Wu-Tang: Widdling Down Infinity

[Grabo]

Wu-Tang: Widdling Down Infinity :: Can a bunch of old, dirty bastards save hip-hop for a third time or will the math just collapse upon itself?

The mathematics should've worked out. 819 days after the death of Ol' Dirty Bastard {8 + 1 + 9 = 18; 1 + 8 = 9}, The RZA announced the forthcoming arrival of Wu-Tang Clan’s fifth release and first in nearly six years. Breaking down the digits, it all added up to 9, and there couldn’t be a number more abiding of the single greatest hip-hop group of all time. Not only does the seductively top-heavy numeral enumerate the group’s original members and their own genesis but also the origin of us all; there are 9 months in the gestation period of a human embryo. The number is so definitive to the New York crew that it now stands out as an era lost to the cruelly neutral cosmos of mathematics. You can’t mention 9 and Wu-Tang in the same breath without having to remind yourself of the need to subtract 1.

According to Supreme Mathematics—a Five Percent philosophy and belief of the Wu, used to describe the Earth’s mechanics—the number 9 means “to bring into existence,” and this meant everything to the group’s first record. It took 9 MCs, each with 4 chambers of the heart {2 atria, 2 ventricles}, to give rise to Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers {9 x 4 = 36}, and hip-hop was never the same. Referencing the Kung Fu films that Wu-Tang so revered, the Clan arrived onto the rap scene with the 36 chambers of hip-hop mastery when everyone else was striving to attain the knowledge of 35 lessons. With 108 pressure points on the human body {1 + 0 + 8 = 9}, only the Wu-Tang seemed to grasp that 36 of those are deadly {9 + 36 = 45; 4 + 5 = 9}. Enter the Wu-Tang was so definitive that when they released a self-aggrandizing, double-disc sophomore album four years later called Wu-Tang Forever, no one even fucking blinked. No artist or group—hip-hop or not, before or since—has defined itself by such a brilliantly conjured and successfully united mythology. And though 9, and thus 36, was the key, it certainly wasn’t the entirety.

From the announcement of death to that of birth, it all seemed so simple then. Wu- Tang Clan’s fifth record would be called 8 Diagrams, finishing off the trio of classic martial arts flicks that helped define the group’s mythology, and the math continued to add up. 8 members to record 8 Diagrams {8 x 8 = 64}—it’s as if 9 members couldn’t balance the equation. God bless Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s soul, but maybe he had to die so 8 Diagrams could be born. One door closes and another door opens, like the black and white of a chessboard’s 64 squares. Chess is a paramount part of the Wu—from constantly spinning lyrical metaphors to the cover of GZA’s Liquid Swords, perhaps the greatest Clan solo project—and the 64 squares extend beyond the board. It is an equally life-defining integer and an organic evolution not only of the crew’s numerology but also of its history.

“64 is a very important mathematical number,” says The RZA, sitting near the back staircase of Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel. “You add 6 and 4, of course, you get 10. You add 1 and 0, you come back around to get 1—knowledge, the foundation for all things in existence.”

But existence might not happen. The math might be all wrong. Unlike 1993, when hip-hop was redefined by the gritty streets of Shaolin, and unlike 1997, when Wu-Tang helped save hip-hop from shiny-suited R&B hooks in the wake of The Notorious B.I.G.’s and Tupac’s tragic deaths, 2007 might not mean the resurrection of Wu-Tang and, in turn, hip-hop. 2 + 0 + 0 + 7 = 9. But that’s not Wu-Tang’s number anymore.

SMALLEST INTEGER WITH EXACTLY 7 DIVISORS
“If Wu-Tang is foolish enough, and it’s possible to be foolish,” RZA says with a wide-eyed look of devastating reality, “if however many members of Wu-Tang are foolish enough to fall for the bureaucracy of the industry in 2007, then they are fooling themselves and taking themselves
out of the realm of heaven.”

