Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Today, we're bringing you an episode of a new series
Speaker 2: from Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast called The Staten Island Problem.
Speaker 2: It's about New York City during the turbulent nineties, when
Speaker 2: a young Donald Trump was making deals, murder was at
Speaker 2: its peak, and Staten Island decided it had enough and
Speaker 2: wanted to secede from the city. It's written by Revisionist
Speaker 2: history producer Ben Natti Haffrey. Ben went really deep on
Speaker 2: the island's history and at some point realized the Staten
Speaker 2: Islands as Session movement was happening at the exact same
Speaker 2: time and place as the formation of the Wu Tang Plan.
Speaker 2: Ben's are wondering if the two things were somehow connected.
Speaker 2: The episode is about the breakup of a city and
Speaker 2: the coming together of one of the.
Speaker 1: Greatest groups in history.
Speaker 2: You can listen to the rest of The Staten Island
Speaker 2: Problem over on Revisionist History, available wherever podcasts are, but
Speaker 2: it is a sample episode of Ben's story. The Staten
Speaker 2: Island Problem.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite books, Middle March by George Elliott.
Speaker 1: It's about the life and manners of a small English
Speaker 1: town in the nineteenth century. It's also a cautionary tale
Speaker 1: for the kind of person I am. There's a character
Speaker 1: in the book named Edward Kasabon, a dreary, middle aged
Speaker 1: man who's engaged in a decades long writing project. Kasabon
Speaker 1: collects facts he writes on little sheets of paper that
Speaker 1: he stores in the pigeonholes of his library shelves. He
Speaker 1: claims that someday he's going to use these facts to
Speaker 1: prove that all the myths of the world are really
Speaker 1: one myth. He's obsessed. He calls it the key to
Speaker 1: all mythologies, and he sees it everywhere. I'm not middle aged,
Speaker 1: and I am fairly uppeed, but I fear that last
Speaker 1: bit is me. I see the Staten Island secession movement
Speaker 1: everywhere in our world today. I've carried my facts about
Speaker 1: the Staten Island secession movement around with me for quite
Speaker 1: a while. Now they burn a hole in my pocket.
Speaker 1: I go to parties, and inevitably I wind up in
Speaker 1: the corner with the Staten Islander who has suddenly revealed themselves.
Speaker 1: They look interested and then mildly concerned as I pull
Speaker 1: from memory the facts that I have stored in the
Speaker 1: pigeonholes of a document I have titled Excellent Staten Island Facts.
Speaker 1: Did you know the towers of the Verizonto and Narrow's
Speaker 1: Bridge are so far apart that they had to take
Speaker 1: into account the curvature of the earth when they built them.
Speaker 1: Did you know that Staten Island claims to have been
Speaker 1: home to the true and forgotten inventor of the telephone?
Speaker 1: Am I kazabon God, I hope not. I cautioned myself
Speaker 1: against seeing my project everywhere. Don't be the hammer to
Speaker 1: whom everything looks like a nail, don't try to write
Speaker 1: the key to all mythologies. And then I learned something
Speaker 1: like this. Wu Tang Clan, arguably the most important group
Speaker 1: in hip hop history is from Staten Island. They made
Speaker 1: their first album, Enter the Wu Tang thirty six Chambers,
Speaker 1: entirely during the height of the secession movement, and it
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen ninety three, just one week after
Speaker 1: the island was gonna vote on secession.
Speaker 3: I'm going to klomp Sat they move Jump Chop Sa
Speaker 3: saying a lot was no job as second hand mons
Speaker 3: bels don't know the man.
Speaker 2: So then we moved the Shalon Land.
Speaker 1: I began to listen to this record every day I
Speaker 1: worked on this project on the ferry to the archives,
Speaker 1: on the subway to work. Shall in what they called
Speaker 1: Staten Island is all over it.
Speaker 2: I'll come from the Sally Slump and the hallo fus
Speaker 2: come not niggas enough guns.
Speaker 1: Their music is all about their lives, what they witnessed
Speaker 1: on the island at the time. Like listen to this
Speaker 1: from the song Wu Tang Seventh Chamber. They bring up
Speaker 1: the projects in northern Staten Island where Wu Tang formed
Speaker 1: nicknamed Killa Hill, like.
Speaker 2: Clash the Russia, slash a sweat and Nigga back like a.
