Wu-Tang Clan's "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)"

All right, my friend. I love it. I'm done. Do I get to get taken nap now? I was up all night doing that shit. That was great. So luxury today, we're talking about a rough rugged and raw debut album that introduced the world to 9 MC straight out of Shaolin. That's right, by incorporating elements of kung fu movies, comic books and Saturday morning cartoons. This triple platinum album was able to capture the harsh realities of street life through a cinematic lens. Today, we're not just talking one song. We're talking one album. And that album is into the Wu Tang 36 chambers by Wu Tang Clan. Watch that baby, baby, come on, baby, baby, come on, baby, baby, come on. What's going on? One Song Nation luxury here. And I'm Diallo. And we are so excited to share that we will be taping a live episode of our show at OnAir Fest this November. We could not imagine One Song Live without you, our fans. So please join us on Wednesday, November 12th at KCRW in Santa Monica. For more information, please visit onairpresents.com or go to the link in our bios. Can we see all there? I'm actor, writer, director and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer DJ songwriter and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers interpolation. And this is One Song, the show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres, telling you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And you can watch One Song on YouTube and Spotify while you're there. Please like and subscribe. Alright, Diallo, I know you're a huge Wu-Tang fan. When was the first time you ever heard them? Dude, I remember it clear as day. I think we were in my buddy at Taurus car and our buddy Joe had just gotten back from Pratt where he was studying in art school. And he was like, yo, I got this killer tape. And he specifically said killer tape, which I didn't even know was a reference to something said on the album. But he was like, you got to put this killer tape in. It's like some stuff you've never heard before. And from the second that it started, like it sounded like nothing that I ever heard before, not just from hip hop, but from anything. It was dark. It was so dark. It was borderline like a horror movie. Like it was it was like an audio landscape in hell. And I'll never forget. I asked the car, everybody in the car is like, we got to like the second or third song. I was like, is this is this hip hop? Like that's how different it sounded from everything that came before. That's so you thought it wasn't hip hop because of what? It just didn't sound like hip hop. I think that we had begun. We got really used to a certain sound and hip like there was always like the James Brown. We didn't know we didn't talk in these terms. But looking back now, there was always like a James Brown drum break. There was a Lonnie Liston Smith bass line and a lot of like the tribe stuff. They were looping up the funk and like the P funk and stuff. And that was not this at all. It was like it had the street rap of like West Coast gangster rap. But there was no smoothness of like G funk in it. There was, you know, some of the grip that you would hear on the East Coast from from producers like DJ Premier does effects. In researching this episode, I didn't even know this. Dazz effects produced their own songs. Shout out to Dazz effects. Like those were some of the first really dark 90s style like hip hop songs that had forsaken like sort of the sounds of like the 80s or even like the bomb squad with Public Enemy. And it just, it didn't sound like hip hop to me. Hip hop had always been dance music or at least party music. At least party music. And like if this was party music, I don't know what kind of fucked up party rap. That's interesting. The distinction you're making is that the darkness of the emotion that the music brought out was different from what you've been hearing. Yes. What hip hop had done for you previously. What you would use it for, so to speak, like what environment you'd be hearing it in the emotion it would rise. Yes. It would be raising you. Luxury, what about you? Were you listening to Wu Tang in the 90s? I was a little late to Wu Tang. I caught up to them a little later, but like it's the sort of thing that like I love the sound of this. I love the grid. I love the dirt. I love hip hop, but I just, it was, it just bypassed me. I bet you your relationship with Wu Tang was a lot like my relationship with the misfits. You probably walked into the record stores, you saw the album covers and stuff. And so you knew what, you knew Wu Tang was a thing, but you didn't know what they sounded like. You know what? While we're giving shout outs to our friends, like my Betty, I would go up to New York City on the Greyhound bus from DC. And I would stay with my friend Gabe, who's working at BMG Records. And he had a Wu Tang on his wall. He had Wu Tang post on his wall. He was listening to Fush Nickens. He was big into Mobb Deep. He was the guy who like was into the New York hip hop stuff. So like when I'd be hanging out with my buddy Gabe shout out to Gabe, that's when I would be hearing and I'd be absorbing it, but I never went down the deeper dive into it. I'm like, I'm so happy you brought up Fush Nickens because I love Fush Nickens. Listen, no, I did too. I do love Fush Nickens. Fush Nickens, it should be said, was like one of the first to incorporate Kung Fu movies. They were the, I feel like they were the first. They had so many great songs. They had, I'm a true Fush Nick. They had Ring the Alarm. They had La Shmoove. La Shmoove. And we ain't got nothing to prove. They got nothing to prove. And what's interesting, I'm glad you brought up also Fush Nick because I went back and listened to Fush Nick recently. And I will say that for whatever reason, their appropriation of Kung Fu movies and Asian culture in general, it, it hasn't aged as well as Wu Tangs. Like it is very cringe, but like it is interesting to see how their stuff has not aged quite as well as Wu, even though both were popular at the time. But props to Fush for, for, for doing that. And I don't think it's a mistake that both Fush Nickens and Wu Tang Clan are from New York because this is what's interesting. I think culturally about New York, we're all, every kids are all watching Saturday morning cartoons. I wish Saturday morning cartoons were something they are really not. That was the highlight of my life when I was a kid. So great. Kids nowadays, they just watch whatever they want to. Even when they want to. Spide a man. Absolutely. 