9 members meant 9 personalities meant 9 individual egos, and sometimes that worked {9 x 9 x 9 = 729; 7 + 2 + 9 = 18; 1 + 8 = 9}. The dynamics inspired some of the greatest art of the past 20 years, as well as some of art’s biggest frustrations. 64 can be divided by 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1, but Wu-Tang has faced uncounted divisors on all fronts. After reinventing the industry in 1993 by forcing a contract with Loud Records that allowed the members solo deals by other labels, those same industry forces have turned on Wu-Tang over and over again.

From Method Man telling Blender that RZA’s brother, and Wu-Tang Corporation’s co- CEO, Divine is “number one on my shit-list” to U-God blaming RZA for his lack of solo success to nobody reportedly visiting Dirty in jail, it’s never been a rap utopia. And though members have always returned for the good of the W, things are proving most difficult in 2007.

“If the business is not taken care of [then] there will be no album or tour,” says Raekwon’s manager, Mel Carter, via e-mail. Raekwon canceled his appearance at the Wu’s scheduled photo shoot for URB, and Bodog, 8 Diagrams’s European label, two days before the shoot was set to go down in mid May. Rock the Bells, the multimillion-dollar hip-hop bonanza, which Wu is scheduled to headline in August with Rage Against the Machine, has already sold out its run. It ain’t Wu-Tang without Raekwon’s inventive slang or infinitely quotable rhymes on “C.R.E.A.M.”

“When it comes to photos and press and all that shit, I agree with anybody in the crew that say, ‘Yo, I want my business straight before I start talking to people,’” RZA says. “I understand that. I told them that’s their prerogative.”

Carter has since told URB that the business is “all good,” but the outside influence weighs heavy in RZA’s voice. Sometimes anger carries the brunt while other times it is an audible sadness, but it’s entirely unavoidable when more numbers are added into the mix.

“That’s a problem,” says RZA. “You talk to someone like Mel Carter, who’s my buddy or whatever. He’s not a Wu-Tang member. He could never understand the importance of what Wu-Tang is. He can only see it from a business point of view. Everybody be talking about the deals. Fuck the deals. We aren’t special because of no deals; we special because when we come together, we make music that changes the world.”

Even without the dotted I’s and crossed T’s of a contract, Raekwon still came through and recorded new verses for 8 Diagrams. In fact, as of the beginning of June, everyone has come through and recorded new verses, at least three apiece, according to RZA, except Ghostface Killah.

Can Wu-Tang exist without Ghostface? In today’s world, Ghost is the Wu’s most relevant solo member. His Supreme Clientele, is widely credited as keeping the group afloat, and his recent string of prolificacy has built up the greatest body of solo work. He was also RZA’s roommate when Wu-Tang Clan was created and perhaps, most significantly, the first Clansman to unsheathe his sword on the first song of their first album.

“I told Ghost, ‘Yo, I’ll do this album without you, Ghost,’” says RZA. “‘I’ll do it without you, man, because it ain’t about you; it ain’t about me; it’s about Wu-Tang. It’s about what it means to the people. It ain’t about what it means to us no more.’”

With the loss of Ol’ Dirty Bastard, the Clan’s number shrunk from 9 to 8...4 x 9 = 36...8 x 8 = 64. 7 may be the God number, but 7 is only prime because it has no product other than itself and one. There is no Wu-Tang with 7, regardless of what RZA says.

64 CELLS
What begins as conception, when sperm and egg meet, turns to meiosis when a cell splits into 2 cells, then into 4, then 8, then 16, then 32 and eventually arrives at 64 {2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 = 126; 1 + 2 + 6 = 9}. Before life exists, it spreads. There wouldn’t even be concern about
Wu-Tang’s fifth album if it weren’t for the influence of 36 Chambers and the 14 years of Wu that have passed since.

The only place to begin is the beginning, and the only things found there are words like “blueprint,” “renaissance” and “revolutionary.” It was a time when hip-hop was dominated by the two extremes of Dr. Dre and the Native Tongues crew: lush, G-funk bass complemented by gangsta mantras and, respectively, jazzy samples accompanied by textbook cleverisms. Dre defined the West Coast while Tribe, De La and the rest were too ethereal to claim earthly locations, so for the first time in hip-hop history, New York was without a definitive sound. Then, a sample from the Gordon Liu-helmed film Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang came from the gutter before turning into the grimiest drums anyone had ever heard, and the streets of New York were defined on record so thoroughly that listeners could practically smell the piss.

