Hip-Hop’s Board of Trustees Is in Session
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The Wu-Tang Clan’s fifth studio album, “8 Diagrams,” hits stores today against all odds. It’s a miraculous appearance, because internal group dynamics and the group members’ solo careers made it seem as though it would be nearly impossible to get the eight living Clan members into the same room long enough to agree on anything, much less make a record. Also, there’s that little snag about the group’s previous outing, 2001’s “Iron Flag,” being such a weak effort. That album didn’t feature Cappadona, the MC who first appeared on 1997’s “Wu-Tang Forever” and was billed as a group member by 2000’s “The W,” nor fan favorite Ol’ Dirty Bastard, whose mounting legal troubles at the time prevented him from recording. ODB passed away in 2004, and the group’s remaining members have spent the ensuing years furthering their prolific solo careers.
More amazing than its very existence, though, is just how great “8 Diagrams” is. It’s not a radical departure from the group’s usual strengths: obscure martial arts movie samples; deft verse trading among its eight MCs, who careen charismatically through Ishmael Reed pyrotechnic wordplay and neologisms, and discombobulating, gritty, and elemental beats that stand apart from everything else in hip-hop. The only real difference this time around is that “8 Diagrams” is more than all of that: It’s the weirdest album from hip-hop’s weirdest personalities. And it may be the most singular moment the Wu-Tang Clan has ever achieved.
After sneaking out of Staten Island like fully formed prophets under cover of fog with 1993’s “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),” the Wu-Tang Clan quickly became hip-hop’s most commercially successful franchise and its most unusual force. As a group and as solo artists, the group’s nine MCs — Ghostface Killah (born Dennis Coles), GZA (Gary Grice), Inspectah Deck (Jason Hunter), Masta Killa (Elgin Turner), Method Man (Clifford Smith), Ol’ Dirty Bastard (Russell Jones), Raekwon the Chef (Corey Woods), RZA (Robert Diggs), and U-God (Lamont Hawkins) — defined and reshaped hip-hop throughout the 1990s, becoming multimedia threats in the process.
Wu-Tang didn’t bother mimicking organized crime models for its operation, like so many other 1990s hip-hop labels and groups. Instead, it operated like a multifront corporation from the very beginning, with nine CEOs spreading the brand name into artist-management, clothing-lines, comic books, music, movies, television, and video games. Where rising rap stars dreamed of becoming the John Gotti of their generation, Wu-Tang envisioned itself as hip-hop’s Microsoft.
That the group essentially met its goal by making the oddest hip-hop anyone ever heard is what makes its career so fascinating. Wu-Tang’s uncanny sound, due almost entirely to producer/de facto group leader RZA, has always resisted any geographic or historic antecedents. East Coast, West Coast, G-funk, crunk, old school, golden age, gangsta — none of these styles applies to the RZA’s sparse, loopy, and almost incidental production, where anything resembling a beat feels like it has to escape the cinematic gurgling of the track.
“8 Diagrams” feels similarly out of time, only RZA’s work here — with assistance from Easy Mo Bee, Mathematics, and George Drakoulias on selected tracks — is more psychedelic and disorienting than ever. Songs don’t so much start as feel conjured into life. Obscure voices swirl around a looped drum break before spilling into a meandering guitar line and watery beat on “Guns Will Go.” A saxophone sample abruptly turns in on itself and becomes a break in “Starter,” as if a saxophonist were trying to suck the note back into the instrument. The quaint melody circling through “Rushing Elephants” feels like a snippet from some inconspicuous 1960s television show, but it floats above a propulsive backing beat so buried in the mix that the song feels like it takes place entirely in the creepy space in between the two, a David Lynchian mix of surface tranquility and chthonic urges.
The strangest track on this strange album is “The Heart Gently Weeps,” an interpretation of the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” featuring a vocal chorus by Erykah Badu and guitars by Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante and George Harrison’s son, Dhani. The song is built atop big drums and moody layers of guitar, haunting keyboards, and a wash of atmospheric sounds, like Phil Spector producing a Goth album. Over this psychedelic swirl, Raekwon, Ghostface, and Method Man spin a correspondingly nightmarish tale that begins with an argument-turned-gunfight at home (Raekwon), becomes a reminiscence of an attempted revenge killing at the grocery store (Ghostface), and concludes with Method Man calmly talking about getting back on top of the game. It is at once bizarre and bizarrely thrilling, Iceberg Slim by way of H.P. Lovecraft.
And that may be the biggest treat about “8 Diagrams”: Not only do all eight Wu-Tang MCs show up, but they all deliver some of the best work of their recent careers. Ghostface is expectedly in top form, and GZA, who will play solo shows this Thursday and Friday at the Knitting Factory, reminds us why his 1995 record “Liquid Swords” remains a classic.
The real surprise is just how incredible Method Man sounds here. From the very first verse on the album’s “Campfire” lead-off — “Cruising on the interstate, just follow while I innovate / Too many try and imitate, medallion like a dinner plate / Front and get your dinner ate, chinchilla for the winter, wait / I’m trying to bring the ‘Sexy Back’ like Timbaland and Timberlake” — Method Man is nimble and spry, delivering his corkscrewing lines in that cold-blooded bite that marked early Wu-Tang and his own solo albums. On “Stick Me for Riches,” he explains rap’s shopworn, hard-knock life in menacing understatement — “I was raised on these mean streets / You know, where poverty and hell meet” — as a lead-in to justify how he came to be armed, delivering the line warmly as though recalling a favorite holiday: “Since my momma held me in her arms to tell me / That it’s a cold world I done held heat.”
Such standout performances all around, however, may turn out for naught. The dizzying, orchestral “8 Diagrams” has pushed the Wu-Tang MCs to perform at the tops of their games, but nary a track on the album seems to have the potential to be a crossover pop hit. Regardless, it’s another arrestingly fascinating document from hip-hop’s best group, and who knows when — or even if — it will ever take the time and effort to do it again.