At last, a rap concert like it says on the tin. Members of the crowd putting up Wu signs upon request, the gig starting late, a blind drunk MC picking up femmes to join him on stage, a member of the audience fainting and needing medical help, terrible opening acts, it was all there (except for the stereotypical guns and bling)! Yes this was the Wu Tang Clan sponsored
GZA concert at The Hague’s
Paard van Troje (The Trojan Horse) a few weeks ago and it was indeed everything I expected it to be.
Were you one of those cats who were spellbound by Wu Tang Clan’s
Enter the 36 Chambers when it dropped in ’93? I was 10 back then so it took your narrator here a full decade to catch up with the rest of the world in being puzzled, intrigued and addicted to the 12 tracks that made up the seminal hardcore rap album. Actually I’ve even asked myself the question why I fell all over this album which was not only not danceable and extremely gritty in production but also crammed with misogyny, talk of chopping people’s heads off and all that jazz. Then it all dawned on me: it was precisely because people couldn’t dance to it, it
was because the production was gritty, creepy as well as minimalist and the lyrics so far out that I loved the rawness and directness of it all. The rap game changed from either jazz layered alternative hip-hop acts like De La Soul & Black Sheep or the LA G-Funk of Dr Dre and Snoop to this modern (at the time) New York hip-hop.
Although many argue that The Wu haven’t produced anything remotely close to the dizzying heights of their debut album ever since, 1995’s
Liquid Swords by Wu celebrated rapper GZA is often hailed as one of the best RZA produced Wu Tang solo efforts. Unlike many other Wu Tang albums where the storyboard is usually dominated by cocaine deals and dark humour (something I feel Wu Tang are extremely underappreciated for), Liquid Swords is cold, precise, scary and damn right disturbing. The kung-fu samples taken are from one of the creepiest: Shogun Assassin (1980), and it compliments the RZA production and lyrics perfectly. Throw in a few complex metaphors on hatred of record labels, chess battles, Staten Island and The Nation of Islam, and you have a masterpiece of New-York rap.
Liquid Swords was 13 long years ago and The Wu Tang Clan have released 4 more studio albums since, including 8 Diagrams released late last year to mixed reviews. Cutting the album has apparently left The Wu in a bit of a strut with rappers Ghostace Killah and Shallah Raekwon branding RZA a ‘hip-hop hippie’ over his alternate guitar heavy production of
8 Diagrams and rumours of the group never performing this new album over a live audience. 2008 saw The Wu tour Europe and the US with little or no material from their latest album to show for. They were scheduled to tour Holland when I saw that GZA, Wu Tang’s most senior member was to perform his 1995 classic only a few months after The Wu play. Add the fact that it was to be held in The Hague and not Amsterdam (meaning no middle of the night, nightmarish train-rides back home), my mind was made up.
The gig started an hour late, leaving the audience entertained to a Wu Tang affiliated Dutch rap group
Sluwe Vosz and
OjaweL, whose only distinction for being Dutch was the language used in their rhymes; the production and rhyming flow were no different to a mediocre rap duo from Harlem or Boston or anywhere else in the US of A. The less said about the Dutch duo the better, but despite lacking originality the two MCs did their best to fill the venue and rile the hip-hop heads in the crowd for the arrival of The Genius and his merry Wu Tang crowd. Whether they played a Dutch version of Wu Tang sounding tracks to get the crowd in the mood and not due to their minimal creativity remains to be seen.
Dressed in a simplistic hooded top, jeans and beanie hat, GZA took the stage with the now-familiar 1970s kung-fu loop “When I was little, my father was famous, he was the greatest Samurai in the empire…”, Liquid Swords’ opening sample, booming in the background (provided by DJ Sueside). He looked every bit as convincing. It may have been 13 years since he dropped the seminal Liquid Swords LP yet his delivery and timing this time around definitely does justice of GZA’s title as Wu Tang’s best lyricist. Liquid Swords was recited from back to front with clinical precision with other Wu Tang member Killah Priest joining The Genius after a couple of tracks from the album. After about an hour, all 13 tracks from the 1995 classic were covered and just when the crowd were fidgeting and getting restless thinking that the gig was about to end, GZA and Killah Priest laid out their standard Wu Tang tracks from either Wu’s 5 other studio albums and a few from GZA’s solo efforts.
The trio went on for another 30-35 minutes which involved the abovementioned girl grabbing, audience fainting, drunken rapper (referring to Killah Priest’s alcohol consumption) antics which was entertaining to say the least. Performance wise it could be underwhelming for the underground hip-hop heads who expect improvisation to live sets but if it’s Liquid Swords that you wanted, you definitely got your money’s worth!