The sophistication of Wu-Tang’s street persona rarely moved dance floors—even RZA leaves the Roosevelt Hotel’s club when the DJ strings together too many Wu cuts—but it was something worth listening to, especially when weed was in the air. Fuck, there are 88 castanet claps on the idiophonic-heavy “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin’ Ta F’ With,” just like the 88 keys on a piano—but the only piano within hearing distance is leering in the corner with a butcher knife. The lyrics of these 9 MCs with 9 immediately differential voices used comic books, Five Percent knowledge, chess and Kung Fu films to narrate complicated tales of New York life at the tail-end of its crack era.

That revolutionary renaissance left a blueprint for The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Nas, Mobb Deep and countless others throughout the ’90s . . .and that’s only ’70s babies. Even in today’s hip-hop world, the slang and Mafioso aspirations laid by Raekwon and Ghostface Killah— especially on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx—are unavoidable in the lyrics of Clipse, Young Jeezy, Lil’ Wayne and more. It’s an artistic expression that, regardless of its high-minded origins and perhaps unavoidable progressions, has become the politically correct cop-out for criticizing the black community in America.

“Everyone in my crew is either a dropout or a felon. And to have that side of America express art was different,” RZA says before quieting down, “but at the same time, it was detrimental. Because now you have guys who have more of a wild-style mentality, the ghetto-hood type of life, and it followed us and caught up to us in one way or another by making us a target.”

RZA may mean “Wu-Tang” when he says “us,” but it’s easy to connect the dots and hear “black America.” Wu practically invented the strong codes and street ethics that, in the wake of Imus Gate, are being “investigated” on 60 Minutes, but there was always a moral—even if it was just “survival of the fittest”—in the group’s cinematic take on poverty’s trials and tribulations. But with Wu-Tang’s gangsta-rap profile being lower than it’s ever been, the Clan wasn’t dragged into the “Stop Snitchin’” argument.

“How has the South dominated hip-hop for the last four, five years without lyrics, without hip-hop culture really in their blood?” RZA asks. “Those brothers came out representing more of a stereotype of how black people are, and I think the media [would] rather see us as ignorant, crazy motherfuckers than seeing us as intelligent young men trying to rise and take care of ourselves.”


WHEN I’M SIXTY-FOUR
Even in the face of Wu-Tang’s glaring lyrical maturity on 36 Chambers, there is no escaping their youthful indifference. From the carefree chorus on “Shame On a Nigga” to Method Man and Raekwon’s battle of torture threats (“I’ll sew your asshole closed and keep feeding you and feeding you...”), Wu-Tang’s exuberance at even the most gutter of scenarios is that of men who haven’t pondered life’s finite quality—not because death was unfamiliar, but because there was no time to think about it.

“In our generation, twenty-year-old niggas got lost ’cause we were supposed to be in jail or dead at twenty-five,” RZA says. “So we remained kids. How many niggas play video games at thirty now?”

The Beatles’ Paul McCartney romanticized old age on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ditty, “When I’m Sixty-Four,” to a level that would’ve been incomprehensible to the young members of Wu-Tang who spent their teens ditching school to drink 40s and watch martial epics from the Far East in Time Square pornography houses with the homeless. “When I’m Sixty-Four” is pure schmaltz—the bubblegum antithesis of Wu-Tang’s sound—that swoons for a time when a couple grows old together, but growing old has never been something hip-hop has ever glorified. The closest thing to a 30-year-old rapper in the 100 best-selling albums of all time is Will Smith’s Big Willie Style, and there’s no equation needed for the significance of those numerals.

“I don’t think we’re going to achieve some of the same things that some so-called hip-hop artists do,” RZA says. “Let’s say Chris Brown— he’s considered a hip-hop artist, but he doesn’t rap, and he sells millions of records and has a real young audience. How do we compete with that? We don’t. Wu-Tang needs to aim at what’s us, what’s ours.”