100%. But in New York specifically, Saturday morning cartoons went into old Kung Fu movies. And so those kids were like getting a steady diet of like, you know, the cartoons we were all watching and then into Kung Fu movies. So, you know, it's just like that's something that both Fush Nickens and Wu Tang incorporated into their music. But Wu Tang is darker, I would argue, than Fush Nickens. And it's not an accident that this album feels like a movie. I felt like if the Riz had been born in another city, like say Los Angeles, he might have been a filmmaker instead of a rapper because he was clearly using the audible space. As his canvas, as his big screen, 70 millimeter misdivision screen. Like his score. It's like a score to a film in your mind. It's almost like he's creating a score with no visuals. The visuals are in your mind. Right, right, right. You mentioned that Kung Fu movies made me connect it to the fact that these Kung Fu movies, it may not be a full coincidence that you go from cartoons into these overdubbed Kung Fu movies because there's something funny about them. And the sounds are part of what make them funny because the overdubbing, of course, famously is always a little bit off. It's always off. And the sounds are a little too loud to what would actually have happened if you hit somebody with that feather. If you hit somebody with a feather, it doesn't go. But those sounds find their way, obviously, into this music, right? And so it gives it kind of a cartoonish violence on top of the actual, like there's the combination, basically, of the references culturally and the sounds which we associate with sort of cartoonish violence. But then there's an actual darkness to the lyrical content. There is. Such an interesting blend of things. There is. But just thinking about like their integration of Kung Fu movies into their music. I mean, like this album that we're talking about today into the Wu Tang, it literally starts with a clip from the movie that they take their name from. That movie being Shaolin and the Wu Tang. This is the beginning of Bring the Ruckus. The Shaolin and the Wu Tang could be dangerous. Do you think your Wu Tang sword can defeat me? I'm God. I'll let you try my Wu Tang style. Bring the motherfucking ruckus. Dude, that song still gives me so stiked. So stiked. This is a podcast. So for those of you missing the video component, we were mirroring the not correct dubbing style that you would have seen in the actual film. What are you talking about? That was expert dubbing on our behalf. I think we were a little too good. I know there were a couple times I couldn't help but say the lyrics. By the way, for that specific clip, RZA has said that, quote, it was perfect for what I was trying to say about my crew. That's how I felt Wu was almost invincible. Yeah, like the same way these kung fu movies would highlight different martial art styles, every member of the Wu was kind of coming with like a totally different style. Unlike almost any other rapper that was out there at the time. Let's talk about the different members of the Wu. The clan was just founded by the RZA and includes Master Killer, the JZA, Old Dirty Bastard, Inspector Dick, Rick Kwam, the ship, U-Ga, Ghostface Killer, and the M-E-T-H-O-D. Man. Sorry, I just got lost in my 90s. I liked your 90s. I wish I had known you then. I wish we had been friends 30 or so. I do too, man. When we were two. I'll tell you, I was effortlessly skinny back then. Now I gotta put in effort and eat right. God damn it. I gotta survive. Welcome back to the Unk podcast. Okay, so just for fun, let's come up with our Wu Tang names. We are all logging into the Wu Tang name generator right now. Which I think has been there since the 90s. Dude, I mean, this is literally how Donald Glover got his name Childish Gambino. This is like a GeoCities ass looking website. It's frightening. So I'm typing it in. You go first. From this day forward, the website is telling me you will be also known as Mighty Menace. I'm Mighty Menace. Dang, Mighty Menace is not bad. That's all right. That's pretty good. Tell them, mid. It's a little bit. It's not great. Ah, I disagree. I don't love it, but I think Mighty Menace might have been. Menace, I don't like. He might have had a featured verse on the Killipriest album. It's kind of a backhand accomplice because you start with Mighty. I'm like stoked, but then Menace, like am I annoying? Do I irritate you? I feel like I'm irritating you right now. No, I'm being a menace right now. You're only irritating me because you've got a fucking dope name. I just typed my name in. Apparently my name is respected ninja. Let me tell you something. If you all start replying in the comments with the ninja emoji, I see what you're doing. You're not slick. Yeah. You're not slick. Respect the ninja. Wait, put your middle name. Put your middle name in because you get a different name. Maybe you get something better. All right. My other Wu-Tang name is intellectual commander. Okay. I like this. I like this for you. You're my intellectual commander. It's the rebel I see coming as you see. I mean, it's not mad at intellectual commander. Is that the deck isn't much? You're in the same zone as Inspector Deck. He's inspecting what, a deck? Like what even is that? So keeping with this theme of album listening, we're going to fast forward, if you will, to the middle of the album. And we're going to spend some time in this block of songs starting with Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with. This song, I think it encapsulates this idea of kung fu brotherhood with a street edge, but bonding over Saturday cartoons and cereal. Check out Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with. Hey, yo, the Wu is back. Making brothers go, boom, boom, like a super cat. This is going to be a hard one for me. This is your Aussie. I kind of know every, I kind of know every lyric. I have memories. By the way, I used to love as a survey said, you're dead. That's a dark episode of the family feud. That's a bar. That's a very dark episode. They were killing people on set. By the way, one of the things I love the most about this song is the song and samples. Let's play a little bit of the song and samples. This is the opening theme song to underdog. That's all, that's all he needed. That's all he needed to make people lose their shit. I mean, like when this album came out, I just can't stress how much multiple songs off this album would make people go crazy. Protect your neck, method, man. Like these songs would get played multiple times at one party. Also, I saw online where Wyclef John just recently has made it kind of clear that he was interpolating the Riz's sample of that underdog sample for when Carlos Santana does his guitar solo, Maria Maria. Let's hear a little bit of that. All right. The next song on the album is Cream. I should say that this would definitely be the first Wu-Tang song I would have ever heard, because obviously it's the one that popped into the culture. The expressions and all the language that came out of the song became reference points, just like that people said. You just started saying cash rolls, everything around me, dollar, dollar billy, all this stuff. To me, that's such a marker of importance for a band or an artist when what they say, when the art gets into the culture, it's just language now. Another thing, like for me, the word ruckus, I don't think I'd heard the word ruckus, since the 30s until I came back with the Wu-Tang. It was funny. I think ruckus was out there in East Coast hip hop slang at the time, but because they had such a big audience, they were able to take it to another level. In my mind, they own that word because their microphone was so big to use it. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. So Cream was their most successful single. By the way, it's their biggest on Spotify by far. It's like got half a billion streams. Cash rolls, everything around me for those who don't know, that's what Cream stands for. And it's the song that really put the band on the map. So let's play snippet of their performance on Arsenio Hall's final show, speaking of the 90s. Speaking of the late 80s into the 90s, that featured a stacked lineup. It's got MC Light, it's got Fife Dog, it's got Q-Tip, CL Smooth, KRS One, and Pete Rock. And the Wu, let's listen. My destination. 