Speaker 4: Dutch Master Killer Sal jumped off and Killa Pilla I
Speaker 4: was the thrilla in the Alley Fraiser Manila.
Speaker 1: It's all about their lives in New York City in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen nineties, who there were become and what
Speaker 1: it all had to do with being from the rugged
Speaker 1: lands of Shaolin. I considered putting this on my list
Speaker 1: of excellent Staten Island facts and leaving it at that,
Speaker 1: but I had no choice. I put on my headphones,
Speaker 1: I picked up the phone, I opened my notebook. Kasimon
Speaker 1: rides again. You're listening to revisionist history. I'm Ben that
Speaker 1: of Haaffrey, and this is the Staten Island Problem, the
Speaker 1: series about the movement that threatened to bring down the
Speaker 1: greatest city in the country. In this episode, I bring
Speaker 1: you the story of the rise of one of the
Speaker 1: greatest rap groups in history that happened all while the
Speaker 1: Secession movement unfolded in the background. We're going to zero
Speaker 1: in on an entirely different experience taking place on the
Speaker 1: island at the same time, one that reveals just how
Speaker 1: in Trent the Staten Island problem really is, but one
Speaker 1: that also I think might show us away to solve it.
Speaker 1: This is episode four, Wu Tang versus the Shoutlin. I
Speaker 1: should say off the bat that I was unable to
Speaker 1: reach the Wu Tang clan for a brief moment. The
Speaker 1: manager of a lesser known member of the group considered
Speaker 1: giving me an interview, then he stopped taking my calls. Domingo,
Speaker 1: if you hear this, I'm ready when you are. But
Speaker 1: luckily I was able to track someone else down.
Speaker 5: I was actually one of the first journalists to ever
Speaker 5: deal with Wu Tang because their record label Loud called me.
Speaker 1: Up sciz Fernando was a hip hop journalist in the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties. He covered Wu Tang from the beginning.
Speaker 1: Had he ever considered the crucial overlap of Wu Tang's
Speaker 1: formation in Staten Island secession. He had not.
Speaker 5: I no no idea any of that stuff was going
Speaker 5: on at the time.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if they did, Like it was
Speaker 1: the they must have. It was the biggest story on
Speaker 1: Staten Island. What was it going to be?
Speaker 5: Just like Staten Island was just going to be a city.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When the Wu Tang clan first formed their label
Speaker 1: called Skids to write their bio, so he connected with
Speaker 1: the group's to facto leader, a guy named Bobby Diggs
Speaker 1: who went by the name Rizza.
Speaker 5: And I was immediately struck by this guy, like I
Speaker 5: could detect like some serious intelligence in this sky.
Speaker 1: Rizza was a former drug dealer with no professional prospects
Speaker 1: living out on Staten Island. That alone was strange. In
Speaker 1: the pantheon of hip hop, Brooklyn and the Bronx reigned supreme.
Speaker 1: Nobody is from Staten Island.
Speaker 5: All of the five Borrows in New York were pretty
Speaker 5: represented in hip hop in the nineties. You had the
Speaker 5: you know you had like the Boogey Down Bronx, the
Speaker 5: guy so obviously Brooklyn.
Speaker 4: Honey out from the Man from the project.
Speaker 5: The Money Make in Manhattan.
Speaker 6: Now I'm the god named Curtis blow Ain't Christmas is
Speaker 6: one thing?
Speaker 3: I know?
Speaker 1: So every just about this time, I celebrate kid.
Speaker 3: With a rhyme.
Speaker 5: You know, Queens, you had Queen's Bridge projects produced so
Speaker 5: many amazing artists like nas Mob Deep every Date Hot, deal.
Speaker 2: With the Russia and mixed.
Speaker 5: Up in Sada, and like Staten Island. You know who
Speaker 5: was from Staten Island. There was not a lot of
Speaker 5: acts coming out of Staten Island.
Speaker 1: You know you had.
Speaker 5: Jesus, I'm blanking.
Speaker 1: This is all to say. Skiz was surprised. Here was
Speaker 1: this relatively unknown MC from the island with an encyclopedic
Speaker 1: knowledge of kung fu movies and a crew of eight
Speaker 1: other mcs who named themselves after a form of martial
Speaker 1: arts invented by a Taoist hermit. Skiz was like.
Speaker 5: What, wow, this guy is something else.
