93 ‘til Infinity: I’m still baffled at how much I didn’t like Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)’
OPINION: The 14-year-old version of me couldn’t stand Wu-Tang Clan’s first album; the 44-year-old version of me wishes he did.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I’ve written ad nauseam about how much I didn’t like Wu-Tang Clan when they first dropped in the early ’90s. So much so that I’ve started to annoy myself about it. While that feeling was gained honestly — and wasn’t entirely my fault; shouts out to my brother Titus — it is one of my few musical, hip-hop-specific regrets. It took me years, and I do mean years, to finally come around on “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),” the debut album by the Wu-Tang Clan, released on Nov. 9, 1993. I would say that it wasn’t until I was in my 30s (yes, in the 2010s) to actually appreciate the album.
This is especially baffling because I love the individual pieces of Wu-Tang Clan. I could make a compelling case about Ghostface Killah’s “Supreme Clientele” as one of the greatest albums of all time. I love Raekwon, Method Man (of course), RZA’s production, Inspectah Deck, ODB, etc. But something about that super muddy sound offended my 14-year-old ears. I wasn’t alone in this feeling, of course. I think it’s safe to say that the Wu-Tang sound was an acquired taste for many. I can only think of a handful of people in my high school who were listening to that album when it dropped, ESPECIALLY because Snoop Doggy Dogg’s “Doggystyle” dropped two weeks later and literally moved every other album to the backburner.
Like I pointed out when talking about how late I got to the A Tribe Called Quest “Midnight Marauders” party, I REALLY hate that I didn’t fully immerse myself in the Wu-Tang Clan. I remember seeing the video for “Method Man” on “Rap City” and knowing right away that this song and that rapper were compelling. Method Man’s star power was even obvious to a 14-year-old kid in Alabama.
When I listen to the album now, something I’ve done in an exhausting amount since watching the Hulu series about Wu-Tang Clan, “Wu-Tang: An American Saga,” I hear none of the warts I associated with the album in 1993 (and 1994 really). I don’t just hear the muddy and lo-fi sound, I hear the ingenuity. I hear the sampling prowess and the genius of RZA. I hear the hunger in Raekwon and Ghostface. I hear the struggle and I hear the sound of New York City, which is something that I relied on heavily back then. Like most hip-hop heads, I romanticized New York City so much because of hip-hop. The first time I actually made it to New York City, during the summer of 2001, I was truly in awe at how much the music really reflected the feel of the city. I can still vividly remember seeing a kid doing the “Harlem Shake” on a corner in Harlem and feeling like that was the most New York thing I’d ever seen.
I also understand better how the creation of those albums really required every ounce of effort and belief from each member of the Clan. It’s not only a classic album because of how it signaled a shift from the West Coast back to New York City, but because it’s really just good. It transports you into a world and that’s what the best art should do. It is easy, now at my big age, to understand why and how this album was so influential to so many. As a 14-year-old whose North Star was the production sound of Dr. Dre and DJ Quik, it was too dirty back then. As a 44-year-old who has listened to so many different types of music and can hear the genius in the way music is presented as part of the storytelling, now “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” sounds like one of the most brilliant musical offerings of all time.
I guess it’s more important to be late than to never show up, and it’s also important to note that sometimes a musical opinion is objectively wrong. I won’t say it’s risen to the ranks of my top 10 favorite albums; that’s a mountain too hard to climb for any album at this point, but I do regret all those times I rode in my homies car where I literally wanted to be anywhere else but stuck in the world of Shaolin.
Oh, what a difference a day makes.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio. He writes very Black things and drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest), but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said: “Unknown” (Blackest).
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