Well, when you think about it, Wu-Tang Clan are the Belle and Sebastian of hip-hop, and 'Bring da Ruckus' is their 'The State I Am In'. In this blog, I will ...
This is one of my favourite songs. Favourite songs in the world. Has been for over 20 years. I won't be able to do justice to it, but there we go.
I first encountered the Wu-Tang Clan on the cover of the NME in 1997 - ashamed to say I hadn't heard of them until then. This was a big interview to publicize their second album 'Wu-Tang Forever'.
The interview was a riot of late arrivals and quotability - Knowledge is knowing the ledge, Wu-Tang is just ... Wu-Tang etc. The one thing I mainly remember is the only one who seemed more down-to-earth and less self-aggrandising was the ODB, counterintuitively.
Anyhow, I didn't listen to them then, but a couple of years later, I bought their classic debut 'Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)'.
'Bring da Ruckus' is the opening track, and, like millions of others, I was instantly hooked.
I wasn't really into hip-hop growing up. I was aware of it. Other kids at school listened to it, from NWA and De La Soul to Jurassic 5 and A Tribe Called Quest - it would be on Top of the Pops, though usually in a somewhat bowdlerized form. By the time I bought 'Enter the Wu-Tang', I probably already owned a couple of Public Enemy albums, but not that much more than that.
Wu-Tang is, I think, the perfect introduction to what makes hip-hop great, for a suspicious indie kid - the pop culture references, the multiple personalities, the humour, the sense of danger, the not knowing quite whether it's genuinely dangerous or all a big joke, or a bit of both, the eclectic production - it was something that could be enjoyed on many levels.
To be honest, it was 'Bring da Ruckus' I was mainly hooked on to start with. Initially it dwarfed the rest of the album, and it was years before I investigated the rest of the discography properly. I said I was a Wu-Tang Clan fan, and I followed their story, its ups and downs, and listened to a bit of new music here and there, but it's really only recently that I've investigated the back catalogue more thoroughly.
Importantly, as any proper Wu-Tang fan knows, the small number of official Wu-Tang Clan albums are just the tip of the iceberg. There are genuinely brilliant records by solo members which are often not that far from group efforts. Two of those which are highly acclaimed and which I've been listening to a lot lately are 'Liquid Swords' by the GZA and 'Supreme Clientele' by Ghostface Killah.
The GZA, Gary Grice, is the RZA's (and the late ODB's) cousin. The RZA (Robert Diggs) is the Number 1 genius behind Wu-Tang Clan, the producer and the leader. His cinematic production style has been hugely influential, not least on Kanye West (he guests on West's 'My Beautiful ... Fantasy'. Notwithstanding all that, I actually love his rapping (it's him that snarls the refrain on 'Bring da Ruckus' - a fearsome call to arms in one sense, but somehow rendered endearing by his dropped r's).
Wu-Tang's influence is deep and wide and they've a fame which transcends their sales (the first two albums were big sellers, but there hasn't been much in the way of singles success). One such instance is their infamous 'Once Upon a Time in Shaolin' album, of which one copy was made and sold to the highest bidder, who turned out to be the loathsome pharma-bro Martin Shkreli. And, hilariously, the whole saga, somehow, was officially chronicled by someone called Cyrus Bozoghmehr, who I was at school with. Cyrus, a fearsome rugby and football player, used to shamelessly (and dreadfully) burst into song on the District Line. All part of the great lineage of art terrorism, I suppose.
So much did I love 'Bring da Ruckus', i suspect I sometimes forgot its beauty wasn't universally recognised. A feeling of genuine (not just comical) shame overcomes me when I think of a friend's black tie, parents and grandparents included, birthday party in an extremely fancy and picturesque venue being spoiled by me and a couple of friends shouting the refrain from 'Ruckus' at the top of our lungs. Likewise, I remember being in a car with my mother and putting on one of my lovingly-crafted compilation tapes, which was all going swimmingly, in particular when it got to 'Over the Rainbow', only for that to transition into 'Bring da Ruckus'. I mean, it's a great juxtaposition, but still, a bit beyond the pale, really.
Anyway, I still love the song, and, as it happens, the comparison with 'The State I Am In' stands - as the first song on their first album, it exemplifies everything great about the band - you might argue it's never been improved upon, but, in each case, that's a very high bar.
PS I remembered another thing I love about the Wu-Tang Clan; it's that, if you take their real names, it sounds like halfway down the leaderboard of a European Tour golf tournament of the late 80s - Robert Diggs, Gary Grice, Dennis Coles, Russell Jones, Clifford Smith, Jason Hunter, Corey Woods ...
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