What’s theirs is an increasingly Web-savvy and dollar-stingy group of hip-hop purists who are more discriminating when purchasing music, if not downright indignant at the very idea of paying for it, than any other demographic with expendable cash. This group has a number in mind far from 9, 64, or even $9.99. It’s 0. Certainly, the decade-old Wu Forever went multi-platinum on the strength of committed fans and not its chorus-less, 338-second, 1,031 word single, “Triumph,” but those pre-Napster days were, quite literally, in a previous millennium. {1,031 + 338 = 1,369; 1 + 3 +6 + 9 = 18; 1 + 8 = 9; remember that?} Even if The RZA isn’t targeting the young’uns, he’s not discounting their possible participation in a Wu resurgence.

“Just look at the media heroes of the sixties and seventies,” he says. “Shaft was a grown-ass man. Super Fly was a grown-ass man. Everybody wanted to be Shaft and Super Fly; these were grown-ass men that kids wanted to be! I think that we have the potential to be those grown-ass men that kids want to be."

THE CRAYOLA 64 BOX
There has never been a more colorful character in the history of hip-hop than Dirt McGirt, aka Big Baby Jesus, aka Osirus, aka Dirt Dog, aka ODB, christened Russell Tyrone Jones, but born Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Method Man depicts his flow on 36 Chambers’s intermission better than anyone ever has, saying he’s the Ol’ Dirty Bastard “’cause there ain’t no father to his style.”

“Real” hip-hop may have been birthed out of James Brown samples, but no rapper had, or has, ever captured the power of grunts, off-melody emotion or spontaneous combustion like Dirty.

“George Clinton said to me, ‘ODB brought to music a cadence that no other performer ever did,’” RZA relays. “A cadence means where your words hit, how they hit and the rhythm of those words. The cadence that ODB brought was unheard of. He was so unpredictable as a performer that it couldn’t be duplicated or imitated— he left a blueprint of originality.”

“Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
But pardon me bitch as I shit on your grass
That means ho, you been shitted on
I’m not the first dog that’s shitted on your lawn”

There is absolutely no reason those four bars should even be recited, never mind be one of the most enjoyably memorable moments of hip-hop in the ’90s, except for Ol’ Dirty Bastard and his cadence that George Clinton was talking about. Few artists in the universe of music could make the nasty nursery rhymes of “Dog Shit” as pure as the Dirty did, but like the intro to “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” suggests, he truly did create a new chamber. And yet, Dirty is better known for his rap sheet than his raps.

“That’s America for you, in the way that there are a lot of American heroes and idols
that we know their name and what they stand for, but we don’t know their music,” RZA says. “Take James Brown, the Godfather of Soul. His name is probably famous around the world, but can somebody name 10 of his songs? Maybe not.”

ODB died nearly 4 years ago, but it’s been 10 years since he impacted a Wu-Tang release. From being the first person arrested under a then-new California law barring bulletproof vests to multiple other offenses, rehab stints and eventual jail time—a bizarre world that still isn’t trumped by his bizarre flow—he wasn’t much of a presence on The W and Iron Flag, his only appearance on the two albums being the first verse and chorus of The W’s “Conditioner,” recorded while on the lam. (As well as an unforgettable jailbreak performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom.) It might not be a coincidence that his absence of color caused the drop-off in both sales and respect for those albums, but he’s as much Wu-Tang as the rest of the nonagon.

“He has a sixteen-year-old son that acts just like this motherfucker—dance like him, talk like him, potbelly like him,” RZA says. “I’m potentially gonna have [him] come in and do a hook on the album—to give us his blood on the album. I’m looking for ways to make that happen, and I’m looking for ways to put money in his family’s pockets.”


