Wu-Tang Clan: Shaolin Secrets
Nov 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Wasim Muklashy
Watch the Wu Tang Part 1 video interview here.
People growing up in this cursed generation ought to consider themselves awfully lucky. Yes, you look at the news, you see the papers, you hear the polar bears cryin', the Middle East bleeding and the religious zealots choking on their own excrement, and it's hard to immediately agree. But consider this: How many generations can rightfully claim being witness to the unlikely birth, rapid rise and glorious apex of one of the world's most influential musical genres?
While hip-hop was gaining credible steam in attempting to prove itself as more than just a passing fad through the '80s, there was a clan of cats from the streets of Staten Island, N.Y. who were honing their craft, paying each others' bail, fine-tuning a style, dodging bullets, stealing electronic equipment, street hustlin' and spiritually evolving all at the same time. They embraced the culture that they lived in, immersed themselves in the movement and locked themselves in a chamber. What they emerged with grabbed the music world by its horns, turned it upside down and shook the hell out of it until any semblance of doubt fell from its pockets.
Embraced by everyone from computer geeks to Australian pop-rock bands to every hood this side of the prime meridian, Wu-Tang exploded with a five-year plan to take over the hip-hop world — masterfully crafted by its de-facto ringleader Robert Diggs, aka RZA. And the plan worked.
Within the 14 years following the release of its raw and dirty debut masterpiece, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) [RCA, 1993], the Wu managed to build not only a hip-hop supergroup composed of nine of the most talented MCs on the planet but also a multifaceted cross-generational superpersona that has spawned an entire industry. With the successful solo projects of each of its members (not to mention countless affiliates) and an internationally recognized clothing line, video game and comic book, the Wu exploited a wide appeal based on obscure kung fu samples, keen cultural commentaries and an identity dominated by its Shaolin ideologies and references.
KEEP ON MOVING
Following the 2004 death of one of its most unique and celebrated, albeit trouble-prone members, Russell Jones (aka Ol' Dirty Bastard, Unique Ason, Joe Bananas, Dirt McGirt, Dirt Dog, Osirus and, who could forget, Big Baby Jesus), a bit of the air was understandably taken out of the group's sails. But with an insatiable appetite to evolve, RZA corralled the rest of the crew: GZA, U-God, Method Man, Masta Killa, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck and even Ghostface Killah. He also enlisted master wordsmith and former honorary member Cappadonna as an official member. The Wu refocused, realigned and, thankfully, soldiered on.
“It really just took a phone call and an explanation that, ‘Yo, it's time for us to do our thing,’ and everyone felt the same,” RZA says over a heaping plate of Thai spaghetti at Lanna Thai in Sherman Oaks, Calif. “So I went up to New York myself, booked the studio and started the process. We promised this to the people, so now it's time to deliver The 8 Diagrams. It's gonna be in their veins.”
In between records, RZA added to his arsenal both materialistically and spiritually. Inspectah Deck divulges that there are “well over 1,000 Wu or Wu-affiliated songs,” the majority of which RZA has had a leading role in producing. It's this tireless résumé, along with numerous movie scores (among them Kill Bill Vol.1, Afro Samurai and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) and an ever-increasing thirst for knowledge that prepared RZA for The 8 Diagrams.
“What I did over these last 10 years, I picked up my first music book,” RZA says. “I started studying music theory, and now I've got 10 years in. I know how to play piano on an intermediate level. I know how to play guitar on an intermediate level. Now I know that he went from C to F; he went to B minor and then to A minor. Harmonic progression, that's what I mostly studied. In hip-hop, you don't need melody because the voice and the rhymes are the melody, so you need harmony. That's a secret right there.”
OFF-KILTER COOL
An important aspect of RZA's unique production prowess comes not from something he's learned but from something he was born with — an innate ability to trust his own instincts. “If you go listen, I may have a slight off-beatness to my music, and I realize it's me,” he says. “Forever may have been more quality than 36 Chambers, but it still never met the quality of what Dr. Dre's doing…I still never had that wide-EQ produced quality. I got the same SSL they got, the same big speakers, the same system. I just don't hear it how they hear it. I hear it how I hear it.
