bona fides: I can't track my listening across iTunes, Spotify, and the playback on my local PC, but I can confidently say that Enter the 36 Chambers is the album that I've listened to most in life. I've put it on when I'm sick, when I'm sad, when I'm happy, when I'm traveling, and when I'm home. It's been this way since I was put onto them by some truly enlightened 8th graders back in middle school. I've since gone on to listen to the entire Wu catalog, I love Tical and OB4CL and when I'm feeling a little saucy you know I am listening to Return to the 36 Chambers and belting along with ODB. All of that is to say that if someone was going to fall in love with this book and its approach to telling the Wu-Tang saga, it would be me.
We get a complete accounting of the creation of the first 6 Wu-Tang albums. This book takes us from the genesis of the group and the creation of Enter the 36 Chambers, through the first 4 Solo projects, and culminates with the release of Wu-Tang Forever. There is a sizable introduction that focuses on the backstories of the clan members and a fascinating explanation of the five-percenter ideology and its impacts on the Wu and the NY projects of the 1980s. But get one thing straight, we are going verse by verse, song by song, and album by album until we get to Wu-Tang forever and that content is the bulk of the book.
I think that the first third of this book is solid gold, I'd always known that a lot of the Wu lingo was coming from some street level nation of Islam stuff, but I felt like a total fake fan learning about the Five-percenters for the first time. Fernando builds this vivid image of the slums of New York and fills it with the backstory and character of the various clan members. It feels like all the interesting stuff got front-loaded into this first section: RZA and GZA's early music careers, the inception of Gravediggaz, and the group's early connection with criminal activities. Fernando has to paint with a broad brush given just how much stuff he has to cover, but there's enough information in the first chunk to validate reading this book.
What follows is what I described above, a breakdown of most of the tracks on each album from 1993-2000. I was pretty into it at first, the level of depth we get for 36 Chambers is exactly what I wanted (because it's my favorite) but once I got past Tical and Return to the 36 Chambers (my other favorite) I really started to get fatigued. It's pretty cool stuff, don't get me wrong, but l don't need 25 pages about the B-sides on OB4CL or any of the subsequent albums. I had the distinct impression as I read through the bulk of this book that most of the information was something I could have found out on my own had I the desire to seek that info out. It's really hard to account for what's "new" information and what is repackaged public information.
This book is dreadfully light on details when it comes to things that are definitely not public knowledge. There's the most anemic description of the production of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, and that album was a big motivator behind me wanting to read this book (If I can't listen to it, reading about it is the next best thing). I think that as a Wu-Approved publication this part of the book was purposefully light so as not to undercut Once Upon a Time in Shaolin: The Untold Story of Wu-Tang Clan's Million-Dollar Secret Album, the Devaluation of Music, and America's New Public Enemy No. 1 and whatever pending movie deal there is surrounding that story.
I wanted more Wu stories, but what I got was something close to the RZA's songwriting journal with some added context and framing. If that gets you going, then you should totally read this book. But, if you wanted to know more about the interpersonal side of the group or hear tales of some of their more wacky publicity stunts, I don't think this delivers. There IS mention of all of this stuff in the book, but it's a mention for completion’s sake and doesn't deliver the same depth as the musical portions of this book.
TL;DR: An in-depth accounting of the MUSIC of the Wu-Tang Clan. There's some cool stuff that bookends that information.
Color me a little surprised, I am mixed on this book. This is a macro look at the group's history, but please disabuse yourself of the notion that this contains tales of Wu escapades and secret projects. You would think that a book about musical legends written by an author who was not only embedded with the Wu at the height of their fame, but was also one of the first columnists to write for The Source would have had a lot more stories about the group to relate. That's not what this book is, this is a music focused retrospective of the "core" Wu-Tang discography.
I want to establish some bona fides: I can't track my listening across iTunes, Spotify, and the playback on my local PC, but I can confidently say that Enter the 36 Chambers is the album that I've listened to most in life. I've put it on when I'm sick, when I'm sad, when I'm happy, when I'm traveling, and when I'm home. It's been this way since I was put onto them by some truly enlightened 8th graders back in middle school. I've since gone on to listen to the entire Wu catalog, I love Tical and OB4CL and when I'm feeling a little saucy you know I am listening to Return to the 36 Chambers and belting along with ODB. All of that is to say that if someone was going to fall in love with this book and its approach to telling the Wu-Tang saga, it would be me.
We get a complete accounting of the creation of the first 6 Wu-Tang albums. This book takes us from the genesis of the group and the creation of Enter the 36 Chambers, through the first 4 Solo projects, and culminates with the release of Wu-Tang Forever. There is a sizable introduction that focuses on the backstories of the clan members and a fascinating explanation of the five-percenter ideology and its impacts on the Wu and the NY projects of the 1980s. But get one thing straight, we are going verse by verse, song by song, and album by album until we get to Wu-Tang forever and that content is the bulk of the book.
I think that the first third of this book is solid gold, I'd always known that a lot of the Wu lingo was coming from some street level nation of Islam stuff, but I felt like a total fake fan learning about the Five-percenters for the first time. Fernando builds this vivid image of the slums of New York and fills it with the backstory and character of the various clan members. It feels like all the interesting stuff got front-loaded into this first section: RZA and GZA's early music careers, the inception of Gravediggaz, and the group's early connection with criminal activities. Fernando has to paint with a broad brush given just how much stuff he has to cover, but there's enough information in the first chunk to validate reading this book.
What follows is what I described above, a breakdown of most of the tracks on each album from 1993-2000. I was pretty into it at first, the level of depth we get for 36 Chambers is exactly what I wanted (because it's my favorite) but once I got past Tical and Return to the 36 Chambers (my other favorite) I really started to get fatigued. It's pretty cool stuff, don't get me wrong, but l don't need 25 pages about the B-sides on OB4CL or any of the subsequent albums. I had the distinct impression as I read through the bulk of this book that most of the information was something I could have found out on my own had I the desire to seek that info out. It's really hard to account for what's "new" information and what is repackaged public information.
This book is dreadfully light on details when it comes to things that are definitely not public knowledge. There's the most anemic description of the production of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, and that album was a big motivator behind me wanting to read this book (If I can't listen to it, reading about it is the next best thing). I think that as a Wu-Approved publication this part of the book was purposefully light so as not to undercut Once Upon a Time in Shaolin: The Untold Story of Wu-Tang Clan's Million-Dollar Secret Album, the Devaluation of Music, and America's New Public Enemy No. 1 and whatever pending movie deal there is surrounding that story.
I wanted more Wu stories, but what I got was something close to the RZA's songwriting journal with some added context and framing. If that gets you going, then you should totally read this book. But, if you wanted to know more about the interpersonal side of the group or hear tales of some of their more wacky publicity stunts, I don't think this delivers. There IS mention of all of this stuff in the book, but it's a mention for completion’s sake and doesn't deliver the same depth as the musical portions of this book.
TL;DR: An in-depth accounting of the MUSIC of the Wu-Tang Clan. There's some cool stuff that bookends that information.