Speaker 1: So skis journalist that he is began a decades long
Speaker 1: process of figuring out how exactly the Wu Tang clan
Speaker 1: came to be Rizza decided what he wanted to do
Speaker 1: with his life. On America's two hundredth birthday. He was
Speaker 1: in the park Hill projects of Staten Island. It was
Speaker 1: July nineteen seventy six, and there was a party in
Speaker 1: the courtyard. A DJ was spinning records and rapping over them.
Speaker 5: He dip dip dive and socialized. I think those are
Speaker 5: the exact words that Rizza remembered, and that kind of
Speaker 5: just just that energy and just the excitement of that
Speaker 5: whole thing of seeing this free party happening in this environment.
Speaker 5: You know, all these kids running around and adults and
Speaker 5: people just enjoying the music and enjoying each other's company.
Speaker 5: This was how this was how hip hop starts.
Speaker 1: To Rizza was seven at the time.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 5: When you're a young kid exposed to this and this
Speaker 5: is like the excitement that's happening in your neighborhood, you
Speaker 5: want to be a part of it. And he wanted
Speaker 5: to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: He stayed up late into the night, turns fixed.
Speaker 5: So immediately he goes home and he starts riding rhymes,
Speaker 5: you know, and then as soon as he could, he
Speaker 5: starts DJing.
Speaker 1: Rizzam moved around a lot as a kid. He was
Speaker 1: born in Brooklyn spent some of his childhood in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: but he landed in the park Hill Projects on the
Speaker 1: north shore of Staten Island. The buildings were built in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, around the same time as the bridge
Speaker 1: and the expressway that split the island down the middle
Speaker 1: into north and south shore. North was where the black
Speaker 1: people lived, South was where the white people lived. Several
Speaker 1: Staten Islanders told me the expressway was their equivalent of
Speaker 1: the Mason Dixon Line.
Speaker 6: People like, where are you from?
Speaker 1: And I'm like so.
Speaker 6: I used to say, if I tell you, I have
Speaker 6: to kill you, and you're like why, And then I'm
Speaker 6: like Staten Island.
Speaker 1: One day, when I was listing excellent Staten Island facts
Speaker 1: to a friend, she told me you should meet Daphne McWilliams.
Speaker 1: She's a filmmaker from Staten Island.
Speaker 6: There were only three houses on my parents' block, and
Speaker 6: then from the lake was park Kill Projects.
Speaker 1: Her parents were from Trinidad and Jamaica and didn't really
Speaker 1: know the intricate racial codes of Staten Island. Her family
Speaker 1: moved to the white area across from the park Hill Projects,
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 6: But when my mother found that house, she got a threatening,
Speaker 6: I guess call or something where they were like, oh
Speaker 6: you something like you better hope that you don't see
Speaker 6: your kids floating in in the pond.
Speaker 1: By one estimate, there were fewer than one thousand people
Speaker 1: of colors south of the Expressway. Daphne stuck out. She
Speaker 1: told me a story from when she was a kid
Speaker 1: about having a crush on an Italian American named Billy.
Speaker 1: One day she called his house and his.
Speaker 6: Mother picked up, and she was like, don't ever call
Speaker 6: this house again. So I went to school the next day.
Speaker 6: It was upset and I went and speak to this priest.
Speaker 6: I don't know what I did wrong. I don't know
Speaker 6: what I did wrong, and tell the guy goes, well,
Speaker 6: you see, he says something to like almost like this,
Speaker 6: this is a little happen for white kids, and there's
Speaker 6: like a little heaven for black kids.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god, like I had
Speaker 1: no idea.
Speaker 6: When I look back and think about it, we always
Speaker 6: stood out because we were always the the black family.
Speaker 6: My parents didn't raise us in a segregated mindset. We
Speaker 6: just never it was this.
Speaker 5: It was the community that made us.
Speaker 6: Feel different, especially as you get older.
Speaker 1: But the truth is all of New York City was segregated.
