A Brief History of the Wu-Tang Clan and Live Instrumentation

On Tuesday, Soul Temple Records will be releasing Twelve Reasons to Die, the new collaborative album by Ghostface Killah and producer/multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge.[1] The record’s been streaming for nearly a week now, and it’s great. It’s definitely the best Ghostface album since Fishscale, and I’m tempted to go back even further and place it third behind only Supreme Clientele and Ironman. I’ll be putting up a review of the record later this week, but in the meantime, I thought I’d look back at the Wu-Tang Clan’s previous endeavors with bands and live instrumentation.

When the Clan first came on the scene in 1993, RZA’s warped sample-based beats were a big part of their appeal. The dust and grit of old records was a palpable part of their grimy sound. Throughout the initial run of Wu-Tang solo albums, RZA gradually refined this sound, culminating in the cinematic Only Built 4 Cuban Linx and Liquid Swords and the soulful Ironman. When it came time for the Clan to reform like Voltron for their second group album in 1997, RZA had begun moving away from this strictly sample-based sound. Most of the album’s twenty-seven songs have samples, but quite a few of them are spiced with keyboards. Notably, “Reunited,” the first song on the album (after the extended opening skit that is “Wu-Revolution”) is built almost entirely from some incredible live violin.

Masta Killa and "Glaciers of Ice"

I was just listening to this song a bunch earlier today and I’m struck by two things that make this one of the best tracks on Raekwon’s nearly perfect Only Built 4 Cuban Lunx. First, it took some serious audacity for RZA to flip the same sample twice on the same album, but he did just that with the rugged strings that drive “Guillotine (Swordz)” and underpin this song. Second, Masta Killa was unstoppable from his first verse on “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” through everything he did on Wu-Tang Forever, and this song is no exception. He was unstoppable enough that he could show up between Raekwon and Ghostface in their primes on a song and still be the illest by a wide margin. Inspectah Deck and U-God were similarly astounding during this five year period, and it’s a shame that all three didn’t get RZA-produced solo albums during the five-year plan. A Masta Killa album in 1996 would have undoubtedly been a classic since RZA didn’t make a bad beat during this era and Masta Killa was capable of verses like this. It probably would’ve even surpassed No Said Date.