This arrived through the mail yesterday. It really isn't very good. I like all sorts of hip-hop, and i like solo work by RZA, GZA, Method Man & Ghostface Killah, but 'Enter The Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers' just sounds horribly dated and i fin the beats largely dull.
Is it one of these "oh, but it was a classic in its time" albums? Ditto Nas' - Illmatic (though that's certainly better than 36 Chambers IMO).
NB: i'm not saying people are wrong for thoroughly enjoying it, i'm just curious as to what is so stellar about an album that - to me - sounds dated and mediocre.
No, it's incredible
modern hip hop owes it such a debt, and maybe that's why it feels a bit dated now. It's so aggressive and the rhyming is so tight. Give it some time, keep listening to it.
there are a few tracks that i've thought
"wow, that's worthy of note", however there were so many that i thought sounded like they should be soundtracking a pilot episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (no "racist" comments thanks, that's not what i meant!)
tit face
you only just bought it? shows how uncool you are. i had this 10 years ago. dated? were you even born in the early 90's?
i bet you think G-Unit is hip hop.
'tard.
profound
I like
The aggression, the wildy contrasting styles of 9 very skilled MCs, the depth and intricacy of the lyrics, the personas and psuedonyms they adopt, the kung-fu samples, the dark humour - pretty much everything about if, for me.
It don't think it's dated anymore than 3 Feet High, Illmatic, Paid in Full etc.
The beats compliment the album perfectly. Raw and gritty, like nothing else there was at the time. It just wouldn't work as well if it had some of RZA's more polished beats from recent. They sound raw because of the lack of technology and expensive equipment he had access to.
Perhaps you'll grow to love it. If not, there'll be no shortage of people who, like me, still think it's an absolute classic.
yeah, it might be a grower.
I think it will require listening to from a different perspective.
I respect people think it's a classic for a reason, but it might just not be for me (also see: Neutral Milk Hotel's 'ITAOTS' and Slint's 'Spiderland')
i like that homoerotic
bondage track
in answer to the original question
here's what's great about it
1. Bring Da Ruckus
2. Shame on a nigga
3. Clan in da front
4. Wu Tang : 7th Chamber
5. Can it be so simple
6. Da mystery of chessboxin'
7. Wu Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing Ta F' Wit
8. C.R.E.A.M.
9. Method Man
10. Protect ya neck
11. Tearz
12. Wu Tang : 7th Chamber - Part II
13. Method Man (Skunk mix)
14. Conclusion
The tunes without choruses where they just trade verses
see:
Protect Ya Neck
7th Chamber II
Chessboxin'
Random lines get stuck in your head.
How can you like Liquid Swords and not like this?
by defying laws of hip-hop.
Perhaps i really just need to give it more time, but i span it 5 times over last night and it didn't tickle my eardrums
Fair enough
But Liquid Swords is just this album with a slightly bigger budget and more of GZA (which is no bad thing).
Inspectah Deck does rule over this album though on his few verses - swinging through your town like your neighborhood spiderman
apart from the title track
Liquid Swords is a little dull. IMO.
My favourite hip-hop album
different strokes...
what are the other good
tracks on it?
I like everything
But especially tracks 7-9.
I think 4th Chamber & Shadowboxin were released as joint singles with one video, much like Green Day with Brain Stew/Jaded. Or I could be imagining that.
Almost every track's a banger
and Inspectah Deck's verse on C.R.E.A.M is probably the best thing in hip-hop ever.
Except for
Deck's verse on Triumph, from Wu-Tang forever, obviously
everything
best track - protect ya neck
yeah...
...as much as I love trying to critise so called 'classic' albums, this one is one that can't be fucked with (excuse the pun).
It literally changed the landscape of hip-hop - I guess I can see not being into it so much if you're more into the De La Soul end of hip-hop, and it's not as out-there musically or lyrically as say GZA's 'Liquid Swords', but for pure undiluted genius, it still stands as an absolute classic.
*prepares for chastising*
i'm not really into De La Soul either.
They were pretty good at ATP though
A nice little break between the guitars.
Better than Ghostface anyway. Still disturbed by images of his entourage on the dancefloor at Crazy Horse giving it loads to My Bloody Valentine.
heh.
Which other Ghostface albums are worth picking up? I have Fishscale and think it's minttttttttttt
Ironman is more like Wu-Tang
with a slight soul bias. Supreme Clientele is probably his best. But I think those two are better than Fishscale.