Speaker 1: Then it seemed like there was a defining race riot
Speaker 1: every year. Very do the right thing. The reality that
Speaker 1: Mayor Dinkins's vision of a beautiful mosaic obscured is that
Speaker 1: if one bit of colored glass from the mosaic crossed another,
Speaker 1: someone might end up shot or run over, and then
Speaker 1: the riots would begin again. But Southern Staten Island was
Speaker 1: a particularly dramatic case. It may as well have been
Speaker 1: the Deep South. When one Wu Tang member went to
Speaker 1: Daphne's area, he remembered getting chased out by white kids
Speaker 1: with motorcycles. They spray painted KKK on the rocks to
Speaker 1: warn the black kids away. This was the Staten Island
Speaker 1: Riza grew up on, but he had a way of
Speaker 1: escaping that reality hip hop. By the time Rizza was
Speaker 1: in his early twenties, hip hop had gone stratospheric, from
Speaker 1: the courtyards and wreck rooms of the New York City
Speaker 1: projects to the top of the billboard charts. The labels
Speaker 1: were grabbing at any artists they could. Rizza got a deal.
Speaker 1: He brought his new label, a bunch of songs, and
Speaker 1: they said, we think girls will like you. So we
Speaker 1: wound up releasing an EP called Ooh We Love You Rakim,
Speaker 1: a record that presented him as a sweet ladies man
Speaker 1: named Prince Rakim Many Ladies. It was an attempt to
Speaker 1: do something extremely commercial, totally inoffensive and upbeat, and also
Speaker 1: fundamentally false and corny, and maybe for that reason it bombed.
Speaker 1: Rizza got dropped from his label and he was back
Speaker 1: to zero. That's when he started dealing drugs and almost
Speaker 1: went to prison for attempted murder. He argued self defense
Speaker 1: and beat the charges in the end, and he had
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars left. It was enough to buy some
Speaker 1: drugs and sell them. But he had a kid on
Speaker 1: the way. He had to make a choice, and this
Speaker 1: choice became so legendary that he's still talking about it.
Speaker 1: Here he is on a recent episode of a podcast
Speaker 1: called Flagrant.
Speaker 3: I had tay k and the gag was, uh, the
Speaker 3: plan was to get a brick, so so we figured, oh.
Speaker 7: If we flipped this twenty, we could at least get eighty.
Speaker 3: The thing was, Joe I had a baby in a
Speaker 3: oven or maybe just born right so life was like
Speaker 3: what are you going to do?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: But then.
Speaker 3: I was like, nah, I have a second chance.
Speaker 1: That's when he started calling himself Rizza r z A.
Speaker 1: He would later say it was short for rakeem zig
Speaker 1: zag zig allah. While everyone else zigged, it was time
Speaker 1: for him to zag. And so, living on a Staten
Speaker 1: Island that was in the middle of its own very
Speaker 1: big zag, he began to make a bold plan for
Speaker 1: an independence movement of his own, something called Wu Tang Clan.
Speaker 1: After he beat his charges, Bobby Diggs aka the Rizza,
Speaker 1: began to walk around Staten Island and he started to
Speaker 1: take these long, drawn out walks day after day.
Speaker 3: So I'm walking and I'm thinking, y'o, and I'm walking
Speaker 3: off ste I'll walking the stand and people people thought
Speaker 3: there was a long this, people who thought I was
Speaker 3: losing my mind because I'm walking and I'm talking to myself.
Speaker 1: He would walk the island and think Staten Island was
Speaker 1: more than twice the size of Manhattan, and Rizza could
Speaker 1: just walk and walk. He would start at the projects
Speaker 1: on the north shore, then maybe journey along the coastline
Speaker 1: through the suburban streets. Rizza was ready to make music again.
Speaker 1: But the first time out with his Prince Rakim project
Speaker 1: had gone badly. But the idea he was coming up
Speaker 1: with now was going to be different. And I want
Speaker 1: to argue here that it has everything to do with
Speaker 1: Staten Island. Let me share with you some writing from
Speaker 1: Rizz's book The Tao of Wu. I spent my formative
Speaker 1: years on an island, Staten Island, which is a blessing
Speaker 1: I've taken with me through life in Staten Island. Wu
Speaker 1: Tang were set apart from all the influences and fads
Speaker 1: that were happening in the other four boroughs. A nine
Speaker 1: man hip hop crew based on mathematics, chess, comics and
Speaker 1: kung fuflicks wasn't springing up in the middle of a
Speaker 1: Manhattan art scene. Only on a remote island can something
Speaker 1: like King Kong grow to his full capacity. But the
Speaker 1: projects in Staten Island were a difficult place to live.
