Speaker 1: Pushkambe. One of my favorite books is Middle March by
Speaker 1: George Elliott. It's about the life and manners of a
Speaker 1: small English town in the nineteenth century. It's also a
Speaker 1: cautionary tale for the kind of person I am. There's
Speaker 1: a character in the book named Edward Kasabon, a dreary,
Speaker 1: middle aged man who's engaged in a decades long writing project.
Speaker 1: Kasabon collects facts he writes on little sheets of paper
Speaker 1: that he stores in the pigeonholes of his library shelves.
Speaker 1: He claims that someday he's going to use these facts
Speaker 1: to prove that all the myths of the world are
Speaker 1: really one myth. He's obsessed. He calls it the key
Speaker 1: to all mythologies, and he sees it everywhere. I'm not
Speaker 1: middle aged, and I am fairly uppeed, but I fear
Speaker 1: that last bit is me. I see the Statine Island
Speaker 1: secession movement everywhere in our world today. I've carried my
Speaker 1: facts about the Staten Island secession movement around with me
Speaker 1: for quite a while. Now they burn a hole in
Speaker 1: my pocket. I go to parties, and inevitably I wind
Speaker 1: up in the corner with the Staten Islander who has
Speaker 1: suddenly revealed themselves. They look interested and then mildly concerned
Speaker 1: as I pull from memory the facts that I have
Speaker 1: stored in the pigeonholes of a document I have titled
Speaker 1: Excellent Staaten Island Facts. Did you know the towers of
Speaker 1: the Verizonto and Narrows Bridge are so far apart that
Speaker 1: they had to take into account the curvature of the
Speaker 1: earth when they built them. Did you know that Staten
Speaker 1: Island claims to have been home to the true and
Speaker 1: forgotten inventor of the telephone? Am i kazabon God? I
Speaker 1: hope not. I caution myself against seeing my project everywhere.
Speaker 1: Don't be the hammer to whom everything looks like a nail.
Speaker 1: Don't try to write the key to all mythologies. And
Speaker 1: then I learned something like this. Wu Tang Clan, arguably
Speaker 1: the most important group in hip hop history, is from
Speaker 1: Staten Island. They made their first album, Enter the Wu
Speaker 1: Tang thirty six Chambers, entirely during the height of the
Speaker 1: secession movement, and it came out in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: just one week after the island was gonna vote on secession.
Speaker 2: I'm going to klomp sat the new joke chaf Sa
Speaker 2: saying the love was no job at second hand.
Speaker 1: Mons bells don't know a man. So then we moved
Speaker 1: the salon land. I began to listen to this record
Speaker 1: every day. I worked on this project on the ferry
Speaker 1: to the archives, on the subway to work. Shall in
Speaker 1: what they called Staten Island is all over it.
Speaker 2: I'll come from the Sallins slump and the halo whom
Speaker 2: it's come a wopn meggas and 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 Kill a Hill.
Speaker 3: Like clash the Russia Slash a switt and they go
Speaker 3: back like a Dutch mask of Chilla now jumped off
Speaker 3: and Chilla Pilla. I was the thrilla in the Ali
Speaker 3: Faisa Manila.
Speaker 1: It's all about their lives in New York City in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen nineties, who they were becoming, 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. Casiman
Speaker 1: rides again. You're listening to revisionist history. I'm Ben Thatt
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: entrench the Staten Island problem really is, but one that
Speaker 1: also I think might show us a way 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 4: I was actually one of the first journalists to ever
Speaker 4: deal with Wu Tang because their record label, Loud called
Speaker 4: me up.
Speaker 1: Fernando was a hip hop journalist in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: He covered Wu Tang from the beginning. Had he ever
Speaker 1: considered the crucial overlap of Wu Tang's formation in Staten
Speaker 1: Island secession? He had not.
Speaker 4: I had no idea any of that stuff was going
Speaker 4: 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 4: Just like Staten Island was just going to be a city.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When the Wu Tang cland first formed their label
Speaker 1: called Skiz 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 4: And I was immediately struck by this guy, like I
Speaker 4: 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 Reign Supreme.
Speaker 1: Nobody is from Staten Island.
Speaker 4: All of the five Borrows in New York were pretty
Speaker 4: represented in hip hop in the nineties.
Speaker 1: You had the you know you had like the Boogie
Speaker 1: Down Bronx. It's one of them.
Speaker 4: So obviously Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: From the next team a man saying.