40 of us life as a shorty shouldn't be so rough. So feminist. What? Such an ally with a feminist line. Life as a shorty shouldn't be so rough. No, no, no. When he said shorty there, he's talking about kids. Shorty used to be, shorty eventually became exclusively the girl you're talking to. It became shouty. So he's saying life as a child. Like yeah, life as a shorty, because he's talking about when he was going to jail. So that sounds much darker than the interpretation that I had, which was sweet and an ally and a friend to women. I didn't mean to take cream and put it in a dark place, but I told you this out in the dark. That's okay. I appreciate the education. I have more knowledge now. That's why we do the show. Absolutely. Can I just say, watch it that the cultural significance of being on the series finale of the Arsenio Hall show, because it can't be overstated. Arsenio was the cool maker in late night TV. In fact, when I started as a writer on late night with Jimmy Fallon, one of his goals, one of our goals was to be in 2009, what Arsenio had done so well in the early He was essential to the culture, wasn't he? Absolutely. Just like, yeah. Also, also about cream, fantastic sample. Fantastic sampling. So the key sample is of course 1967 Charmels tune, as long as I've got you. That's it. It's just that little intro section right there is the primary loop and that's co-written. That's the primary loop. That's the primary loop. And then if you let it play a little bit longer, just a little bit longer, you'll hear the beginning of cream. And it's co-written. It's Isaac Hayes and David Porter. So I'm like key Memphis musicians. The Stacks era. Just a real quick moment. Everything we're talking about today, by the way, talking about all these samples, it's worth noting that first of all, the RZA has talked extensively about all these samples. I'm glad you bring this. They're all cleared. All of these are cleared. And what's interesting is you sort of go through them because sample clearance is back in the day, we're just starting to happen and they were early to it. They were doing it the right way really early. Only a couple of years earlier, we'd have that big Bismarcky decision. That's right. So we had the grand upright lawsuit, which was terrible. And this is where Bismarcky was sued for sampling alone again by Gilbert O'Sullivan, who sued and it went to trial, which prior to that hadn't happened. This was the first sort of like precedent case. And it set this idea that literally the judge in his decision said, use biblical terms to say that thou shalt not sample, which is crazy to me. It's crazy. He threatened to send them to jail. Like it didn't end up happening that way, but it set this cultural framework. We're sampling from that moment forward. People started calling stealing. And let me say this, a thing in the hip hop culture, the time that you don't talk about samples, that was about 30 years ago. I just want to take a step back until all the hip hop heads of whom I would count myself. On this show, we only talk about samples that are known only samples that are fully, fully public knowledge. There's no secrets being revealed here. This is all fun. As I often say on the show, we are not sample snitches. If we ever do come across something that is not public knowledge, we won't talk about it. Because we believe in the art, we believe in the producers. If anything, we just want to celebrate the producers and celebrate the art of sampling in ways that everybody already knows about. Absolutely agree. And just to build on that, to be like really specific and clear, like we look at the publishing, not just the liner notes. The liner notes tell you something, but it's a snapshot and things change. The public records tell you whether there were publishing splits, meaning the people that were sampled got paid. That's what we look into every single episode for every sample we talk about. This is all about celebrating sampling as an art form. We are so proud to have had the Jimmy Jams, the Lil Johns, the Warranties, the Bangladeshes on this show. Because they, to me, I get sort of emotional like, they appreciate that we appreciate the culture, that we, that I appreciate the culture, that I am here in D'Yolo. We're both here to spread the joy of where did this come from? And for producers and songwriters to help them understand, this is a songwriting technique. You can make music from other music. It's the history of music. Sampling is one size of that. We always say that a lot of those rock bands from the 60s that everybody's love, they're basically interpolating old black musicians. And if we can talk honestly about this stuff, then everybody gets their flowers. And we just want to undo the damage that was done by that 1991, the grand upright decision that's framed sampling in a separate category of interpolation and covering all these other areas of normal musical borrowing. So I'll get off my soapbox now with D'Yolo. We're sharing the soapbox together. We'll jump off and get back into the music. Exactly. Another thing that makes hip hop albums in this period, we talked a little bit about this on the Day Last Soul episode that we did, is the interludes. Yeah, the skits. The skits and interludes, right. Always made it feel like... Were Day Last Soul the first or like the biggest to do it first? They were one of the first to like make it like a major, yeah, to popularize it, I think that's fair to say. This is one of my most favorite albums to have interludes on it. Famously or infamously, there's an interlude at the beginning of the track, Method Man, where Method Man and Rayquan go back and forth trying to one up each other on how to torture people. We are not going to play a clip from this. Yes, we have to play a clip from torture. You can't. Apologies to anyone who can scrolls out easily, but you've had more than 30 years to prepare. This is what became known as torture. It's so crazy. I fucking sew your asshole clothes and keep feeding you and feeding you and feeding you and feeding you. Jesus Christ. I'm sorry. Is this a threat or a promise? This is like... That was some dark comedy. Yeah. Listen, my understanding about this group is that these guys as independent artists, right, started, they then landed later also as independent artists, but the will, RZA put together eight, nine, 10, how many you want to count, depending on the day, artists who were themselves rappers, who to some degree in Staten Island might have known about each other. I've heard stories, they were in high school, they're like, oh, that guy, I know who that is. He's from another part of town. There's a degree to which there's some actual quote unquote animosity, which is creative and it's a friendly rivalry, but underneath that, bubbling under that a little bit might be some actual, it's still creative and there's still a team as the Wu Tang, but they're also rivals. They're trying to have the best verse. Absolutely. There's absolutely competition taking place, but I also think that they're all like, just to talk about torture going back a second, they're all still like excited. They're recording an album. You get the sense that they know that it's going to come out. And so in that one, I hear like people having fun. So yes, there's competition and there's some rivalry, but there's also, I mean, some of them are family, but there's also like some friendship, some kinship there. Yeah, for sure. That was really funny because a couple of the torture scenarios that get thrown out there don't land. They're not that bad. Some are better than others. That seems to win every single time. There's delivery. It's like they're kind of pulling their punches a little bit. I'm not going to go that far, but Memphis is like going all the way. I think it's like a, it's almost like a joke cipher where like, some jokes don't land as hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. No, and definitely I'm not trying to imply that there's actual hatred going on. That's a joke clearly. When we come back, we're pressing play on Protect Your Nack. We're going to dive deep into the samples of the song and the legendary verses that introduced us to the Wu on a genre-defining posse cut when we come back. This is your latest idea. It's unique. It's game changing. It's huge, but you can go even bigger with AI-powered PDF spaces in Acrobat Studio, turning your files and links into actionable insights and content, plus share projects and collaborate seamlessly while keeping everything private and secure. So your excellent idea stays yours. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more and try it out on adobe.com. All right, welcome back to one song. Let's dive into another song off of Enter the Wu Tang, 36 Chambers. This is Protect Your Nack. And this was the first song Wu Tang recorded as a full collective at Firehouse Studios in Brooklyn. It's been well documented that the final version of the song was not the version they originally recorded. They originally recorded to a different beat and in a different order. That version was never released. That's right, Y'all. But on the TV show Wu Tang and American Saga on episode six of season two, there's this really great sequence where they really dive into the making of this song. And it's really beautifully done, by the way. I have to recommend it because they sort of display how sampling is done in this sort of artistic way. They bring back these 70s band members and Riz's there at his console and he's like telling the drummer to do this. No, just play the snare. Just play this beat. It's really cool. It's very well done. Wow. Are you feeling about this? We're going to recreate that a little bit in just a second. But first, on the episode, you hear that they're rapping to a completely different tune. And full props goes to a YouTuber called Project Strum, aka ColeJohn23, who recreated it. This is the beat. And again, this is a snippet that was used on that episode that he took and turned into the entire track. This is what Wu Tang Clan would have been rapping to when they first did Protect Your Nack. It would have sounded like this. So it sounds a little different, right? It does. It's a little bouncier, a little upbeat, I would say. Yeah, it's not quite as, I don't know, maybe it's because it's new. It sounds a little bit more in the hip hop pocket, if you will, of like 1992. It's sort of brighter sounding to my ears, right? It doesn't have the darkness and the grit that we're about to get into. I agree. Yeah. So that was originally done by Prince Rakim, aka Rizzebac, when he was still Prince Rakim. And it was originally a beat for the Rebel INS, aka Jason Hunter, aka Inspect The Deck. Yes. Well, I feel like as an unsung hero of this group, people forget that on, you could argue, maybe two of their biggest posse cuts of all time, Protect Your Nack and Triumph, he's got the first verse. That is such a big weight on his shoulders and he carries it every time. That's right. He brings you in. So anyway, that song was samples, by the way, the main ingredient song, something about love. So that's the sample you're hearing. Obviously, at a certain point Rizzebac heard back the results of all of them in the room and was like, this isn't quite the right beat for this. It's not the right vibe. So what they did was, and by the way, a couple of unsung heroes, I got to give props to Ethan Reiman, who gets the Soul Engineering credit on this song. But on the version we know. Yeah. On the canonical version, that's on the record. He gets the engineering credit for this song. But we also know that Carlos Best had something to do with it, as did Blaise Dupuis. There's a little bit of a Rashomon who tracked it and who didn't, but they were all part of the process of making this tune. Yeah. Well, let's hear a little bit of the beat of Protect Your Nack. Here's the main loop. And that's it. It's really just a bar, actually. I played it twice. Don't overthink it. Yeah. I think that's the lesson. Don't overthink it. Where did they get that loop from? Now, the Rizzebac himself explained this on his TV show. A lot of what I'm about to show you comes out of what he's told all of us. I've just broken it down for our show to get to the more micro level. All right. So the first beat is the legendary Honey Drippers Impeach the President, 1973. One of the most sampled tunes of all time. You've heard this loop. I'll just play it for you raw. This is what it sounded like. You've heard that in literally one of the thousands of tunes that it's been in. It is early hip hop. Cool Herk bought one of the like 500 maybe copies that were made. Maybe actually only be 100 copies. Not a lot were pressed, but he had one and it became legendary in hip hop after he started to play it. And then most famously in 1985, Marley Marl does one of the first, if not the first quote unquote, chops where you're not just using the loop. He started taking just the kick, just the snare, and you can remake a beat based on those basic elements in hi-hat. So legendarily, great story he tells on QLS. Go listen to that episode about how his reel-to-reel got stolen and the beat that he originally made for MC Shands, The Bridge, found its way into other tunes of the era, like because he had left it behind at the studio. So Rizzo would have chopped at the beat using his sampler. So he just isolated the snare and mapped it to his sampler so he could just play that separate, as well as the kick, which sounds like this. So once those two items got to his sampler, including the hi-hats and everything, he would have had something like this. And then there's the double kick. And he left out this. I wasn't there, but what one can do with a sampler so it's likely the Rizzo would have done something like this is mess around on the keyboard, by the way, I'm doing it with the pads. He didn't have pads on his keyboard. He just had the notes like a keyboard keyboard, but he would have played around with a beat like... But I think you left out that hi-hat. Yeah, I don't think there's a hi-hat in there. So what you're actually getting, and I'll play it for you now, is this. Yeah, he left out the hi-hat and I think that's what prevented it from sounding like more older school hip hop. Oh, wow. Like that hi-hat is like the happiness. Like it's also like brings up the hype by taking that part out and stripping it down a little bit. It feels more like a beat down. Like it feels like somebody, it honestly feels like you're on the receiving end of some characters from Stap Myler. And I think that that's what makes it sound more in the context of 1993, more modern. Now I gotta say, that doesn't sound quite like the beat as I think about it. So what else is going on here? We have a few more steps to go. I'm going to keep it simple. There's a degree to which what I'm doing is recreating it in the room in five minutes, which takes, you know, doesn't take into account. Well, it doesn't take into account all of the sonic shaping that would have required a lot more time on the day. So, and different gear, by the way, but we're going to get pretty close. I think 88%, maybe 91% if I do a good job. So there's another beat in there. I'll