I-CHING’S 64 HEXAGRAMS
Today’s hip-hop appears to be eons removed from the time when a Raekwon purple tape set the culture on fire and even ages from the day when a Wu-Tang CD brought hope to the horizon. It’s not just album sales that are down, but it’s the belief that hip-hop still has the ability to inspire that has plummeted to an all-time low. People are dissatisfied with the state of rap, and much like the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD when Nero mythically danced nude in the mountains playing his lyre while the city burned, rap’s elite seems happy to exist in penthouses and boardrooms while the whole thing is in flames. On 8 Diagrams Wu-Tang is faced with the challenge of change, certainly from the culture at large, but definitely from within.

For the first time, Cappadonna will sign as an official member of the Wu-Tang Clan. An affiliate for life, he was never far from any track involving Ghostface or Raekwon and, in fact, helped tutor many members of the Wu in the art-form of rhyme. Although his capacity as an official member is exciting based on the man’s track record on songs such as “Winter Warz” and “Daytona 500,” it does fuck up the numbers a bit. 9 living members can’t create 8 Diagrams—despite the issues, RZA is certain that Ghostface will come around—it just doesn’t equate.

“I’m not a part of the 8 diagrams, I’m just the 7 in the center,” RZA says, in reference to the Five Percenter Universal Flag. “They’re the 8-pointed star; they’re the ones that shine out. I’m the one that maybe fed it to them, the source of it.”

The star needs to shine at full force for Wu-Tang to overcome all that is upon them. Every member, no matter how they fit within the diagram, needs to remind the world why hiphop was the voice of those muted by poverty and a muse for the world’s creativity. Whether it’s Cappadonna or ODB’s son, an unavoidable hunger needs to be expressed...otherwise the American public just won’t eat it up.

“Right now, as far as the freshest voice on the mic, it’s the person you least expect,” RZA says. “U-God is on fire. Now how could U-God be on fire after all these years? After all the shit that he done been through, after U-God came on the radio publicly blaming me for his life. He’s the most in-tune motherfucker right now. ..This is a nigga that hates me.”

Part of RZA’s enthusiasm for the most often overlooked MC of the Clan newfound fire is U-God’s excitement over RZA’s evolution in production. After scoring 8 or 9 feature films, RZA has expanded his sound palette to include what Raekwon calls, that “orchestral shit.” He’s still The RZA, but he promises that in addition to the gritty sound people expect, there’ll be more than just that on 8 Diagrams.

“I’m making songs, nigga, songs that you can have Carnegie Hall play one day,” RZA says, also announcing that for the first time Wu-Tang will bring in big name outside producers (Marly Marl, Q-Tip, Easy Mo Bee and perhaps Dr. Dre) to add to RZA’s newly unearthed vibe. “I’m making songs that you can write out on a piece of paper and give it to another band, and they’ll do it.”

The ancient Chinese philosophy of I-Ching uses 64 hexagrams to plot the inevitability of change in the universe. There is no questioning that Wu-Tang’s universe has changed— from the members to the state of hip-hop that surrounds them—but they’ve been in similar positions before. Each of I-Ching’s hexagrams represents a specific statement about the world at large, and the 64th is simply translated as “not yet completed,” something very familiar to the probability of 8 Diagrams.

If you look hard enough, any number is everywhere. Squinting at the world through a filter of digits there are infinite equations that provide answers that we’re all seeking. Numerals can block reality as much as they pierce the truth, but their infinity can never be contained by paragraphs. 9 drags on a cigarette turns into 36 into 64 into 9 + 36 + 64 = 109 into 1 + 0 + 9 = 10 into 1 + 0 = 1, Supreme Mathematics’ number of knowledge, and yet it also turns into 9 + 3 + 6 + 6 + 4 = 28 into 2 + 8 = 10 into 1 + 0 = 1, knowledge. And the knowledge that one, final, great Wu-Tang Clan album exists may be just enough to save hip-hop a third time.

“It’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen because it’s inevitable—it has to happen,” RZA says. “[But] if it’s not coming this year, it ain’t coming at all. That’s my opinion. If it doesn’t come this year, it don’t mean nothing no more.”

http://www.urb.com/features/246/WuTangWiddlingDownInfinity.php?PageId=1

[UKnowWhatItIs: welcome to my traps....game over]

That number shit throughout the whole article was stupid but other than that it was cool. Thx for the read.