Apparently he had a lot of difficultly getting sample clearance after that as he wasn't selling as much as expected and record company wouldn't pay for it.
what's Supreme Clientele like, style-wise?
Lots of soul samples
...Kanye West was accused of ripping it off. Only a few RZA tracks.
Lots of horns and stuff - I'm sure Nutmeg, One or Apollo Kids would be on YouTube. Also has Wu-Banga 101 which is a quality tune.
I sound like some sort of hip-hop geek. I'm not at all.
it's all interesting stuff
any other great hip hop albums you'd recommend?
i like the debut Kanye West album,
but subsequent releases didn't do much for me.
I may just check it out, though; it's pretty cheap on amazon.
Last question: which is most stylistically similar to Fishscale? Like, grandiose, hard-hitting stuff?
(i sound like a hip-hop imbecile, but i'm more into independent stuff, so don't know much about the big players)
Ironman
Even has a song on it called Fish. It's sort of a halfway house between Raekwon's Cuban Linx (where Ghostface is on every song) and Supreme Clientele.
I'm into stuff like Madvillainy, Illmatic, The Root's Things Fall Apart, early Common stuff like Resurrection and a lot of Golden Age 80's stuff. Never really got Dr Octagon.
that was two replies at once
I'm not into De La Sould either...
...I like my hip-hop socially irresponsible.
probley
the first hip hop album i got, stole it off my mate when i was in year 6... love the raw agressive approach to it.
Its the filthy production,
aswell as the aforementioned 'verse trading'
aggression is easy
any fool can do that.
takes real skillz to do what De La did.
not easy
to sound aggressive but still maintain a flow and good rhymes.
yeah...
...I'm not going to disregard every hardcore album ever made just because being aggressive is apparently easy.
its a good album but
"Black Sunday" and "3 Feet.." are head and shoulders above it.
Black Sunday...now THERE'S an album
Agreed...
...you have to give credit where credit's due, that keeping an album entertaining over its hour duration, whilst only approaching the subject matter of smoking weed is not easy.
alaxander is spot on
as usual. I dislike the whole classic album/cannot be criticized mentality, but 36 Chambers is a genuinely brilliant album. Chessboxin' is just immense, as is the rest of the album.
I also really don't like De La Soul.
yes you do
everyone loves de la soul...
They're anaemic.
Fluffy, lightweight and retardedly overrated.
Also - if everyone loves them so much, then why does virtually no one own any of their albums other than '3 Feet High and Rising'?
because their subsequent albums are mediocre at best
but they get a life-long pass for the first.
this sacrilege will be ignored for now...
^Wrong
Have a look at this week's DiS album club.
The thing is that Wu were on some crazy avant garde
experimental shit at a time when nothing in hip-hop sounded even remotley like it.
I just love the total amazingness of a bunch of dudes sitting round smoking concaine blunts and casually innovating the fuck out of music.
Plus every tune is banger.
^
Perfect.
the best thing
is that crazy avant garde shit was always just part of the melting pot, i mean rae and meth back then were pretty much just straight drugs talk but the crazy shit never got in the way of the dope beats and rhymes and never descended into anticon wackiness, native tongues style keepin it real positive daisy age blah or def jux boring fake underground/terrible raps/annoying beats herb nonsense or any of the other signifiers of avant garde rap which make it the worse genre of all time - its impressive that wu kept this precarious balance
which is probably a result
of having so many contradictory characters in your crew, the genius (no pun) lies in how they complement each other and bounce of each others flow
OK - maybe I'll give it a closer listen then
still wont beat 3 feet or sunday though is my bet...
See in many ways Hip-Hop operates
in a way thats the polar opposite of indie; the gold really does float to the top.
The most avant garde producers are often some of the most famous. People like the Neptunes, Timbaland and RZA have probably pushed the genre forward more than anyone else and they're like the biggest selling producers in the world.
So true...
...so true.
with that in mind
are we still comparing "36" to "3 feet"?
If so its just as applicable to the latter.
feel like a wanker abbreviating but can't be arsed...
spiderland is over-rated but
it is a bloody fantastic album and the way it was recorded and written is what makes it. I think with a lot of these things it is the appreciation of the circumstance in which something was created that makes it special.
I have never really got Wu-Tang, but I went from thinking "Lethal Injection" was the best hip-hop/rap album to "Man Overboard" and "Clouddead" being the best albums of all time.
any love for Method Man & Redman - Blackout?
I think it's fantastic