I was replying to a post about Wu-Tang on SOHH and this thought popped in my head, and I figured here was the best place to expand on it.
Do you think they know that that's it? There are no more options for them to come back from the position they're in right now, as an old school group who make the same music over and over.
RZA gave them a new sound and what I think he hoped was a new direction to take the music into and they couldn't even get along long enough to promote it. These people act like they're musical geniuses when they can barely make what can be considered an album without that one man overseeing it. They couldn't even follow his lead long enough to shoot a goddamn video covering a Beatles song with Erykah fucking Badu - who, by the way, sold over 100k first week with one of the most non-commercial, non-traditional albums in years - and George Harrison's son and John Frusciante. Yet Ghostface can spare the time and the budget to shoot a video for CELEBRATE, an awful song and a terrible pick for a single.
Regardless of whether or not RZA had the right idea with what he was doing, the rest of the Clan decided instead to rely on their back catalogue for the 8 Diagrams tour and judging from some of the posts on this board and others, they're boring as fucking batshit while doing it. I mean, here's a group of people that have spent 10 years running away from their classic sound - they've always talked about how you can never stay the same and how tastes and sounds change with maturity and age but when RZA produces a work that stays true to the gritty, musical and artistic aesthetic of the old work while creating something different and interesting suddenly they need some traditional shit? Suddenly there has to be a Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang.
Why didn't Raekwon do this on Immobilarity or Lex Diamond? Why is it the Ice Water album is so pathetic when he thinks he can do such a bang-up job creating a record? Why hasn't Deck stayed true to his own comments in interviews? Most of his music is generic NY shit in the most literal sense of the word.
Here's the best part though - 8 Diagrams sold something like 150k records and Big Doe Rehab hasn't even cracked 100k in sales. Ghostface had the bigger budget, recorded a video and actually aimed at the club charts with his single - all the while creating an album so musically close to Supreme Clientele but lacking the perfect conditions in the recording and release of that album, but 8 Diagrams, the album only RZA actually gave a fuck about, still sold more?
Sounds like the Clan put their fate in the wrong hands and lost their last shot at relevance.
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