"The Wu-Tang Manual" by RZA

Book I provides basic information, backstory, and a complete list of alter egos for each of the nine core members of Wu-Tang Clan:
+ RZA
+ GZA
+ ODB
+ Method Man
+ Ghostface Killah
+ Raekwon
+ U-God
+ Inspectah Deck
+ Masta Killa

Book II breaks down nine key themes of the Wu-Tang universe:
+ Spirituality: the spiritual journey through the Bible to Greek Mythology to Five Percent Nation to Ch’an Buddhism to a holistic spirituality.
+ Martial Arts: from a fascination with kung fu movies up through a serious study of martial arts Eastern spirituality.
+ Capitalism: from the now-famous original record deals that allowed the Clan to record together and as solo artists through the Clan’s later diversification, including Wu-Tang Records, Wu-Wear, the Shaolin Style Playstation, and more.
+ Comics: the influence of comic book heroes on hip-hop and Wu-Tang, including specific discussions of the bestselling Nine Rings of Wu-Tang comic books and Bobby Digital.
+ Chess: the importance of chess to Wu-Tang both as a game and as a multi-sided metaphor.
+ Organized Crime: Wu-Tang’s personal, cinematic, and structural affinities with the Mafia.
+ Cinema: includes both kung-fu and mafia movies, but also the cinematic sound of Wu-Tang music, plus sections on key filmmakers John Woo, Jarmusch, and Tarantino.
+ Chemistry: brief history, anecdotes, and information about Wu-Tang Clan’s experimentation, and how it has influenced their music.
+ Slang: a dictionary-like compendium of Wu-slang.

Book III provides the lyrics and densely annotated explanations of nine Wu-Tang songs:
+ “Protect Ya Neck”
+ “Bring Da Ruckus”
+ “C.R.E.A.M.”
+ “Triumph”
+ “Hellz Wind Staff”
+ “Impossible”
+ “Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)”
+ “Uzi (Pinky Ring)”
+ “Rules”

And in Book IV, RZA discusses the art and craft of hip-hop as it relates to Wu-Tang:
+ Wu-Tang Samples: RZA’s unique, groundbreaking approach to sampling
+ Technology: history of key technological components RZA and the Clan had to master to make their music what they wanted it to be.
+ The Spirituality of Producing: what goes into producing Wu-Tang’s music and what it has meant to the RZA.
+ Voices as Instruments: how the nine members of Wu-Tang Clan function like a symphony, with each member playing an instrumental role
+ The Art of Rhyme: a discussion of Wu-Tang lyric-writing, with key contributions from GZA and U-God.
+ Live Performances: a brief history of the importance and the sensibility of Wu-Tang performances, up through their recent show in Los Angeles.
+ The Way of the Abbot: RZA on his role at the center of the Wu-Tang Clan
+ Wuman Resources: the career management behind the Wu-Tang Clan and the solo careers of the individual members
+ The Saga Continues: The future of Wu-Tang...

Heh.

are you saying RZA was a cokehead?

EXCEPT if this book includes a reprint of the interview that the CHRONIC zine did with each member of wu-tang when they were filming the 1st video for "wu tang forever" (i forget which track it was) then i'll buy the book.

has anybody ever seen those interviews?? if you weren't in the bay area in 96-97 you might have missed it. oh god, those were the shit.

"I didn't know it at the time. but cocaine influenced a lot of the best rapping on 36 Chambers. Maybe you can hear it?" -- the RZA

no you really don't but it might be very interesting what he has to say on their other inspirations, his musical knowledge is surprising. the man plays 6 different instruments.

(Also if anyone can find or scan those Chronic interviews oh boy that would make me so happy.)

By the way, did anyone notice this snippet of the Chronic interview posted above?

Chronicmagazine.com: “If you had to do it all over, would you change anything in your career?�

RZA: “If I had to do it over, I would do [it] twice as nice. I have no legitimate regrets, but I did make a few errors on the path. Positive education always corrects errors. I know much better now and I will do it over again from a different chamber.�

Does RZA speak in acrostics in normal conversation too?

