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Wu-Tang: The Manual

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Bruno

22:29 / 15.06.05

i am finding wu tang hard to get into, somebody give me a lead.

An experiment for people who dont listen to a lot of hip-hop.

1. get yourself into a trance sort of state (call it what you want).
2. listen to an album by eric b and rakim. Paid in Full if you can. Pay close attention to rakim's way of talking rhythmically and his use of voice (flow). Do not judge the lyrics in normal terms, do not judge the beat in terms of being too 80s. Close your eyes, breathe, listen. Treat Rakim's voice as an expression of divinity and understand its logic and its interaction with the beat. Try and ignore the words for a time and listen to the a and o and ee sounds, the vowels, and the consonants too as they dance along the beat.
3. Then put on Fast Shadows by Wu Tang Clan. Listen to it in the same way.

-bruno

Nietzsch E. Coyote

00:14 / 16.06.05

Great you just made me want to buy two albums... thanks. :P

Colonel Kadmon

21:33 / 16.06.05

I have been thinking about this thread since it started, and it's definately given me pause for thought.

WU-TANG FOREVER is "the Bomb", if you will allow, just as Barbelith used to be.

Also, The ODB called himself Osiris from time to time, mostly on Wu-Tang Forever, the most directly philosophical of their albums. And I was thinking, doesn't that imply some knowledge of Crowley's writing, to know that "Osiris was a black God", a term the Wu-Tang are fond of applying to themselves? (The quote comes from the Book of Lies, I think.)

Gypsy Lantern

08:32 / 17.06.05

On the track 'Ready to die', from the album of the same name, Biggie can be clearly heard to shout out the number "93" as it fades out. Was Biggie secretly a Thelemite?

"No more Thoth deck secrets, one two three
One two three, the Supernals of the tree is a mystery
I hear Ipsissimus's talk about it
But I stay drawing circles with the motherfuckin' chalk around it"

at the scarwash

23:15 / 18.06.05

leaving the musical side of hip hop for a moment, has anyone ever made any sense (magical or otherwise) about what Rammelzee is on about? in Style Wars, Dondi goes into an exegesis of one of Rammelzee's pieces, explaining how one of the central facets of the artists approach to letterforms is an attempt to armor and arm them against outside threats, as (i think) the Rammelzee writes here:

"Wild Style has no rules" in itself to have no rules is to be ISM the ogal and the rule. Separation of unique interpretations or basic symbolic construction, example: common sense says the only basic symbol for a missile is an arrow, shown ny [sic] the Chinese, the ones who really started all recording verbal formation symbols, several thousand years ago. NO GOVERNMENT IS ALLOWED TO STEAL SUBCONSCIOUS SYMBOLS.

(oh, if anyone is unfamiliar with Rammelzee--not that I'm an expert, he's this guy:

influential graf writer, musician, and now sculptor)

at the scarwash

23:22 / 18.06.05

ooh, and I know that the previous post was already treading towards threadrot, but check out the analysis of the Roman alphabet that Rammelzee provides about halfway through the linked essay on Panzerism.

illmatic

09:24 / 20.06.05

Ramellzee is the original mad mystic of Hip Hop. Heard a track by him last night on resonance incidentally. No, I've never been able to figure out what he's on about but it sounds goo. He did a little known album with a band called The Gettovettes which features more of the same schizod inspired nonsense. Anyone check out his album from last year?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:23 / 15.10.05

I have to know. How is this working out for you guys?

Chiropteran

15:08 / 24.10.05

How is this working out for you guys?

*Bumped* and seconded.

SteppersFan

13:53 / 27.10.05

There's been quite a lot of work on the links from Jamaica to New York hip hop. I couldn't agree that the links are ephemeral. Hiphop's use of sound system culture, MCing and remixing have a direct lineage from reggae. Check out Last Night a DJ Saved My Life in particular, but also Energy Flash, and the work of Dr Stuart Borthwick.

The dub of Eric B and Rakim's Follow the Leader is one of the most transcendental, magical pieces of music it is possible to imagine.

Seth

23:32 / 27.10.05

How's this working out for me? Well, I became extremely busy and didn't have time for it. Sorry, but a dude's gotta rest.

Ulysses Lazarus

08:06 / 07.11.05

Personally, I've been meaning to do some research mapping the nine members of the Wu onto some 9 demons of Tibetan Buddhism, I've been told about. Altho it's not a tradition that I know enough about to do at this point (as you can well see) the symbolism seems obvious enough to match.

I think that an entire magic!al system could be constructed around the Wu, precisely because they've always been so mythological. I remember listening to them in project housing back when '36 Chambers' dropped. Hip-hop's first superheroes, they gave us something to believe in at a time when most hip-hop was fun, but devoid of meaning and incredibly hedonistic and lame.

Chiropteran

11:50 / 07.11.05

Sorry, but a dude's gotta rest.

Seeing as you've got a new album and a self-organized show with (none-other-than-effing) Melt Banana, I think we can cut you some slack.

Ms.Blue

19:54 / 09.11.05

"Some of the 5percent stuff can be quite powerful but it is designed to exclude so-called whites."

honestly,this is very far from true....one of clarence13x's main students was a white man called "azrael"..he led an entire group of white 5%ers and remains to this day a very respected and influential member of the nation of gods and earths.

just clarifying. ; )

Essential Dazzler

13:12 / 11.05.07

*Ba-Bump*

My copy of this arrived this morning, I'm doing a crash course in the Wu.

How'd this work out for everyone? Did it work out at all?

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