“Method Man will vouch for this and Tru Masta will vouch; if you come to my studio session, if you touch one fader after I mix everything, you'll be like, ‘That's not on beat.’ The only thing keeping it on beat are the levels of where everything is at. You got like 15 things making one sound. I take all these different elements and make it one tone, but if you move anything, it falls apart like a card-house.”
Although some producers will tell you that the rhythm section has to lock together, RZA sees it differently. “Most producers want their bass to hit with their kick,” RZA demonstrates with an impromptu beatbox, “but I don't think you need to. The bass can be wherever the fuck it wants to be, as long as it has a space of operation. Sometimes my bass note isn't even the same key as my kick note. A long time ago I realized music isn't only a note and a melody and a harmony, it's also a pulse.”
“A lot of people are straight 1, 2, 3, 4,” Inspectah Deck chimes in. “They're so formatted, they think the snare has to come here. With this dude, the snare may come in on an off-beat, but when it come in, it come in with a smack. It come in and announce itself. That's the difference between him and a lot of other producers. That's why we sound the best when we rhyme with him.”
BATTER UP
RZA's certainly come a long way in the 14 years of recording and adjusting to the nuances of 9 — and often more — MCs, each with their own subtle quirks requiring different approaches and levels of attention. “In the old days, it was more like I knew whose voice would go on which beat, but over time, everyone's talent has grown and expanded and voices have changed somewhat,” RZA says. “In my opinion, no producer ever mixes Ghostface's voice the way I mix his voice. I always had his voice warmer. A vocal only sleeps between 70 Hz and 10 kHz. Between that range, you got to find that perfect balance for your artist that takes away some of the nasal high, while still keeping the warmth of the mid and a little bottom.”
For 8 Diagrams, RZA used Avalon and Urei preamps, as well as the dbx 160 compressors with Pultec EQs. There's enough to go around. “Each Clan member had his own compressor, so when he came to my house or studio, his compressor was always set to his voice,” RZA says. “I had a preset channel that I would never touch.”
“Basically, he's the conductor,” Inspectah Deck says of RZA, “so all I got to do is give him what I feel was decent to me — my vocals, my ad libs — then I let him seal the deal. I know by the time he's done with it, it's going to sound how it's supposed to sound. It's gonna have that Wu-Tang edge. There's only one RZA.”
Being the conductor has its downside, though. It means having to be honest for the sake of the music. And because egos get involved and RZA didn't treat every situation with kid gloves, there's been plenty of tension in the studio. “He'd be like, ‘Get the fuck out the booth!’” U-God reflects. “Next day I'm back in again: ‘Get the fuck out the booth!’ Next day I'm back in again…it got to a point where it was like ‘Motherfuckerrrrrr!’ I mean, the last time he kicked me out the booth, I done killed the whole booth, slammed the door, boom boom boom! Went home. But he brought it out of me. He made me go back and correct it and made me perfect my shit. Now, it ain't nothing. He made me a beast.”
At one point during lunch at Lanna Thai, RZA shot Remix a judgmentally discerning glare before offering, “I don't know if I want to tell anybody…but I'll tell you. I'll tell your magazine only. I recorded the vocals in two to three mics at one time. I put a mic right at the chest, one up close to the throat and one right in front of them,” he says. “It's a mess for the engineer. You have like 20 tracks of vocals for Raekwon alone, but I wanted to have a new vocal sound. I wanted to be able to catch a nigga's chest ambience, his throat ambience and maybe his nose ambience.”
For this process, he used Neumann U 87s as the main sensor, with AKG C 12s and a Shure 55 Unidyne (“the mic that Elvis used to record his shit,” he says), and the positions were slightly altered depending on the MC up to bat.
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