play you the whole thing. It's another situation where he's just isolated a piece of it. So see if you can listen for what was isolated. This is Otis Redding, Hard to Handle. So I'm going to show you what he took from that. And you may not have noticed the first time, but here it is. That's the piece right there. I'll play it again. That shows up, including the piano. Yeah, I was going to say the piano sounds very woo. One of my favorite things about sampling, especially, and specifically the Rizawa he does and Wu Tang, is the sounds are, we call them, a lot of words are used that are about darkness and grit and dirt, right? Yeah. Part of it is because the sample chops the choice of what he uses and the choice to keep in what was there. That wasn't the note maybe that he wanted. Just the kick drum. He includes that piano sound. Now he pitches that up one and a half steps. So it sounds like this. And then he takes a little piece of it and he puts it on the end. So the entire loop sounds like this. And now I'm going to bring back the impeach, the president's snare and kick. And I think he layered like an A to wait kick or something underneath it to get a little more punch. So that might sound like this. I love it. And what's crazy about it is like, think about what's happening on the West Coast right now. Dr. Dre is like cleaning that stuff up, making it shine. Yes, this is the opposite of that. The Rizawa is going in the absolute opposite direction. He's leaving that sample dirty. Yes. He's leaving an element that he may not have even asked for, but because they're there, it's giving it that Wu Tang Rizatouch. I'm so glad you said that because the final step in the process, which is going to get us from what might be 75% accurate now, to like, I hope 90% is that there's one last step to make it dirty and gritty. You can accomplish that grit in a lot of ways. I think down sampling, in other words, the sample resolution was very low. He might have added distortion. He might have done other things. I'm going to quickly make that whole thing sound a little bit darker. And one way to do that is we're going dark. We're going a little bit dark. Here's that hard to handle loop. And now if I add some of the, what's called down sampling to make it sound like what a sampler would have done, it does this. And I could do an EQ cut on the highs to make it sound darker. And all of a sudden, when you add back, I still think there's too much high end. So I'm going to take the high end off of that. It sounds a lot darker. And here's the original. I got close. Let's see how close I got. See, even now there's another day or five to like tweak that into dial it in. Now I'm hearing the snare. I want to bring back a little more of that high end, but long story short. Yeah. These are the tools you use to piece together from different sample sources, just the sound you want, in the place you want, and then shape and transform the overall mix of all those elements. I know that there's a bass and piano on this track. Those sampled or something that the RZA played, what's going on there? So I believe that they come from the Ensoniq workstations floppy disks that would have been, essentially the presets that would have come with the machine. This is the 90s version of the Melotron, sounds like. It's 1990. When you buy this machine, you get a whole bunch of floppy disks, 3.5, not the five inch ones, but the ones that came in at 3.5. And they have different sounds that you literally put in, and then you can play a piano or a bass sound. So I'll play you what the bass sounds like, isolated, and then I'll bring the beat back in. So I didn't hear that bass without me doing what I was just doing, which is doing the piano part, because that's sort of more of what I hear. You put it to your nose. I've got good news for you. Yeah. Coming next is the piano, which I believe comes from a 3.5 inch floppy disk called Piano Steinway 1. And it would have sounded something like. If you can't afford a Steinway, get the Steinway 1. Would have sounded something like this. And I believe this is the RZA playing this melody line. Yeah. Let's put it together in the mix. All right, my friends. I love it. I'm done. Do I get to take a nap? No, I was up all night doing that shit. That was great. Listen, there's a whole bunch of other samples on this tune. They're mostly little cut-ins, little sound effects, right? Of course, there's that guitar noise that we hear whenever there's a swear, for example. Tick tock and keep ticking. Well, I get to flippin' off the set. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. I'm kickin'. For example. Tick tock and keep ticking. Well, I get to flippin' off the set. I'm kickin'. The lone range are cold. Which, by the way, comes from LL Cool J. LL Cool J is hot as hell. Battle anybody. I don't care. You do. Which comes from ACDC. They're the kings of amazing ways to censor your music. I've said on the show many times, the Brooklyn Zoo Clean Edit is one of my favorite songs of all time. Because of how they cleaned it up. Yeah. So I'll take socks off quick to make some hadamon. You could... If you want to step to my mom. But this is an important one. It's arguably the last piece in the core part of the instrumental of the track that runs through it for the most part. This is Break Your Promise from the Delphonics 1968. So here it is in the original. Yeah. It's that stabbing sound. And let's hear where that came from. And there's another thing in there that's like in so many hip hop songs. I call it the squeal. Yeah, that's the grunt. The JB's sound something like this. Yeah. And this would already be, to your point, legendarily hip hop because public enemy had used it on us. Everybody's used it. Yeah. Yeah, so they used half of what public enemy had used in their jewelry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So many people. The rhythm, the rebel, without a pause, I'm lowering my level. The hard drama, where you never been a man. You want styling? You know... That's the grunt from the JB's 1970. I wish we could do a whole episode dedicated to just this song. It's their first song. It's the song that I believe that they took to Jack the Rapper. It's the song that really introduced a lot of us to the Wu Tang because it was like getting like traded about on like mixed tapes. And there was some of the first music that we ever heard from them. They all have a verse on here. I want to highlight three verses in particular because as with any posse, some people go on to greatness. Some, I would argue this is not at all the best Ghost Face killer verse of all time, but he goes on to have, I think, easily one of the best solo careers after this album. But I want to focus on three big verses on here because they're really introduced to three guys who went solo in a big way. First off is Method Man. I mean, like, it's not an accident that he's one of the first voices that you hear, Watch Step Kid, Watch Step Kid. Like, he's one of the first voices that you hear on the album, and he's got a great verse. It's the Method Man, for sure. Mr. Map, moving on your lap. And shut it off, get it off, let it off like a jack. I want to break food, cop me back. Small change, they put in shame in the... Set it off. Strength. First off, amazing, amazing verse. And like, same, I'm going to live forever. Yeah. Like, he's calling it popular TV shows of our youth. But one thing I want to say about Meth, obviously, he was the breakout star of this roundup. He was a chubby chase, if you will. Breaking out of, you know, the SNL. Early SNL, yeah. Out of early SNL. Because he was the only person who had, like, a huge song that was literally his name. Like, later in this album, we hear... Wow, that's helpful for your brand. ...M.E.T.H.O.D. Man. Smart. And both... Meth Man, which is, you know, he's using M.E.T.H.O.D. Man. He's making a reference to Darrell Hall and John Oates. Meth of Modern Love. He's also... He's like the interpolation king. Even in this verse. Even in this verse, he's like, Move it on your left. Yeah, yeah. Which is a callback to Stratoff. Strength. Yes, one of the great dance songs. Electro-electro-electro. Early, early proto-electro. Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking about it. Like, he's just the king of, like, bringing in the folky other songs. If you think about on Meth Man, he brings in the Beatles, come together. Right after interpolating Darrell Hall and John Oates, he says, Hey, you, get off my clums. I'm not gonna let you go. I'm not gonna let you go. I'm not gonna let you go. I'm not gonna let you go. I'm not gonna let you go. You, get off my clown. Which is, of course, a reference to the Rolling Stones. On how high he starts off with, Excuse me while I kiss the sky. I'm with Jake Lennon, nothing to fuck with. He says, The math will come out tomorrow. He's referencing Annie. To me, he was always the guy who knew how to bring in just the right reference from a previous song. Yeah, I love all of those references. And to be clear, they mostly sound like references to me. Like, you're allowed to refer to another song or another lyric. And this is all down to, like, it sounds like their record label was really solidly behind them. Because they were able to do things that I think are wonderful culturally, bring in both musical references with the sampling and lyrical references. Right? I also think math, you know, it was funny when we were working on this episode when I went back and listened to some of my favorite songs off of their solo albums. It occurred to me that he sings a lot of their choruses. Like, I was like, oh, I love ice cream off of Ray Kwan's only built for Cuban links. But he's the one who's like, Wash these rep, get all up in your guts. Yeah, you're right. When I went back and listened to Shadow Boxing, I realized he starts off that song. Right. And then when I went back and listened to other songs, I just realized like, oh, he was like the guy with the gift to make your song or your chorus really pop. And he even did it for himself when he came out with that remix with Mary J. Blige, the All I Need. Like that's one of the first songs, I think, to win like the duo Grammy or whatever it is in hip hop. Like, Meth is just that guy. Meth is that guy from the beginning. I mean, they should call him Chorus Man. Oh, I didn't know I'd get a laugh out of you. I was so happy that that happened. I was expecting silence and a dead stare. Well, you know what Meth stands for, right? Method of modern love. No, it's actually that's what we used to call marijuana. So you and method, you know, old hip hop hunks like myself. Yeah, no, it was a popular choice. I actually hadn't heard that one at the time. Yeah, I was the chronic East Coast style, which is funny because now if you say meth, it means another drug. Different meaning. It means another drug. Well, Chorus Man, it's available. If you want to use it, it's my idea for you. Let's hear a verse from one of my favorite Wu Tang rappers. This is Old Dirty Bastard. Same on you when you step through to the old dirty bastard straight from the Brooklyn Zoo. And I'll be damned if I let any man come to my sensor. You enter the winter straight up and down that shit is packed. Damn, you can't slam couple of things. Number one, there are so many old dirty bastard choruses that will be there. So many lines of this will be lifted and used as choruses in later songs. What did I say? Chorus Man. Well, that's Old Dirty Bastard now. Oh, sorry. Oh, wait, we got competition for Chorus Man. Yeah. I mean, listen, Old Dirty Bastard, not great branding. Let's face it. What's he thinking? It's like that rock group, the Negro problem, right? It's like it's really hard to book them. It's hard to book them. It's hard to throw that name up on the marquee. But here's what I'll say about ODB, as we may call him. He himself was sort of like a unique chorus driven guy. Like I said, a lot of these lines get used in choruses later. And I like that he says something like you can't slam because Onyx had a huge hit with slam. Just the previous year. And I feel like they were already maybe moving out and Wu-Tang is sort of taking over that slot of like, we're the New York guys you should be afraid of. And also how much I miss Russell Jones, you know, like Old Dirty Bastard. Go back and listen to our Mariah Carey fantasy episode, because we sort of do a mini deep dive on ODB. His story is so fascinating. So many great stories. But this album gave us ODB, The Osiris, The Big Baby Jesus to the Wu-Tang Clan. And this verse, you know, is one of the best verses on the song. That's so crazy to just be reminded that this is an introduction to all these guys that are just like legendary cultural figures for 30 years now, right? That's crazy. It's so strong. Let's talk about the genius, aka the jizz. Matter of fact, we got the girls and let's have a mud fight. I loved every single line of that because every Wu member had their own style. They're all rapping about different things. They all have a totally different delivery. The fact that the RZA, who is like the jizz's cousin, as you should be said, the jizz, the RZA and Old Dirty Bastard are all cousins. So they've known each other for a while. They have so many different styles, yet the RZA is able to piece them all together onto this super loaded track. Can I just ask, because it just so begs the question, like, is there any precedent for this? Not really. I mean, like eight rappers with no hook, with no repeated elements, right? There's no chorus. There's this is so unique, but it like is a new template for a new way to, this is what their music sounds like. You know what's crazy is I never thought about that. If you could call anything the chorus, the chorus is the very end of the song. Right. Because they have it in the top. The very end of the song, they say, you best protect your deck, you best protect your deck, you best protect your deck. Like that's the, that's the chorus. You get like an echoey outro. Right. That's crazy. It almost feels like an afterthought, not quote unquote. I mean, listen, the whole thing is obviously a combination of mastermindedly engineered by the RZA, but also he re-peaced together what they had recorded and changed the beat. The fact that the protect your neckline appears at the beginning. At the very beginning. At the very end. And at the very end. And then it's like right in the middle as it interlude. It's almost as though to give there a hook that like a through line for the whole thing. I think what he was going for with this song, especially when they were shopping it, I think the hip hop world was still very, very infatuated with a certain, with another posse cut that doesn't get mentioned a whole lot live at the barbecue. I don't know this one. What's that one? This is the, this is the posse cut. I think it was on cold chilling. Pretty sure it's on cold chilling that was sort of everybody's introduction to Nas. And Nas had an amazing verse on live at the barbecue live at the barbecue. I also don't think ever gets mentioned in the