Easton Connell

Wu-Tang Clan occupies a unique echelon of the hip-hop pantheon. Their love of kung fu movies, comic books, and soul samples set them apart from the jump off. Beginning with 1993’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) they carved out and dominated their own corner of the music industry with each member securing a solo career on a different record label. They claimed in a skit on 36 Chambers that their goal was “domination, baby” and dominate they did. They marked hip-hop forever with their revolutionary style of slang, their staccato delivery, their sound at once smooth and abrasive. They tapped an explored world of samples from soul and R&B in an era when producers relied on a strict diet of James Brown and PFunk. They were nothing to fuck with.

I’ve had the luck to see Wu-Tang live on three occasions. The first was at Rock the Bells in 2010 when the Clan assembled to perform their debut album in its entirety, followed by a second set of other Wu-Tang and solo hits. In a word, it was incredible. Their onstage chemistry was apparent from across the chasm of a packed stadium. They were a clan united.

The second time I saw Wu-Tang was at the Warfield in San Francisco (rebranded as the Wufield for the night). Bay Area natives Souls of Mischief opened, backed by a live band, and the crowd was primed. When Wu-Tang took the stage, they brought the motherfuckin’ ruckus. The show was only a few weeks before the long-awaited release of their first record since 2007, A Better Tomorrow. I could tell from watching them interact with each other and the way they interacted with the crowd that they were having a great time. A cadre of emcees doing what they love best, friends doing what they’d been doing together for over twenty years.

I saw the Wu for the third time a few weekends ago. They returned to the Warfield and we made the six hour drive down a weather torn and winter thrashed 101 to see them. After a long drive in the rain and a quick dinner of Chinese food we walked to the Warfield and entered, skipping the line at the bar to snag a good spot.

An hour went by. The wings and upper levels of the theater slowly filled in. The opening DJ, William Stokes, was having a great time and the crowd was right there with him. Playing the classics, cutting the volume to have the silence filled by the audience singing hooks from the ‘90s. It seemed to go on rather long.

The crowd cheered as the lights eventually went down and a video came on the screen. Two music videos for Raekwon’s new record are played, and the crowd gets excited, figuring the onslaught of the Wu-Tang must be imminent. When the DJ for Wu-Tang, Allah Mathematics, walks on stage people cheer and stand up out of their seats. He gets set up, drops a juggle of Wu-Tang and LL Cool J to get warmed up, and then walks off the stage. More music videos hit the screen. This time, you start to notice funny things about them. A slight grain to the quality, and credits in the corner of the video for French MTV. When a title card of what looks like a user name and photo hangs on the screen between music videos I start to wonder what’s going on. Bridget and I debate the likelihood that one of the projector operators was asked to hook up his phone and project Wu-Tang video rips off youtube to kill time.

Allah Mathematics returns after a good half-dozen music videos and the crowd goes nuts. We can barely hear him over our cheers as he explains that he’s gonna have his man Hugh Hef come out and do his new single. People sit back down in confusion as an emcee we’ve never heard of strides across the stage, tasked with the Sisyphean burden of trying to hype a crowd that’s growing impatient. I feel bad for Hugh Hef, as he tries to elicit a reaction from a reluctant audience. It seems pretty clearly a last minute decision for him to open as his name wasn’t on the bill and he only does the one song. The DJ doesn’t even have the instrumental track for it, and Hugh Hef hollers into the mic over his own recorded vocals. This ends up being a good thing, as he runs out of breath by the middle of the second verse.

Hugh leaves the stage to lackluster applause. I’m starting to be genuinely concerned that the night might be a trainwreck, and then Killah Priest takes the stage. The drums, keys, and that oddly beautiful sample of a woman laughing explode from the speakers and Priest launches into “B.I.B.L.E.” One of my favorite Wu songs, the smoothly cerebral and moving finale to GZA’s Liquid Swords. I still haven’t figured out why this song has been left off of so many reissues of that record. Maybe it’s a sample clearance issue, or maybe it’s because it’s the only track that GZA doesn’t rhyme on. Regardless, the audience is back on their feet. As I look around the balcony I see only a handful of people actually rapping along to the lyrics, and every one of them is smiling just as big as I am. The magic of the moment is palpable, and my worries about the evening are put to rest. Killah Priest ends the song with a new verse, acapella, and tells the cheering crowd to expect a “B.I.B.L.E. II” from him soon.

