It’s been two whole decades since they climbed into the rap game like your neighborhood Spider-Man, yet the Wu-Tang Clan remains at the center of attention. N.W.A. is done. The Geto Boys are finished. G-Unit is a distant memory. But in a business where most acts have a shelf life of skim milk, the Wu still has more juice than any other crew, then or now.
With the 20-year anniversary of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) upon us, a lot of air and ink have been expended trying to explain why. A few admirers have argued that the group’s singular and intensely arcane beats and rhymes are the secret. More enlightened commentators have attributed the Wu’s prosperity to RZA’s bold business plan, in which all his soldiers are pushed to secure solo deals beyond the hive—an arrangement that's been winningly replicated by cliques ranging from Dipset to Odd Future.
But, as a journalist who has spent a lot of time around the edges of the Clan, and even written liner notes for some of their records, I find that the recent swarm of salutes misses the real reason that they still thrive after all these years. It’s simple: unlike other rap acts of their caliber, which desperately whore themselves out for cheeseburger ads and guest verses, Wu-Tang has remained elusive, tightly controlling information and access, and essentially maintaining an unprecedented scarcity to keep fanatics fiending for more.
Their debut album cover featured the posse creeping in anonymous ninja garb. They’ve rarely given group interviews, and they don’t desperately leak rumors for attention. They arrive at their own shows ridiculously late, if at all, and habitually postpone release dates. They even abuse their own labels. Legend has it that after an uninvited A&R guy visited Miami to check up on Ghostface Killah's progress during the Supreme Clientele sessions, the rapper flew to New York just to tell executives, “Motherfuckers, you can taste my cake when I'm done baking it!” None of the members have conceded this to me personally, but RZA lays the strategy down front-and-center on “Reunited,” the lead single off the collective's then-long-awaited sophomore return, Forever: “Grow like a fetus with no hands and feet to complete us / and we return like Jesus, when the whole world need us.”
I’ve seen this strategy in action firsthand over the last 15 years. Save for Alvin Blanco and a handful of other obsessive rap journalists, I’ve probably exerted more energy than anybody on chasing the Wu and interpreting their expressionism. I even have the logo prominently tattooed on my arm. And yet all of my most profound Clan memories are disappointments.
When I asked Ghostface about his sterling abstract verse on “Tha Game,” off Pete Rock's Soul Survivor album. I'd been analyzing it since college—“Words with the president / brunch with Yeltsin / Gorbachev under Meth's nuts / he out in Belgium”—stressing over references to spring rolls, John Travolta, and the New Testament, only to be told that it had no metaphorical value. “I guess I knew what it meant when I wrote it, but that was around last century,” Ghost explained. Then there was the time, years later, when I arranged to interview RZA as part of an audition for a magazine job, but blew my deadline after he flaked on three consecutive appointments.
I eventually broke through, developing a reputation for being a leading Clan aficionado, but the abuse continues today. I was hired to write liner notes for reissues of early Ghostface, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and GZA releases. But while RZA, who produced those projects, has signed off on my participation—all handled through the boutique imprint, Get On Down—none of the artists has made it easy. The process usually goes like this: I’m typically told to text or email their managers, who occasionally pass me the direct digits. From there, I’m guaranteed at least an 80 percent cancellation rate on planned interviews, and then maybe one or two half-hour phoners if I’m lucky. If there's one perk to my career in hip-hop—other than the 20,000 useless CDs crowding my Timberland boot-sized apartment—it’s that I can connect with any MC du jour in two emails or fewer. Still, my chances of locating Inspectah Deck in less than a week are infinitesimal.
To put this in terms that Eminem diehards will understand: Every Clansman is a godly anti-hero in his own right, and the rest of us—the writers, the biters, the Wu-Tang logo bathroom stall graffiti writers—are Stans. Most hardcore fans tolerate this relationship; we’ve learned to fall back and impatiently anticipate what's next, which is currently the Clan's planned vigintennial opus, A Better Tomorrow. I'm not sure when that day will come, but for now I'm content just knowing that the cake is baking. With that said, if you see Ghostface around, please tell him to drop me a line. We're supposed to work on the liner notes for Supreme Clientele, and I can't seem to find him anywhere.
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