Speaker 4: That from the projects the money make in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: Now I'm the guy named Curtis blow Ain't Christmas is
Speaker 2: one thing I know? So every year just about this time,
Speaker 2: I celebrate kids with a rhyme.
Speaker 4: You know, queens you had Queensbridge projects produced so many
Speaker 4: amazing artists like nas Mob.
Speaker 2: Deep every day deal with the Russia and mixed up in.
Speaker 4: And like Staten Island. You know who was from Staten Island.
Speaker 4: There was not a lot of acts coming out of
Speaker 4: Staten Island.
Speaker 1: You know you had.
Speaker 4: Jesus I'm blanking.
Speaker 1: This is all to say. Skiz was surprised. Here was
Speaker 1: the relatively unknown MC from the island with an encyclopedic
Speaker 1: knowledge of kung fu movies and a crew of eight
Speaker 1: other EMCs who named themselves after a form of martial
Speaker 1: arts invented by a Taoist hermit.
Speaker 4: Skiz was like, what, Wow, this guy is something else.
Speaker 1: So Skiz 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, who 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 4: He dip dip dive and socialized. I think those are
Speaker 4: the exact words that Rizza remembered, and that kind of
Speaker 4: just just that energy and just the excitement of that
Speaker 4: whole thing of seeing this free party happening in this environment.
Speaker 4: You know, all these kids running around and adults and
Speaker 4: people just enjoying the music and enjoying each other's company.
Speaker 4: This was how this was how hip hop started.
Speaker 1: Rizza was seven at the time, and.
Speaker 4: When you're a young kid exposed to this and this
Speaker 4: is like the excitement that's happening in your neighborhood, you
Speaker 4: want to be a part of it. And he wanted
Speaker 4: to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: He stayed up late into the night transfixed.
Speaker 4: So immediately he goes home and he starts writing rhymes,
Speaker 4: you know, and then as soon as he could, he
Speaker 4: starts DJing.
Speaker 1: Riza 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 express 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 5: People like, where are you from? And I'm like so.
Speaker 5: I used to say, if I tell you, I have
Speaker 5: to kill you, and you're like why, And then I'm
Speaker 5: 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 5: There were only three houses on my parents' block, and
Speaker 5: then as from the lake was park Hill 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
Speaker 1: projects back in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 5: But when my mother found that house, she got a threatening,
Speaker 5: I guess call or something where they were like, oh
Speaker 5: you something like you better hope that you don't see
Speaker 5: your kids floating in and in the pond.
Speaker 1: By one estimate, there were fewer than a thousand people
Speaker 1: have called her South of the Expressway. Daphne stuck out.
Speaker 1: She told me a story from when she was a
Speaker 1: kid about having a crush on an Italian American boy
Speaker 1: named Billy. One day she called his.
Speaker 5: House and his mother picked up, and she was like,
Speaker 5: don't ever call this house again. So I went to
Speaker 5: school the next day. I was upset and I went
Speaker 5: and speak to this priest. I don't know what I
Speaker 5: did wrong. I don't know what I did wrong, And
Speaker 5: telling the guy goes, well, you see, he says something
Speaker 5: to like almost like this that's a little happened for
Speaker 5: white kids, and it's like a little.
Speaker 1: Heaven for black kids segregated.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh my god, Like I had no
Speaker 5: idea when I look back and think about it, we
Speaker 5: always stood out because we were always the.
Speaker 4: The black family.
Speaker 5: My parents didn't raise us in a segregated mindset. We
Speaker 5: just never It was the community that made us feel different,
Speaker 5: 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 Rakkim,
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 6: I had t k and the gag was The plan
Speaker 6: was to get a brick, so so we figured, oh,
Speaker 6: if we flipped this twenty we could at least get eighty.
Speaker 6: The thing was, Joe I had a baby in the
Speaker 6: oven or maybe just born right, So life was like
Speaker 6: what are you going to do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But then.
Speaker 6: 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, moving 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 there is
Speaker 1: A began to walk around Staten Island and he started
Speaker 1: to take these long, drawn out walks day after day.
Speaker 6: So I'm walking and I'm thinking, yo, and I'll walk
Speaker 6: in off step, I'll walk up the stand and people
Speaker 6: people thought there was the people who thought I was
Speaker 6: losing my mind because I'm walking and I'm talking to myself.