Isn't that part of the whole 5%er thing?

But I thought I should reply to the comment above about acrostics which I somehow missed. AFAIK, there is some connection between 5 percenters (and other NOI groups) and the use of acrostics and numerology. For example: I Self Lord Am Master. It's the Science of Supreme Mathematics and Alphabets.

Examples: "The number seven symbolizes Allah because it is the Mathematical terminology for the creator of the universe (and the seventh letter of the [The Supreme Alphabet], G, stands for God"

"8 = Build. Eight is buld because God builds everything. Even the word God itself--G-O-D--you take those letters and add it up, you get eight. 7-15-4. And to build means to add on to life. And when you build positively, you take away from negativity."

(Did anyone ever read "Sideways Arithmetic From Wayside School" by Louis Sachar in elementary school?)

re: skeptics
Remember, the book is subtitled "A Written Introduction to the Philosophy and Saga of the Wu-Tang Clan" Certainly it is litered with arguably menial information regarding references or group infighting, but the rest of the book is just so kick-ass that you can't dimiss it completely. There is a chapter on chess for chrissakes. And as arch Ibog said (ie. OTM!), it's a very well written, very honest and frank book that could have been just another tour diary of Method Man on the set of deoderant commercials. Also it underscores the aspects of the Wu-Tang that are dissimilar from most hip-hop groups, in that they set out with a very clear vision for not only maintaing the group direction, but each individual member as well, financially and musically (readers at home see "The Five-Year Plan" page 75).

It demonstrates once and for all how RZA and the Wu are so much deeper and more profound than 99% of their contemporaries, particularly the bling-bling guys. It's really mindblowing at times.

yeah. though it appears even the publisher/distributor was confused about that, as there's a "book one" sticker on the cover of mine.

i'm reading it from front to back, am only about 1/3 third so I haven't even gotten to the stuff I think I'd be more interested in, but it's already a great read. Actually, the stuff I thought I'd just skip over (mathematics, kung fu flicks) is fairly interesting, too.

I personally would find cruising the neighborhoods that Jay Z raps about far more enlightening...

that makes me weirdly uncomfortable. Maybe it's just the word "cruising."

I've actually been to housing projects in Brooklyn, to play basketball, but I took the subway and walked, and didn't try to buy any drugs.

Um, but what about this whole business about Wu lyrics being multi-layered?

I mean, did anyone here really read the RZA's book and see the references and feel MORE enlightened than the way they felt the first time they heard Enter the 36 Chambers?

Among other reasons, the Wu impresses because they incorporat(ed) a whole variety of distinct voices and styles into their sound and brought a cinematic element to their beats that was previously unheard in hip-hop (at least not in their distinct fashion).

The relevence of the whole 5% hocus pocus seems pointless by comparison, simply because 5% is hocus pocus. It lacks deeper meaning because it's a sham.

I doubt most people here would stop and have a two hour discussion with a homeless man who stopped them on the street and started rattling off 5% ideology, so reading RZA's take and taking it as enlightening seems silly to me...

Except that the part in the book about 5% ideology only took me 5 minutes to read and I was on the toilet in the comfort of my own home. At least he didn't spend too much time talking about that even bigger sham known as the Bible. That definitely would have irritated me.

i don't know whether it's more irritating if the rza et al actually have taken some of the more outlandish ideas that pepper their music to heart, or if they are just sort of dabbling in psuedo-profundity and received "heaviness" (as i'm generally inclined to think) as a kind of half-hustle.

anyway i'm not taking that bait, and not just because i'm not very interested in "jay-z as black capitalist" theories. i think these externals are sort of a red herring, if you're interested you should go for a close reading of his lyrics.

but if you really need a book, he's got one coming out! there's an excerpt in the liners to "the black album" and true to style it's not particularly philosophical. the excerpt read like an overwritten take on the thompson/mccain school of self-incriminatory noir (it's a page of him agonizing over making some woman friend of his carry drugs for him, if i remember right)

larger picture as in "my community" instead of "me"

well, i'm not sure as to the mechanis of how an interview (or a documentary, or a concert) is any more faitful a document of the artist's "intention".