song. Even if it does, it's again, a non-traditional chorus. To bring back the genius, I think he had one of the best verses on this song. The fact that he gets so granular with like record label politics and he benches cold killer, but that's in a reference to the fact that he was on cold chilling. And he always felt worse from the genius was his album back then. He felt like he had been done wrong. He felt like they were investing in another rapper, this suit and tie wrap as he references later in his verse. He's really like sort of opening himself up and being vulnerable in his own way and saying like, this industry's messed up. So I got with my cousins and I got with these other rappers and we're about to take this rap shit by storm. And I think that's really cool. And they really did when you think about it because the JZA, I think has one of the best solo albums coming out of Enter the Wu-Tang 36 chambers. His album, Liquid Swords is just really amazing. And they really, I thought, said the bar very high along with methods to Cal and Ray Kwan's only bill for Cuban links. I think that these albums really set the bar high for the level of quality that you would get out of a Wu-Tang solo album because they could have just been this group that came out with a great Posse album and then sort of like, you know, disappeared until the next Posse album came out. No, every single solo album that came out of the Wu felt curated and Taylor made for the audience that was ready to devour it. So luxury, how do the splits break down? Listen, the splits are almost exactly what you'd hope there'd be for eight dudes. Seven of them get 6.25%. Really? But interestingly, we were just talking about them, but the JZA gets a little bit extra. He gets 9.37. Oh, wow. So the genius, the JZA gets that extra 3%. I did not know. I would have thought the RZA would have got maybe like that extra 0.5 or something. It's so interesting you say that. So this is from 1991. It's him first trying out this line, Protect Your Neck. So he clearly wanted to use that line watch to stepkid. So he brought it into the song. Maybe the fact that that becomes part of the hook is why he got some of those extra percentage points. Maybe so. Wow, I would have thought it would have been the RZA, but good on the guys. I think again, I think that's one of the things that helps keep people in good standing. We know that there are some choppy waters in this past future, but at least in theory, those splits sounds kind of fair. D'all, what do you think the legacy of End of the Woo 36 Chambers is? I can still remember what it looked like sitting there in Tower Records when I went to go buy it. Listen, this album went off like a cultural bomb. It planted a flag in the ground for the East Coast and the future course of hip hop in a way that I've rarely seen since. This kind of thing happens like once or twice a decade at best. I really didn't think it allowed a raw street aesthetic into East Coast rap that would have been out of step with what Tribe and Native Tongues was doing, but it would have also been out of place in the penthouses where Puffy and the bad boy guys were hanging out. You know what I mean? Like this is this third lane approach is what I think allowed the mob deeps and the Smith and Wessons and the Heltaskelters and honestly, the post-illmatic output of Nas to really come in through the door and that's not even mentioning, which we don't have time to do all of the epic and classic Wu Tang solo album. I mean, very simply, this changed the sound of hip hop over and over. It changed the sound of hip hop and there were so many of them. Like if you think about it, their solo album output is kind of unparalleled in almost any genre. I'm not even talking about hip hop. Like what rock group breaks up and all of the solo albums are kind of amazing. It doesn't happen very often. Timon's maybe? Oh no, I take that back. Back in the New York groove. Even the Ringo Starr albums are not really well known. I mean, like there's no other group that breaks off with like nine members and you have like admittedly like nine interesting solo careers. I mean, just think about it. You've got Method Man's to Cal. You've got the jizzes liquid swords. You've got Rick Juan's only bill for Cuban links. Who got Old Dirty Bastards return to the 36 chambers? And you've got one of my absolute favorite members of the woo. Ghostface killer, his album Iron Man, insane. Daytona 500. Come on. I mean, this one cements Wu Tang as a unique super group and the RZA as a production powerhouse. And what's crazy, that's all before they even drop the second album, man. We won't even have time to talk about 1997's Wu Tang Forever and its amazing song Triumph. You have to give Inspector Deck his props. You have to give him his props because he comes on first on Protect Your Neck. He comes on first on Triumph. Play Triumph at a party to this day. Every person of a certain age is going to know every single lyric on that first verse and fight me. That is the best verse on Triumph on a song with amazing verses. Inspector Deck's verse on Triumph is transcendent. It's so interesting also to hear the change in production because this is sound wise, a lot different from the earlier ones. Four years later, they're less digging into the dirty, gritty dirt darkness of the earlier records. Absolutely. So much is happening in four years right after Enter the Wu Tang 36 chambers, not too long after the Rizzas like doing like grave diggings, which is even darker and like horror chord. But after so many solo albums and so much, you know, things happening in their professional and personal lives, yes, at some point, the sound of music is changing. And to hear Method Man tell it, by the time Wu Tang Forever comes out in 1997, he already felt the industry was moving towards what we call the jiggy era, the shiny suit era, whatever you want to call it. And it was hard for them to get Triumph on New York radio. At that point, Puffy's sort of taking over New York radio. So as much as I love Triumph, it is sort of that point where Wu Tang will have to again start fighting their way through the industry instead of easily guiding it and sort of like influencing it in their own image. But because of the epic, epic album Enter the Wu Tang 36 chambers, from then until now and into the future, we will always throw up the W Wu Tang Wu Tang. Alright, Wensang Nation, this is one genre. Our friends at Discox challenge us to dive deep into a subgenre and share a few records that we think are essential listening. Today, we're talking about Neil Soul. I'm so excited to talk about this subgenre Motown Music Exec. Kadar Massenberg is credited with coming up with that term. It's funny that he plays into the story when I was doing the radio show at my college station, you know, we would open up the packages with the records inside. I remember the day that I opened up a package and there was an Eric Abadu record that had come and the only I never, I had never heard the name Eric Abadu in my life. But what stood out about the record is that there was a piece of incense taped to the record. I was like, Oh snap, when you're in college, like a free piece of incense. You're like, okay, you got my attention. I remember lighting the incense and being like, Hey, they gave me a free piece of incense. I should listen to the record and I put on Erica's on and on. And I was like, man, this is cool because she's singing about like current stuff, but she sounds like Billie Holiday. Yeah. And I remember thinking