Speaker 1: And he would walk the island and think Staten Island
Speaker 1: was more than twice the size of men, and Rizza
Speaker 1: could just walk and walk. He would start at the
Speaker 1: projects on the north shore, then maybe journey along the
Speaker 1: coastline through the suburban streets. Rizza was ready to make
Speaker 1: music again, but the first time out with his Prince
Speaker 1: Rakim project had gone badly. But the idea he was
Speaker 1: coming up with now was going to be different. And
Speaker 1: I want to argue here that it has everything to
Speaker 1: do with Staten Island. Let me share with you some
Speaker 1: writing from Rizza's book, The Tao of Wu. I spent
Speaker 1: my formative years on an island, Staten Island, which is
Speaker 1: a blessing I've taken with me through life in Staten Island.
Speaker 1: Wu Tang were set apart from all the influences and
Speaker 1: fads that were happening in the other four boroughs. A
Speaker 1: nine man hip hop crew based on mathematics, chess, comics
Speaker 1: and kung fuflicks wasn't springing up in the middle of
Speaker 1: a Manhattan arts scene. Only on a remote island can
Speaker 1: some thing like King Kong grow to his full capacity.
Speaker 1: But the projects in Staten Island were a difficult place
Speaker 1: to live. A few of the Wu Tang members have
Speaker 1: written books, and reading them it's clear that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the remoteness of Staten Island that led them to
Speaker 1: the Wu Tang clan. It was also what they experienced there,
Speaker 1: especially in the projects. One Wu Tang member. You God
Speaker 1: wrote about the first time he saw somebody die. He
Speaker 1: was five years old, sitting with his mom listening to
Speaker 1: Loving You by Minnie Ripperton play on the radio outside.
Speaker 1: When he heard a crowd forming in the courtyard. He
Speaker 1: ran out to look. A woman was standing on the
Speaker 1: roof screaming. He watched so long his neck one stuff.
Speaker 1: Then she jumped or fell, You, God wrote in his
Speaker 1: book called Raw. I was a toddler. The sound of
Speaker 1: her hitting the concrete steps would resonate with me forever.
Speaker 1: So when Rizza walked Staaten Island, and it wasn't just
Speaker 1: this utopian vision of the isolated island where you can
Speaker 1: dream big. It was also the deeply segregated place where
Speaker 1: kids living on their own little island watched adults fall
Speaker 1: to their death, a kind of paradox. And my theory
Speaker 1: is that paradox was expressed in the word Shao limb.
Speaker 4: 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 7: But sure or a man choose, Oh well armed, what
Speaker 7: can we do?
Speaker 4: 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 Rizza 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: Hero of the movie is a villager who journeys to
Speaker 1: the Shaolin temple in China to learn to fight back.
Speaker 1: Rizza 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 Shaolin.
Speaker 7: Is shallin school is restricted.
Speaker 4: Only monks had taught that if Shaolin techniques could be
Speaker 4: taught here and the people could use it to fight
Speaker 4: the Manchu troops, that would be good.
Speaker 1: At some point, Rizza started to call Staten Island Shaolin,
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 Chao
Speaker 1: Lin's rival. This is from another kung fu movie they loved,
Speaker 1: called Shao Lin Versus Wu Tang.
Speaker 3: Isn't it true that you think you're better than us,
Speaker 3: but you're afraid that one day the Wu Tang will
Speaker 3: overtake you?
Speaker 7: You so you he was your special person to get
Speaker 7: rid of.
Speaker 8: By master, who was your biggest threat on sen No,
Speaker 8: it isn't nice song with my own earnsense, Chao Lynn, I'm.
Speaker 6: Afraid of the Wu Tang will Wu Tang will find
Speaker 6: Listen to me.
Speaker 3: Someone is trying to frame me.
Speaker 1: Rizza kept walking and thinking Shao Lin Wu Tang thirty
Speaker 1: six chambers, Shao Ln Wu Tang thirty six chambers. Wu
Speaker 1: Tang biographer Skiz Fernando knew all about those walks Rizza
Speaker 1: would take.
Speaker 4: That's one good thing about state. Neile and you can
Speaker 4: walk around in these nice neighborhoods with like Victorian mansions,
Speaker 4: you don't have to worry about getting bugged necessarily.
Speaker 1: And what would have been on the lawns of all
Speaker 1: those Victorian mansions. Rizza was walking by signs that said
Speaker 1: vote yes for the City of Staten Island, secession means
Speaker 1: a better life, billboards for secession above the streets, the
Speaker 1: same thing as was on the front page of the
Speaker 1: paper all the time, the same thing the NAACP of
Speaker 1: Staten Island was hosting meetings about, worrying that this could
Speaker 1: be really bad for black people living on Staten Island.