Speaker 1: A few of the Wu Tang members have written books,
Speaker 1: and reading them, it's clear that it wasn't just the
Speaker 1: remoteness of Stadn Island that led them to the Wu
Speaker 1: Tang clan. It was also what they experienced there, especially
Speaker 1: in the projects. One Wu Tang member you, God wrote
Speaker 1: about the first time he saw somebody die. He was
Speaker 1: five years old, sitting with his mom listening to Loving
Speaker 1: You by Minnie Ripperton play on the radio outside. When
Speaker 1: he heard a crowd forming in the courtyard. He ran
Speaker 1: out to look. A woman was standing on the roof screaming.
Speaker 1: He watched so long his neck one stiff. Then she
Speaker 1: jumped or fell, you, God wrote in his book called
Speaker 1: Raw I was a toddler. The sound of her hitting
Speaker 1: the concrete steps would resonate with me forever. So when
Speaker 1: Rizzo walked Staaten Island, it wasn't just this utopian vision
Speaker 1: of the isolated island where you can dream big. It
Speaker 1: was also the deeply segregated place where kids living on
Speaker 1: their own little island watched adults fall to their death,
Speaker 1: a kind of paradox. And my theory is that paradox
Speaker 1: was expressed in the word Shao Lim.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When Rizza was a kid, he and his cousin used
Speaker 1: to go to a Times Square porno theater. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: showed kung Fu and one movie that they loved, in particular,
Speaker 1: the thirty sixth Chamber of Shao Lim.
Speaker 8: But sure or a man choose ah well armed what
Speaker 8: can we do?
Speaker 7: No man, so we he cannot help.
Speaker 1: Most people came to that Times Square movie theater to
Speaker 1: jerk off, sniff glue, or shoot heroin. But Riza would
Speaker 1: later say in interviews that he and his cousin were
Speaker 1: locked in on this poorly dubbed movie about a small
Speaker 1: village in China that was being oppressed by a distant government.
Speaker 1: The hero of the movie is a villager who journeys
Speaker 1: to the Shaolin temple in China to learn to fight back.
Speaker 1: Riza saw this movie over three hundred times. He hadn't
Speaker 1: realized that kind of oppression happened to people who weren't black.
Speaker 1: This is from the thirty six Chamber when our hero
Speaker 1: learns what Shao Lin is.
Speaker 2: Shallin's school is restricted.
Speaker 8: Only monks had taught that if Shaolin techniques could be
Speaker 8: taught here and the people could use it to fight
Speaker 8: the Manchu troops, that would be good.
Speaker 1: At some point, Rizaz started to call Staten Island Shao Lin,
Speaker 1: the place he learned his secret weapon to fighting oppression
Speaker 1: hip hop but Staten Island was also a version of
Speaker 1: that distant oppressive government he saw in the films, and
Speaker 1: as he walked the Island trying to come up with
Speaker 1: his next play. He didn't decide to start a group
Speaker 1: called the Shaolin Clan. He came up with an idea
Speaker 1: for something called the Wu Tang Clan, named after Shaolin's rival.
Speaker 1: This is from another kung fu movie they loved, called
Speaker 1: Shao Lin Versus Wu Tang.
Speaker 2: Isn't it true that you think you are better than us,
Speaker 2: but you're afraid that one day the Wu Tang will
Speaker 2: overtake you?
Speaker 6: You till you use your special points, gonna get rid
Speaker 6: of by master who was your biggest threat.
Speaker 7: On said, no, it isn't I saw it with my
Speaker 7: own eyes. Since Chao Lyn, I'm afraid of the.
Speaker 4: Wu Tang Wu Tang will find Listen to me, someone
Speaker 4: is trying to frame me.
Speaker 1: Rizza kept walking and thinking Chao Lin Wu Tang thirty
Speaker 1: six Chambers Shall Lin Wu Tang thirty six Chambers. Wu
Speaker 1: Tang biographer Skiz Fernando knew all about those walks Rizza
Speaker 1: would take.
Speaker 5: That's one good thing about Staten Island. You can walk
Speaker 5: around in these nice neighborhoods with like Victorian mansions. You
Speaker 5: don't have to worry about getting mugged necessarily and.
