Wu-Tang Clan Enter The 36 Chambers: A 20th Anniversary Retrospective

At the time Wu-Tang Clan first appeared on the national stage, it was thanks to a hit 12″ single titled “Protect Ya Neck”/“Method Man”, released by Loud Records. The year before the group independently released “Protect Ya Neck” with a different B-side (“After The Laughter Comes Tears”) which built up enough of a buzz on the underground circuit to draw the attention of Loud Records founder Steve Rifkind.

While Staten Island had representatives from that borough to contribute to Hip-Hop in previous years like the Force MC’s/MD’s and The UMC’s, neither succeeded in bringing it the level of notoriety the Wu did following the release of their debut album, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), on November 9, 1993. In order to put their success in its proper context we have to be mindful of the climate of the rap game at the time the Wu-Tang Clan first burst onto the scene.

The rap world was still captivated by and under the shadow of Dr. Dre’s magnum opus The Chronic in the fall of 1993. Even though The Chronic was a Gangsta Rap album that featured a ton of newcomers, it was helmed by N.W.A’s production maestro who mastered how to make hardcore Hip-Hop music that appealed to a wide audience. Dre’s albums sounded clean and were the height of sonic mastery and song construction at the time. What the Wu Tang Clan did was go in the complete opposite direction with their sound and aesthetic, thus making them stand out from the jump.

“Protect Ya Neck” featured seven verses tied together by a bridge and an improvised break in the middle in lieu of a chorus. The beat sounded frenetic and raw, exactly like the kind of songs that blew up on college radio Rap shows like Stretch & Bobbito’s on NYC’s WKCR. Just when rap was in danger of becoming super professional sounding and clean,  Wu-Tang Clan showed up and dragged it right back down into the mud again and made it grimy.

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Photo: Loud Records

The videos for “Protect Ya Neck” and “Method Man” proved to be extremely popular on both BET and MTV, cracking the regular rotation on most of the former’s video shows and even got played on the latter’s regular daily video rotation outside of Yo! MTV Raps. Wu-Tang Clan’s debut LP dropped on the same exact day as A Tribe Called Quest’s third album, Midnight Marauders. What most people neglect to mention when discussing Enter The Wu-Tang is that it didn’t enter the charts high but it had steady sales for a protracted amount of time.

Each successive single and video for “Da Mystery Of Chessboxin'”, “C.R.E.A.M”, “Can It All Be So Simple” and “Wu Tang Ain’t Nuthin’ Ta F*ck Wit” added to the album’s buzz and contributed to the album’s sustained sales numbers all throughout the rest of 1993 and well into 1995. The question remains, what exactly was it about the album that made it resonate with so many music fans and spread through word of mouth like it did?

First of all, Enter The Wu-Tang36 was spilt into two sides for the cassette version, side A was Shaolin Sword and side B was Wu-Tang Sword. The album incorporated things that much of the generation loved from Shaw Brothers Kung Fu films such as Five Deadly Venoms, Shaolin Vs. Wu Tang, Shaolin Executioner and Ten Tigers From Kwangtung. It had raw sounding, gritty beats that reminded them of the late 80s and right before the pop-rap and alternative rap eras happened.

The album sounded nothing like The Chronic; it even had some songs on it that sounded like demos such as “Clan In Da Front” and “Tearz.” Just as the sonics were unique to the market due to the skits and Kung Fu film dialogue, the WTC’s were all distinct individuals. Ghostface Killah used to appear in videos with a makeshift mask made of a stocking. They all rapped about drug dealing and street tales but rather than glorify the lifestyle, they used it to tell the story of their transition out of that life into their present ones.

While people nowadays have it in their heads that Enter The Wu-Tang was a huge sales success out the gate, the truth is it really wasn’t. The album actually peaked at #41 on the Billboard 200. Only two of the singles on Enter The Wu-Tang even managed to crack the Billboard 100 (“Method Man” & “C.R.E.A.M”) and it took more than 18 months for it to go platinum. The real power of classic album was in its influence over the rest of the rap game and how it springboarded the Wu-Tang Clan’s individual members into prominence.

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Each video was a new missive that helped to spread the influence of the Wu and prepare the world for the impending invasion. RZA had mapped out his strategy back in 1992 and informed the newly formed Clan in a meeting that if they put everything into his hands, in five years they’d be the largest thing in rap and they could then control their own individual destinies. This was merely stage one being executed.

The deal RZA signed with Steve Rifkind was a landmark one as well. Loud/RCA received the Clan for short money up front ($60,000 for all nine members) but the MCs were free to sign as solo artists with any record label they wanted. The Wu-Tang Clan signing soon became a sort of a coup for Loud, a label that was acquiring many of the best groups and individual MC’s in rap music. Enter The Wu-Tang somehow managed to capture both the imagination of Hip-Hop fans and the cultural zeitgeist simultaneously.

This album spoke directly to a new generation of rap fans, capitalized off of the climate of the rap game at that particular time then caused a sea change that affected the way rap music sounded for the remainder of the second Golden Era. The next November, Method Man released his Def Jam debut, Tical, and the Wu-Tang saga continued. Bring da ruckus.

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