Speaker 1: Let me be clear, I have never found Riza himself
Speaker 1: talking about Staten Island secession, but in my Kasmon mode
Speaker 1: I see a connection. Because as he walked a Staten
Speaker 1: Island that felt like it wasn't welcome in New York
Speaker 1: City and was striking out on its own, this guy,
Speaker 1: who had had every reason not to feel welcome on
Speaker 1: Staten Island formed a plan for an unlikely hip hop
Speaker 1: group from Shoolin that was about to do the same.
Speaker 1: Maybe he thought they could skip the whole major label
Speaker 1: thing that had screwed him before. Maybe he didn't have
Speaker 1: to sanitize his life in character to succeed. Maybe there
Speaker 1: could be a hip hop group from the forgotten borough
Speaker 1: that made it all happen on its own, and that
Speaker 1: group would be 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: rode 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 secessions 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 next.
Speaker 4: He took the whole mythology that was in the movies
Speaker 4: and he appropriated it to his current conditions of a
Speaker 4: black man living in Staten Island doing battle in this
Speaker 4: game call 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 4: These guys had absolutely no future. They're all caught up
Speaker 4: in the same They're all selling crack, you know, two
Speaker 4: for five on the street.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to be doing that. The guys all
Speaker 1: went out to a diner on Staten Island. They toasted
Speaker 1: Wu Tang with a bottle of champagne. Each member put
Speaker 1: up one hundred dollars for studio time. The next day
Speaker 1: they started recording what became their first single, protect Yanik,
Speaker 1: putting eight mcs on a track and making it all
Speaker 1: blend together is as difficult as making five burrows feel
Speaker 1: like one city. The difference is that Rizza was about
Speaker 1: to pull it off. It took days of recording until
Speaker 1: all the verses were in place. Like students at Shaolin
Speaker 1: and Wu Tang, each MC was trying to one up
Speaker 1: the other, pushing farther and farther beyond the reaches of
Speaker 1: what existed in hip hop at the time. Rizza knew
Speaker 1: each one's style and how to draw out what made
Speaker 1: them unique. It was the opposite of some oppressive label
Speaker 1: telling him we think girls will like it and new
Speaker 1: tering his art. He didn't need the label. By December
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety two, the song was finished. The group
Speaker 1: took the cassette of Protecting Neck to the hottest hip
Speaker 1: hop radio show in Town Stretch and Babido Babido was
Speaker 1: alone in the studio.
Speaker 8: I'm not quite sure how members of the Wu Tang
Speaker 8: clan got into our hallway, but I hear a knock
Speaker 8: on the studio door. I open it and there's five
Speaker 8: dudes out there, and then, not smiling.
Speaker 1: They shoved an unmarked record into his hands. They're like
Speaker 1: yo man, Yo, you got played this. You got played Yo,
Speaker 1: we played it right now.
Speaker 4: I was like, yo, fella is like, I can't.
Speaker 8: I felt like I was being strong armed to play
Speaker 8: their record immediately I was.
Speaker 4: I was like, all, I fella's cool.
Speaker 1: So I took the record.
Speaker 4: I threw it all because I was.
Speaker 8: I was intrigued. I was like, how did these does
Speaker 8: mysteriously get into the studio.
Speaker 1: He listened to it privately first.
Speaker 8: And I hear the earner and earner, you know, the
Speaker 8: martial arts, and uh, I'm like, oh, this this is dope.
Speaker 8: You know I'm gonna play it.
Speaker 1: It was the premiere that launched the Wu Tang clan.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the damn like tups in Pakistan, swinging
Speaker 2: through your town like your neighborhood spot a man so
Speaker 2: on TikTok ticket.
Speaker 8: But yeah, I mean immediately the phone lines let up. Immediately.
Speaker 8: I'll never forget my friend. He called up and was.
Speaker 1: Like, Yo, Wow, what the EPP is Dad?
Speaker 8: I was like, Yo, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, I don't know, I don't know what the record is.
Speaker 1: All right. I love this song And my favorite part
Speaker 1: is the final verse, when Jesse explains the entire philosophy
Speaker 1: of Wu Tang is that they don't need some centralized
Speaker 1: music industry to take over the world. They can do
Speaker 1: it all on their own.
Speaker 2: The woe was too slammon, but he's called killing label,
Speaker 2: so he had to hit. Since I sing can't table,
Speaker 2: he doing one on a sitting like Tang did table.