Speaker 1: What would have been on the lawns of all those
Speaker 1: Victorian mansions. Rizza was walking by signs that said vote
Speaker 1: yes for the City of Staten Island, secession means a
Speaker 1: better life, billboards for secession above the streets, the same
Speaker 1: thing as was on the front page of the paper
Speaker 1: all the time, the same thing the NAACP of Staten
Speaker 1: Island was hosting meetings about, worrying that this could be
Speaker 1: really bad for black people living on Staten Island. Let
Speaker 1: me be clear, I have never found Riza himself talking
Speaker 1: about Staten Island secession, but in my kasbon mode I
Speaker 1: see a connection. Because as he walked a Staten Island
Speaker 1: that felt like it wasn't welcome in New York City
Speaker 1: and was striking out on its own, this guy, who
Speaker 1: would have every reason not to feel welcome on Staten
Speaker 1: Island formed a plan for an unlikely hip hop group
Speaker 1: from Shaolin that was about to do the same. Maybe
Speaker 1: he thought they could skip the whole major label thing
Speaker 1: that had screwed him before. Maybe he didn't have to
Speaker 1: sanitize his life and character to succeed. Maybe there could
Speaker 1: be a hip hop group from the forgotten borough that
Speaker 1: made it all happen on its own, and that group
Speaker 1: would be called Wu Tang Clan. He began to assemble
Speaker 1: his crew, and the core ideology for Riza, I think
Speaker 1: had a whole lot in common with the secession movement.
Speaker 1: It's the exact same fantasy. If some central authority is
Speaker 1: dominating you and you don't like it, what do you do?
Speaker 1: Go away to shoolin, learn the truth, build a movement,
Speaker 1: and go to war with the oppressor till you remake
Speaker 1: it in your own image. Let me put my kasavon
Speaker 1: robe back on and bring you back into my library.
Speaker 1: Please sit at the table, have a mug of tepid tea.
Speaker 1: I believe that the fantasy Wu Tang Clan had was
Speaker 1: that there's a way to strike out on your own,
Speaker 1: independently and take over the forces that oppressed you. And
Speaker 1: that's the exact fantasy of the secessionists emanating from the
Speaker 1: exact remote island at the exact moment. So many people
Speaker 1: on the island experienced it, and it was the spirit
Speaker 1: of what skiz that Wu Tang biographer told me that
Speaker 1: Riza did.
Speaker 5: Next, he took the whole mythology that was in the
Speaker 5: movies and he appropriated it to his current conditions of
Speaker 5: a black man living in Staten Island doing battle in
Speaker 5: this game called rap against the music industry.
Speaker 1: Walking the island, Rizza had come up with a five
Speaker 1: year plan. He'd go to the greatest underrated mcs he
Speaker 1: knew on the island and banned them together into the
Speaker 1: Wu Tang clan. He'd been burned by the labels before
Speaker 1: with that Prince Rackim album, so now he wanted to
Speaker 1: go it alone. He'd take the ten thousand dollars he'd
Speaker 1: saved and use it to start a production company.
Speaker 5: These guys had absolutely no future. They're all caught up
Speaker 5: in the street game. They're all selling crack, you know,
Speaker 5: two for five on the street. They didn't want to
Speaker 5: be doing that.
Speaker 1: The guys all went out to a diner on Staten Island.
Speaker 1: They toasted Wu Tang with a bottle of champagne. Each
Speaker 1: member put up one hundred dollars for studio time. The
Speaker 1: next day they started recording what became their first single,
Speaker 1: protect Yanik. Putting eight mcs on a track and making
Speaker 1: it all blend together is as difficult as making five
Speaker 1: Burrows feel like one city. The difference is that Rizza
Speaker 1: was about to pull it off. It took days of
Speaker 1: recording until all the verses were in place. Like students
Speaker 1: at Shaolin and Wu Tang, each MC was trying to
Speaker 1: one up the other, pushing farther and farther beyond the
Speaker 1: reaches of what existed in hip hop at the time.
Speaker 1: Rizza knew each one's style and how to draw out
Speaker 1: what made them unique. It was the opposite of some
Speaker 1: oppressive label telling him we think girls will like you
Speaker 1: and neutering his art. He didn't need the label. By
Speaker 1: December of nineteen ninety two, the song was finished. The
Speaker 1: group took the cassette of Protect Yan Neck to the
Speaker 1: hottest hip hop radio show in Town Stretch and Babido
Speaker 1: Babido was alone in the studio.
Speaker 7: I'm not quite sure how members of the Wu Tang
Speaker 7: clan got into our hallway, but I hear a knock
Speaker 7: on the studio door. I open it and there's five
Speaker 7: dudes out there, and then, not smiling.
