Wu-Tang Forever

This morning, at the Experience Music Project Pop Conference,, we had our panel on the Wu-Tang Clan, and I think it went rather well. First, Leonard Pierce spoke about the Wu-Tang’s, and particularly the RZa’s, embrace of Marvel comics, and how they turned the ultimate nerdy/fanboy obsession into something cool. Next, Nate Patrin gave a detailed account of the RZA’s use of southern soul samples, and how this helped change the sound of hip-hop. Then, my old friend Charles Tonderai Mudede pondered the politics of nostalgia, with particular reference to Killah Priest’s song “From Then Till Now.” Finally, I talked about Ghostface’s voice, and his use of soul samples, with particular reference to “Can Can,” a banned track that was originally supposed to appear on Fishscale. (You can find a rough, not entirely finished, draft of my paper here). The real reason the panel went so well was that we were really all addressing common questions: sampling as transformation, the relevance of the past, how soul relates to hip-hop, etc. The song that kept on coming up was “I Can’t Sleep,” from the Wu-Tang Clan album The W, featuring Ghostface and Isaac Hayes.

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