i am very very leery of examining artist's intentions - hstencil's objection upthread be damned - and would prefer to focus first on their work, esp when there's not the same sort of historical distance and perspective you'd have with say, a book about miles davis or whatever.

so is it telling or not that jay-z's favorite slang for drugs is "work"?

haha come on now that's facile silly.

yes i agree it's weird to call them "building maintenance technicians" but only because it's tough to show that there's any "technique" to mopping a floor that the layperson doesn't possess. (part of my job is mopping a floor, i received no training in that field, i hesitate to call myself a technician)

anyway i'm not sure how the critique of intellectual language plays into this.

slapping academic names on stuff to sound smart probably won't help you understand a text, you're right about that. i think wasting too much time learning background info about a text probably won't help either (you just need "basic competency", i know what kung fu movies are about, what gangster movies are about, who's ironman and what's a "seed" and a "sun" and "an earth", in general so i don't really feel i need the rza's book)

trying to watch how the metre and storytelling and (especially!) the wordplay works in jay-z or wu-tang track is probably the best way to go. since i'm not really a good enough rapper to come up with great wordplay on my own (humorous understatement alert) i don't really feel like i've read too much into jay-z when i detect it there.

i can't tell you about jay-z's "black capitalist philosophy" cause i don't think it's really there

didn't you and others go on about how obvious wu's references were, and how could anyone learn anything from the book that they didn't know already?!
anyway, no it doesn't. the lyrics section is more of a "see? remember that shit about ironman you about? you know, in the 200 pages that weren't notes on our lyrics....i told that's what ghost is talking about there".

okay, so you've figured out how it works. what then? are you then able to create raps like jay's or ghost's? i doubt it. (not saying this is what you're arguing, just like, what exactly is the point of a close reading? what do you gain from analysis?)(i wish there was a way to type a question so it *doesn't* sound rhetorical)

he really does have this obsession with cause-and-effect that runs through all of his songs, it's just how he tells stories and how he relates meaning (just like the wu do with metaphor and free association).

check a song like "coming of age". he and memphis bleek trade off verses narrating an imaginary confrontation. as they move through their verses they move forward in time through the confrontation (jay jumps out of his car, bleek says hi, jay gets suspicious, they hug, etc) - the interesting thing is that in each verse instead of moving linearly forward they start waaay back in the past and narrate a string of historical events that moves up to the present moment (like in the 2nd verse, instead of examining the present, bleek examines the weeks of drugs, uncertainty and hanging out with the wrong crowd that has led up to his present mindstate, only finishing with "hey jay, what's up?")

he may not use words like "temporality" but neither would writers like borges or marquez or mutis, who uses the same techniques in their stories (except admittedly on a much much grander scale), it doesn't mean the technique isn't there, or it isn't interesting to study it.

more relevantly you could look at how someone like tarantino uses these techniques. i'm not sure why you'd give him the pass on "artistry" but not jay-z, solely because he mentions the french new wave in his interviews but jay-z doesn't. remember, jay-z is interviewing for a different audience than tarantino!

the point of a close reading, i think, is to try to understand *what* exactly makes a text compelling. i don't mean you have to listen to something and then rephrase what just happened in academic language. but when i'm not sure what others are hearing in something that i don't think is all that great, usually i just listen closely, pay attention and try to reconstruct why the audience is enjoying it.

ask any high school student why he likes tupac and he'll say "he tells good stories!". they may not have the language to explain what a good story is the way an english teacher might but i don't think it's crazy to assume that they're hearing the same qualities instinctively.

(don't quiz me too closely on that assertion cause i don't really listen to tupac so i couldn't explain his storytelling skills)

are you sure this is what they'd say? I'm not.

the interesting thing about 5%ers isn't their beliefs, at all. It is interesting (to me, maybe not to anybody else) how 5% philosophy evolved as a social movement, and how something so obscure (basically a very small New York-based movement) now gets heard by people around the world thanks to, you guessed it, hip-hop. I'm sorry, that's just interesting to me! I can't really explain why, but there it is.