Speaker 1: They shoved an unmarked record into his hands.
Speaker 7: They're like, yo, man, yo, you got played this, You
Speaker 7: got played yo, We played it right now. I was like, yo,
Speaker 7: fella is like I can't. I felt like I was
Speaker 7: being strong armed to play their record immediately I said.
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, fella's cool. So I took
Speaker 1: the record. I threw it all because I was.
Speaker 7: I was intrigued. I was like, how did these dudes
Speaker 7: mysteriously get into the studio.
Speaker 1: He listened to it privately first.
Speaker 7: And I hear the you know, the martial arts, and
Speaker 7: I'm like, oh, this is this is dope. You know
Speaker 7: I'm going to play it.
Speaker 1: It was the premiere that launched the Wu Tang clan.
Speaker 3: Tell me about the damn like tops in Pakistan, swinging
Speaker 3: through your town like your neighborhood spot a man so
Speaker 3: on TikTok ticket.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I mean immediately the phone lines let up immediately.
Speaker 7: I'll never forget my friend. He called up and was like, Yo, wow,
Speaker 7: what that he is?
Speaker 2: Dad?
Speaker 7: I was like, Yo, I don't know, I don't know,
Speaker 7: I don't know what the record is.
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 1: I love this song And my favorite part is the
Speaker 1: final verse, when Jesse explains the entire philosophy of Wu
Speaker 1: Tang is that they don't need some centralized music industry
Speaker 1: to take over the world. They can do it all
Speaker 1: on their own.
Speaker 3: The woe was too slamming, but He's called chilling label,
Speaker 3: so we had to hit.
Speaker 4: Since a sing an't table, he doing one on a
Speaker 4: sitting like Tang did table.
Speaker 3: Now, any money's getting stuck to the gum under the table.
Speaker 4: That's what you're getting when your mishoos what I advent
Speaker 4: and Pia.
Speaker 1: Falls in your Basically, you had your chance, you lost it.
Speaker 1: We don't need you. It's our time now. The song
Speaker 1: blew up.
Speaker 4: You know what I want here?
Speaker 1: What do you want here?
Speaker 3: I want Wu Tang again.
Speaker 1: So of course the labels came knocking. But this time
Speaker 1: Rizza was ready no more Prince Rakim. He was the
Speaker 1: king and he had a plan for world domination. They
Speaker 1: would make a deal for Wu Tang as a group,
Speaker 1: but he would do something totally unprecedented in the industry.
Speaker 1: In the contract, there would be a clause though all
Speaker 1: the mcs and Wu Tang might be consolidated under the
Speaker 1: name Wu Tang Clan, and Wu Tang might sign a
Speaker 1: record deal. Each MC was going to retain local control
Speaker 1: of their own career. Each one could make any deal
Speaker 1: he wanted with any other record label. Loud Records agreed
Speaker 1: to Rizza's terms. Skiz Fernando again revolutionary deal in the
Speaker 1: music industry.
Speaker 5: The whole first round of Wu Tang solo albums was
Speaker 5: like that, all on different labels and different artists, but
Speaker 5: like all the wut It's on each album, so they're
Speaker 5: using the major label system to spread their own brand
Speaker 5: out there. That was the genius of it, Like no
Speaker 5: one had ever done anything like that before.
Speaker 1: On November ninth, Wu Tang Clan played their album release
Speaker 1: show for Enter the Wu Tang thirty six Chambers at
Speaker 1: Webster Hall in the heart of Manhattan. Skiz was there.
Speaker 5: The floor was packed with people. They were showing thirty
Speaker 5: six Chambers the original on the big screen, and then
Speaker 5: when the group got on to perform, Honestly, it seemed
Speaker 5: like all of Staten Island was on stage. You didn't
Speaker 5: know who was in the group and who wasn't because
Speaker 5: it was just like the whole stage was packed, The.
Speaker 1: Whole floor was packed.
Speaker 5: That whole floor was just bouncing up and down these
Speaker 5: wooden rafters. I thought I thought the whole thing was
Speaker 5: going to collapse. It was just like people were ready
Speaker 5: to tear shit down. The energy, the excitement because they
Speaker 5: came from Staten Island. It was like a sneak attack
Speaker 5: like no one saw it coming.
