Bring da motherfuckin' ruckus, on paper, reads like a request for war. Sent to say, I won’t accept peace, I won’t go down in silence. To hear RZA say it, loud and ludicrous, sounds like a full-body battle cry. Escaping his lungs as if he’s shouting in a room covered in rampage: Tables flung, chairs tossed, teeth on the ground. As a song chorus, it’s a wrecking crew chant repeated four times before any verses on “Bring Da Ruckus” are heard, foreshadowing the demolition to come.

With just four words a tone is set, a promise is made, an energy decided. To provide a listener with all that context, on an album intro, a debut at that, gives them a warning. Allowing anyone who decided to press play on Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers to know, immediately, that they weren’t playground rappers making music for afterschool specials. This was hip-hop for the ready and willing steppers prepared to stomp on heels and heads for their respect. 

Respect was everything to Wu-Tang, nine emcees fed a diet of mathematics, chess, comics, and kung-fu flicks. Shootouts, drug deals, jail time, and housing projects. They had survived, outside the studio, making the words on their breath contain all they had been through. It’s impressive how a group with such a sizable membership and unique personalities mesh together as if they shared one stomach. All hungry for the same plate, but willing to share the success that comes on a silver platter. Never sounding jealous, envious, or ego-driven. Not then, not at the time when all they could do is dream of better. 

Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers had it’s 29th anniversary on November 9th. That’s 29 years of RZA, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, GZA, Masta Killa, Method Man, and Ol' Dirty Bastard, names that, on paper, read like names you would only see on most wanted posters. A ​​Staten Island crew of criminals is how they sound, rapping songs dedicated to the winners and the losers, Jeeps and Land Cruisers, drive-by shooters, and all the ugly scenes that shaped their lawless worldview. 

But they weren’t heartless, just starved, paranoid, and impatient for payday. How could they not, as Ghostface put it, “The glorious days is gone and everybody's doin' bad, yo, mad lives is up for grabs.”

Hardships, of any kind, are heavy to carry. The magic of Wu-Tang is how they recorded the weight of their times, the culture of their lives, with skill, with style, humor, and hunger. It’s music that absorbed the atmosphere, translating how they spoke, what they heard, the sonics that vibrated off the concrete, that bounced off the walls. Their lively spirits, feeding off each other, never sound winded or wrinkled. 

“Da Mystery of Chessboxin” has to be one of the greatest posse cuts strictly for the collective energy that carries seven rappers across a four-minute cypher. But really, pick any song on 36 Chambers and you’ll hear how a unified group moves when each member knows their individual strength and able to direct that uniqueness in a community, improving, not imploding, the many dynamics at play. 

Wu-Tang didn’t produce any songs on their debut that fell apart in the middle, trailed off at the end, or struggled to start strong, but music that nine rappers could stand on. Records made to compete, cause rebellion, bend rules, and break necks. RZA handled the production alone, credited on all 13 songs, and as he wrote in his book, Tao of Wu, “I made beats to rhyme to, not to make a party jump.” 

Enter the Wu-Tang was street music, beats that MCs could rap on, beats that would make you wanna rip a hole out of the wall. 

RZA wrote in Tao of Wu that Enter the Wu-Tang cost $36,000 to make. In a time where expenses for albums can reach seven figures, Wu-Tang made a timeless tape for the cost of a Model 3 Telsa. To be fair, they had tools that a budget couldn’t buy. They, as RZA said in the book, took a martial arts approach to hip-hop—the sound of the music, the style of the lyrics, and the competitive wordplay of the rhyming took mental preparation, not money. The kind of mentality that speaks to how they weren’t trying to appeal to the commercial side of hip-hop, but the combative spirit. They were all challenging the best writers to be better, keep their skills sharp, and their style fresh.

After nearly three decades in the game, every ten years there is a group, a crew, a collective that sounds like they emerged from the 36 Chambers. 

I see the Wu-Tang spirit in Coast Contra’s freestyles. Although a crew of four, they have the heart of eight emcees and the passion to perform, entertain, and create with the intent to be remembered for rapping like themselves, not just their forefathers. Ras, Taj Austin, Rio Loz, and Eric Jamal's throwback nature has a nostalgia tug, but their longevity as an exciting foursome will be determined by how they mold their old influences into a new inferno. 

I hear the Wu-Tang hunger in Van Buren Records, a crew of 13 from Brockton, Massachusetts. Luke Bar$, Ricky Felix, Meech, Homeinvader, Jiles, Saint Lyor, Kiron, R Louie, Andrew Regis, E, Moses Besong, Shelby, and Lord Felix. They aren’t all rappers, but when you see them all enter a room, or stand on stage, it’s like staring at a mob in motion. Their immense physical presence swallows rooms, matching the size of their musical personalities. 

DSM is the group’s latest album, a sizeable 16-track offering that doesn’t feel like a crew doing old-school karaoke. No, Van Buren Records is on the verge of a formation that is of the times while honoring the eras that are behind them. It’s still a work in progress but the path gets clearer with every step.

I recognize the Wu-Tang genius in Griselda Records, a label that established individual emcees by moving as a collective.  Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, and Benny the Butcher started as a trio that expanded, adding Armani Caesar, Boldly James, Mach-Hommy, and Rome Streetz under their umbrella. Their prolific output made the music a renaissance to the East Coast of old. Cultivating a place in rap that can entice modern ears and earn support from major record labels while honoring golden periods that produced legends and introduced empires.  

Every new act that adds a branch to the tree of Wu, or grew from their influence and ideology,  must be sourced back to the beginning, a miraculous story of nine rhyming radicals that found themselves between movies and music, reality and fantasy, danger and domination to make an album that brought a new pulse to hip-hop’s heartbeat, one that, in years to come, will still bring da motherfuckin' ruckus. 

-Yoh