Turn my music high, high, high, high-er
{*"You don't know.. what you're doing, doing, doing, doing.."*}
Sure I do..

I'm from the streets where the
hood could swallow a man, bullets'll follow a man
There's so much coke that you could run the slalom
And cops comb the shit top to bottom
They say that we are prone to violence, but it's home sweet home
Where personalities clash and chrome meets chrome
The coke prices up and down like it's Wall Street homes
But this is worse than the Dow Jones your brains are now blown
all over that brown Brougham, one slip you are now gone
Welcome to hell where you are welcome to sell
But when them shells come you better return 'em
All scars we earn 'em, all cars we learn 'em like the back of our hand
We watch for cops hoppin out the back of van
Wear a G on my chest, I don't need Dapper Dan
This ain't a sewn outfit homes, homes is about it
Was clappin them flamers before I became famous
For playin me y'all shall forever remain nameless
I am Hov'

Sure I do, I tell you the difference between me and them
They tryin to get they ones, I'm tryin to get them M's
One million, two million, three million, four
In just five years, forty million more
You are now lookin at the forty million boy
I'm rapin Def Jam 'til I'm the hundred million man
R., O., C.

{*"You don't know.. what you're doing, doing, doing, doing.."*}
That's where you're wrong

I came into this motherfucker a hundred grand strong
Nine to be exact, from grindin G-packs
Put this shit in motion ain't no rewindin me back
Could make 40 off a brick but one rhyme could beat that
And if somebody woulda told 'em that Hov' would sell clothin
Heh, not in this lifetime, wasn't in my right mind
That's another difference that's between me and them
Heh, I'm smarten up, open the market up
One million, two million, three million, four
In eighteen months, eighty million more
Now add that number up with the one I said before
You are now lookin at one smart black boy
Momma ain't raised no fool
Put me anywhere on God's green earth, I'll triple my worth
Motherfucker - I, will, not, lose

{*"You don't know.. what you're doing, doing, doing, doing.."*}
Put somethin on it

I sell ice in the winter, I sell fire in hell
I am a hustler baby, I'll sell water to a well
I was born to get cake, move on and switch states
Cop the Coupe with the roof gone and switch plates
Was born to dictate, never follow orders
Dickface, get your shit straight, fucka this is Big Jay
I.. hahahaha..

{*"You don't know.. what you're doing, doing, doing, doing.."*}
.. will, not, lose, ever.. FUCKA!

Method Man's doped-up ass would NEVER have the self-discipline to be a true master of the eternal spirit!

Satori4Life -- I'm out!

http://www.crystalcavern.com/media/indian-buddha.jpg

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13

good interview

http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee39/samgezee/wu.jpg

Anyone read "Tao of Wu," the followup to "the Wu-Tang Manual"? I've been reading that, and it's quite good! It's a cross between an autobiography and an insight into the influences behind Wu-Tang. Highly recommended, even more than "the Wu-Tang Manual," in my opinion.

Please, please, please

Explain to me why RZA having other names like "Bobby Digital", etc., makes him such a diverse talent.

I guess my being "Solana Surfmastaz" and "Solana II" makes me an artist, too.

Why don't you STOP TYPING, seriously.

― Solana II - The Return, Thursday, March 3, 2005 7:33 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is it possible this was the first incarnation of Raccoon Tanuk

Having trained as a shaolin for four INTENSE years I think I can say authoritatively that the Wu's version is a watered down sellout intended for mass consumption. They clearly don't understand the first thing about the eightfold path. The Third Noble Truth is that individuality must be OVERCOME! In all their marketing I don't see any overcoming of individuality -- exactly the opposite in fact!
Method Man's doped-up ass would NEVER have the self-discipline to be a true master of the eternal spirit!

Satori4Life -- I'm out!

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Sunday, March 6, 2005 5:33 PM bookmarkflaglink

p.s. if you look closely he's holding a pred ship:

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Sunday, March 6, 2005 5:51 PM bookmarkflaglink