Speaker 1: Riza executed his plan flawlessly. Wu Tang released their debut album,
Speaker 1: an absolutely bizarre hour long hip hop record full of
Speaker 1: Kung Fu samples and weird jazz and nine unheard of mcs,
Speaker 1: most of whom hailed from a forgotten island and island
Speaker 1: they'd renamed after a Chinese martial arts school, and it
Speaker 1: went quadruple platinum. Here's method Man on TV.
Speaker 3: And we tried to lock down the industry, which you
Speaker 3: cannot do because they already set in their ways, like
Speaker 3: I said before, So what we have to do is
Speaker 3: build our own industry to make it right.
Speaker 1: And Rutang's still playing together. So for me, in this
Speaker 1: series on Secession, it's a lesson than how to keep
Speaker 1: a group of people together. Not that the clans without
Speaker 1: its problems, but the genius of the whole thing is
Speaker 1: that Riza figured out how to showcase each rapper's own
Speaker 1: personality and give them their own career. He went on
Speaker 1: to produce a round of solo albums for each of
Speaker 1: the MC's in the group, hit after hit after hit,
Speaker 1: each one on different record labels, who were feverishly trying
Speaker 1: to ride the Wu Tang Wave, Method Man on def
Speaker 1: Jam Platinum, Old Dirty Bastard on WMG Platinum, Rayquon on
Speaker 1: RCA Platinum, ghost Face Killer on Epic Platinum, Jizz on
Speaker 1: Geffen Gold. Six hit albums in three years. Wu Tang
Speaker 1: clan ran the industry. These guys who had so much
Speaker 1: working against them went to shoolin, came back on their
Speaker 1: own terms and toppled the oppressor.
Speaker 4: Don't think that because he has a solo deal and
Speaker 4: I have a solo deal, this man may it a
Speaker 4: solo deal that we all we all just separating and
Speaker 4: breaking up. It's not that type of thing, man. We
Speaker 4: just we just expanded because the talent is so great.
Speaker 4: It's like we have we have mad talent in this,
Speaker 4: you know, and we just.
Speaker 5: Got to spread out.
Speaker 4: You know, you can't come out on one chain when
Speaker 4: you just got to spread.
Speaker 1: This is the fantasy of secession. You break away, you
Speaker 1: come back with a crew of guys from Staten Island
Speaker 1: and you dominate. That's what Wu Tang did. That's what
Speaker 1: the Staten Island secessionists dreamed of doing. It's the zeitgeist,
Speaker 1: the key to all mythologies. Some force in the early
Speaker 1: nineties of New York City was shouting secede, secede. Oh.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the vote on secession it happened
Speaker 1: seven days before the Wu Tang Clan put out their album,
Speaker 1: and that vote was going to leave an even bigger
Speaker 1: mark on our world today. That's coming up on the
Speaker 1: last episode of The Staten Island.
Speaker 5: Problem live here on Channel seventy seven from Secession headquarters
Speaker 5: at the Island Chateau, Channel seventy seven, bringing you that
Speaker 5: live happening as we do. It's so parallel.
Speaker 7: Who gets to be in this position? What's fair and
Speaker 7: what's not?
Speaker 9: Who gets to wheel power?
Speaker 7: Who doesn't?
Speaker 9: These sentiments show up in so many places and parts
Speaker 9: of our population right that sense of low boiling resentment
Speaker 9: towards the people in charge, Like who doesn't feel that?
Speaker 4: Right now? Do you realize as a city that can
Speaker 4: plan for its own and that doesn't have to say
Speaker 4: may I, may I do this and may I do that?
Speaker 5: Where are we going?
Speaker 1: What are we standing on top of? Right now?
Speaker 8: We're standing on the story of New York City. If
Speaker 8: you lived here between nineteen forty eight and two thousand
Speaker 8: and one, you're here somewhere, maybe not in this exact mount,
Speaker 8: but some piece of you, even if you just passed through,
Speaker 8: some piece of you is underneath us.
Speaker 1: The Staten Island Problem is written and produced by me
Speaker 1: then mat of Haffrey, with Lucy Sullivan and Nina Bird Lawrence.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Karen Schakerji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Sam Russick, Sound design and mastering by
Speaker 1: Jake Gorsky. Original music by Stellwagon, Symfinette, Luis Gara, Jake Gorsky,
Speaker 1: and thanks to Todd Reynolds for his track The Solution
Speaker 1: from the album Outer Borrow Special thanks to Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 1: I'm Ben Mattahaffrey