like, this is really interesting and being a liner notes reader. I saw that name Kadar Massenberg, kind of a weird name. And it's like out to me. So that was my first experience with Kadar. I would say without artists like Eric Abadu and D Angelo with his Brown Sugar album, we may not have gotten Neil Soul the way that we ended up getting it. But just for the uninitiated, Neil Soul is basically R&B that borrows heavily from a 70 soul aesthetic, but had contemporary to the 90s production values and a post hip hop perspective. And again, that's artists like Erica Badu with her album, Badoism, D Angelo's Brown Sugar, and of course, Maxwell's Opus, Urban Hangsweep. I'm just thinking, because you know that phenomenon, if somebody describes a record, sometimes you'll never not hear it the way they described it. I just remember, I think it was Novena Carmel, actually our friend of the show on KCerdeb was describing an Erica Badu song. And she's like, it's like someone came up behind you and breath heavily on your neck. And that's what I think of every time I hear Erica Badu. That's a perfect description of her music. So what is your pick for Neil Soul? All right, my friend, I brought in D Angelo's legendary Voodoo album. This record to me is perfection. It's one of the best albums of the 2000s. It's one of the best albums of the 2000s ever. It combines, as you mentioned, the sounds and vibe even. There's something viby. It's not just 70 sounds, but it's also some of the vibiness. There's also something interesting about it being modern because they use dry production techniques instead of the big cavernous reverb that you might hear in the 60s and 70s. Very dry production, obviously. Didn't they use like some vintage instruments? And like, you know, I feel like it wasn't enabled. They're going for a vintage sound, but they did things that you would not have heard at the time, not the least of which is Questlove and his drumming, which on a bunch of songs has that Dilla vibe, which he had been, you know, himself obsessed with for a few years. Absolutely. Working with Dilla, meeting him and shouting out to the highest heavens that this guy is a genius. And he started to actually, you know, every now and then perform broken beats style stuff he might have heard out on a Dilla record. I love Voodoo for the second. I actually worked at Virgin as an intern, fresh out of college when that album came out. So I remember seeing just stacks and stacks of them and putting it on thinking like, oh man, I like brown sugar. I'll probably like this. It was so drastically different from brown sugar. And yet it sort of like let us know that like, oh, this is a guy who could have a super long career because it is just genius. And you've got Questlove and you've got James Poiser. You've got so many people, you know, from that Neil Soul. Neil Soul was like, not even just a John or it really did feel like, it's like grunge. It's like a scene. And there's certain people who pop up on record after record. Yeah. And the sound of this record is so specific. It's got like, I don't even know what emotion is, but it takes me to a very specific place. It's a very specific color that only this record has. Is it like a dark gray? Is it like grainy? It is a little bit, that's so funny. Yeah, I would say it's a sepia tone. I think you're right. It's not, it's black and white, but with a little bit of something added to it, so it's not black and white. And of course, vocally speaking, we've got, you're alluding back to Prince and Curtis Mayfield. You're getting all of these shivers up your spine kind of feelings that come from this record. So one of my favorites. This one of these records that I've been wanting for years, you know, that list is endless. I will never buy all the records I intend to buy. Finally, I was like, this is the day I was at the record store the other day, bought this, immediately ran home, put it on discogs. It's there in my profile, and I'm proud of it. I'm proud that it's there, balancing out all the dub records and all the Jane's Addiction originals and misfits and whatever else. What about you, Diallo? What is your Neo Soul pick this week? Glad he asked for my pick. I actually went with Music Soul Child. This album was really cool. I love the song Just Friends, which is the first single off of this album. And the other thing that I think is sort of interesting about it, you know, there were a lot of artists, once Erica blew up and DiAngelo blew up. There were a lot of artists I felt like started to adopt, if not the sound of Neo Soul, sort of like the appeal of it, you know, like they didn't maybe go full on, full on Soul Querians, but you just got the sense that like artists like Bill L, Sunshine Anderson, you know, there were more artists that were coming into the tent and Music was one of them. And I love the song Just Friends. I lived on discogs to find out who had played the keys on this. And I saw the name James Poiser, who is once again, with our buddy Questlove, somebody who worked on your pick, which was DiAngelo's voodoo. So it really was a scene and a time. And it's a really cool scene. And I do feel like certain artists like Miguel sort of like carry on the tradition of Neo Soul into the present. One other fun fact, the song that Music Soul Child had on his other album, which was called Half Crazy, is an amazing song. And I don't think you know that song. I would say go listen to that song because that has like a really hypnotic, strange sort of like time signature. I really can't wait to play that song. I'm the guy who likes strange time signatures. Okay, fine. I like time signatures. Not wrong. But I like them. I know you like them. I think we're going to bond over his song Half Crazy. Next level bonding. Okay. Next level bonding. And this was his breakout album. This is a I just want to sing, you know, spelled in a very interesting way. AI. AI just want to see a thing. Seeing. Look, we can spell it whatever we want. I got a great album. I knew what he meant. No, I did too. So those are our one genre picks for Neo Soul. Let us know what you think in the comments. I'm sure you have comments. If you want to hear our selections, please check out our one song playlist linked in our episode notes. As always, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Dio Lo D I A L L O and on Tiktok at Dio Lo Rina. And you can find me on Instagram at luxury. That's L U X X U R Y and on Tiktok at luxury X X. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and Tiktok at at one song podcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of one song on YouTube and Spotify. Just search for one song podcast. We'd love it. Love it. If you'd like and subscribe. Also, be sure to check out the one song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, you're officially part of the one song nation. Give it up for yourselves. Show us some love. Give us five stars. Leave a review and send this episode to a fellow music nerd. It really helps keep the show going. All right, luxury. Help me in this thing. I'm producer DJ, songwriter and musicologist, and I'm actor, writer, director and sometimes DJ, D'Alaro. And this is one song we will see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duaneas. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo. Mixing is by Michael Hardman and engineering by Eric Higgs. Production supervision by Rizak Wutang Boykin. Additional production support from Z Taylor. And this show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Weil and Lizzy Guam.