It’s almost two hours of bars dunked in the Fresh Kills Landfill, dense wordplay, twisted humor that blurs the line between reality and fantasies told on the corner, and RZA’s unrelentingly dark production with a polished spin. The sprawling, gloriously messy, double-disc album makes no concessions. That June, the group reunited for the 36 Chambers follow-up Wu-Tang Forever, with “Triumph” as the lead single. They fully established their own mythology and language: lingo remixed from Park Hill and Stapleton projects in Staten Island, an endless pool of aliases, nearly indecipherable inside references, and lyrics lined with allusions to kung fu flicks, Five-Percenter ideology, and ultra-specific New York City geography. From their instant classic 1993 debut Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) to a string of five solo albums between 19, a raucous crew of forgotten borough rap purists had become mega-stars.īy 1997, the world of the Wu was as deep and insular as professional wrestling. The party records, big-money samples, and sleek R&B hooks of the Bad Boy shiny suit era were on the horizon, but in the years before the summer of ’97, the Wu went on a storybook run unlike any other group in rap history. That would eventually hurt them, but at that moment, the Wu didn’t need the rap world-they had created their own. For years after, the station shut the Wu out, refusing to spin their records as a group or solo. Meanwhile, Method Man flung a battery at DJ Big Dennis Rivera and Funkmaster Flex backstage.
He followed that uppercut with a haymaker, a flip on the station’s slogan-“Hot 97, where hip-hop dies!”- and eventually got the audience to chant along. “Fuck Hot 97, we listen to Kiss FM!” is what Ghostface Killah yelled out to the crowd that night, annoyed at sound issues.
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