Speaker 1: Now, any money's getting stuck till the gum under the table.
Speaker 1: That's what what I avent poles And basically, you had
Speaker 1: your chance, you lost it. We don't need you. It's
Speaker 1: our time now the song blew up. You know what
Speaker 1: I want here? What you want to hear? I want
Speaker 1: Wu Tang again. So of course the labels came knocking.
Speaker 1: But this time Rizza was ready no more Prince Rakim.
Speaker 1: He was the king and he had a plan for
Speaker 1: world domination. They would make a deal for Wu Tang
Speaker 1: as a group, but he would do something totally unprecedented
Speaker 1: in the industry. In the contract, there would be a clause.
Speaker 1: Though all the mcs and Wu Tang might be consolidated
Speaker 1: under the name Wu Tang Clan, and Wu Tang might
Speaker 1: sign a record deal. Each MC was going to retain
Speaker 1: local control of their own career. Each one could make
Speaker 1: any deal he wanted with any other record label. Loud
Speaker 1: Records agreed to Rizza's terms. Skiz Fernando a revolutionary deal
Speaker 1: in the music industry.
Speaker 4: The whole first round of Wu Tang solo albums was
Speaker 4: like that, all on different labels and different artists, but
Speaker 4: like all the Wu Tang's on each album, So they're
Speaker 4: using the major label system to spread their own brand
Speaker 4: out there. That was the genius of it, Like no
Speaker 4: 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 4: The floor was packed with people. They were showing thirty
Speaker 4: six Chambers the original on the big screen, and then
Speaker 4: when the group got on to perform, Honestly, it seemed
Speaker 4: like all of Staten Island was on stage. You didn't
Speaker 4: know who was in the group and who wasn't because
Speaker 4: it was just like the whole stage was packed, The
Speaker 4: whole floor was packed. That whole floor was just bouncing
Speaker 4: up and down these wooden rafters. I thought the whole
Speaker 4: thing was going to collapse. It was just like people
Speaker 4: were ready to tear shit down, the energy, the excitement
Speaker 4: because they came from Staten Island. It was like a
Speaker 4: sneak attack, 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, an 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 2: And we tried to lock down the industry, which you
Speaker 2: cannot do because they already set in their ways, like
Speaker 2: I said before, So what we have to do is
Speaker 2: build our own industry to make it right.
Speaker 1: Wu Tang's still playing together. So for me, in this
Speaker 1: series on Secession, it's a lesson in 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 mcs 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 3: Don't think that because he has a solo deal and
Speaker 3: I have a solo deal, this man may get a
Speaker 3: solo deal that we all we all just separating and
Speaker 3: breaking up. It's not that type of thing, man. We
Speaker 3: just we just expanded because the talent is so great.
Speaker 3: It's like we have we have mad talent in this,
Speaker 3: you know, and.
Speaker 4: We just got the spread out.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't come out on one chain when
Speaker 3: you just got the.
Speaker 1: Spread This is the fantasy of secession. You break away,
Speaker 1: you come back with a crew of guys from Staten
Speaker 1: Island and you dominate. That's what Wu Tang did. That's
Speaker 1: what 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, seceede.
Speaker 3: 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 2: Problem live here on Channel seventy seven from Secession headquarters
Speaker 2: at the Island Chateau, Channel seventy seven bringing you that
Speaker 2: live happening as.
Speaker 4: It's so parallel.
Speaker 1: Who gets to be in this position?
Speaker 4: What's fair and what's not?
Speaker 6: Who gets to wheel power?
Speaker 4: 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 6: Right now?
Speaker 9: Do you realize as a city that can plan for
Speaker 9: its own, that doesn't have to say may I, may
Speaker 9: I do this, and may I do that?
Speaker 4: Where are we going?
Speaker 1: What are we standing on top of? Right now?
Speaker 7: We're standing on the story of New York City. If
Speaker 7: you lived here between nineteen forty eight and two thousand
Speaker 7: and one. You're here somewhere, maybe not in this exact mound,
Speaker 7: but some piece of you, even if you just passed through,
Speaker 7: some piece of you is underneath us.
Speaker 1: The Staten Island Problem is written and produced by me
Speaker 1: Ben Matta 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 mattap Haaffrey. Here. Episodes of Revisionist History The
Speaker 1: Staten Island Problem early and ad free by subscribing to
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus line up on the Revisionist History Show page
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm slash Plus.
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