Allah Mathematics exits the stage, takes Killah Priest with him, and tells us to enjoy the videos while they sort out some technical difficulties. And so begins another round of music videos. After another unfortunately long stretch of b-list Wu-Tang videos, the stage lights come up. It’s roughly 11:30, and we’ve been here since the doors opened three and half hours ago. Finally, Allah Mathematics is practically pushed onstage ahead of one of the nine – Ghostface Killah.

Ghost comes out and reminds us that “We’re Wu-Tang. We don’t need lights or any of this fancy shit – we rhyme over records. That’s what we do,” and promptly launches into a string of heat from Supreme Clientele and Ironman. At some point Ghost’s energy infects Raekwon and the Chef jumps in for a few of their duos, “Daytona 500” and some Cuban Linx tracks. One by one the Wu form like Voltron in slow motion, the energy in the room building with the addition of each member to the stage. RZA finally erupts from the sidelines yelling “Enter the Abbot” into his mic over someone else’s verse. The crowd goes wild, but I don’t miss it when RZA says to Ghost “I like what you built out here, this pyramid.” The implication isn’t lost on me that RZA, as the last to enter, is the top.

It takes the Wu a few tracks to get into the swing of things, and when GZA comes out for a sloppy “Liquid Swords” he seems a little unsteady on his feet. The other members are quick to fill in the lyrics he doesn’t get out. But once they find their rhythm the Wu were in rare form. Moving like water from hit to hit, delivering group and solo tracks with perfection. They carry the crowd like Mariah, to paraphrase Inspectah Deck.

Yet the seams show. When Allah Mathematics drops “4^th Chamber” from Liquid Swords the room explodes. Ghost lays his verse down like honey, one of my favorite verses in the entire empire of Wu releases, only to have the beat cut off by RZA shouting to stop the music. The crowd is thrown off and Ghost even calls him out – asking who he is to stop the music. RZA calls for more energy from the crowd, more volume from the speakers, and after a series of increasingly loud cheers from the audience the beat slams back in place. To be fair, I can feel the music in my entire body now instead of just my chest, and every person in the Warfield is on their feet this time around. I should mention that by this point in the night RZA has sprayed several bottles of champagne on the crowd and smashed the empties on the stage behind him. Ghost delivers his verse a second time, with even more lyrical alacrity, and when it comes time for RZA to follow he again kills the music. He demands even more energy from the crowd and gets everyone to start pogo-ing in the narrow aisles before delivering his verse.

The show carries on in a similar fashion, stretches of ecstatic hip-hop performance punctuated by ego-driven showmanship. The cracks in the once unmarred Clan are there if you have eyes to see, and Method Man’s absence takes on a looming significance. The hour grows late and RZA looks at his watch, says they have eight minutes, gets Allah Mathematics to throw on Gravel Pit. Ghost shakes his head, wanders to the edge of the stage and sets down his microphone. He hangs out in the background, the other members of the Wu standing off to one side in a cluster, while RZA blows yet another bottle of champagne front and center. When no one jumps on their verse the DJ lets the beat dwindle. RZA yells at him to back him up, and when the beat comes back he proceeds to do a call-and-response rundown of every popular Wu hook with the crowd – including prompting the crowd for a “MAN!” by yelling “M-E-T-H-O-D.” The night ends with RZA alone on stage, the lone rock star still trying to rage in the spotlight after everyone else has called it a night.

My love for Wu-Tang remains unshaken, despite a rollercoaster of a performance that shone a light on the cracks in the cohesion of the Clan. I won’t discount the impact of technological troubles, either. Allah Mathematics spent the beginning of Wu-Tang’s set pointing at various pieces of equipment and yelling to the sound guy. I’ve been there, on a vastly smaller scale, and it’s terrible. Still, the fissures that led to  Wu-Tang taking several years apart are there. RZA taking a back seat during the Better Tomorrow sessions seemed to patch things up but that record has come and gone, and it might have taken their better tomorrow with it. My first two experiences with Wu-Tang were miraculous, and it’s only fitting that in the depths of this long, dark winter we’ve all staggered through their performance wasn’t where it has been in the past. I wouldn’t worry though – there are quite a few promising new projects in the works, both solo and collaborative. The book drawn on the cover of their first 7” is far from shut. There’s hope for the future. The sun never truly sets on Shaolin; Wu-Tang is forever.