Digital Culture: Production history
1997 was the year hip-hop called for maximalism: it was the year of double albums, the year of epic concepts, the year of innovative beats and intricate rhymes. That year, „Wu Tang Forever“was the greatest album in hip-hop. A classic - and even a little more than that...
1997 was the year that hip-hop called for maximalism. It was the year of double albums, the year of epic concepts, the year of innovative beats and intricate rhymes. That year “Wu Tang Forever” was the biggest album in hip-hop. A classic - and even a little more than that: An album that changed the course of the entire industry so much that it is worth looking back at it.
Some turning points are the beginning of something new. When „Sgt. Pepper‘s“was released in 1967, it not only marked a high point of the psychedelic era, but at the same time established the beginning of a recording and album aesthetic as part of which LPs became increasingly ambitious and the studio became a playground for complex sound manipulations. Sometimes, however, turning points are also end points. This was the case, for example, with „Wu Tang Forever,“which appeared exactly 30 years after the Beatles‘ masterpiece. This record, which is still as dearly loved as it is despised, marked the end of an era in hip-hop that is unlikely to return. Some may not care. But since hip-hop has since become the dominant style worldwide, the question of why is a very fundamental one because the aftermath of that release can still be felt today.
The world is on fire.
Even critics of the work admit: „Wu Tang Forever“is a fascinating disc. When it came out, the Wu Tang Clan had already set the rap world on fire. The band was a kind of independent cultural movement, a lifestyle, creative network and commercial empire all at once. The debut „Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers)“had sold over a million copies, despite its razor-sharp underground aesthetics, hilarious rhymes and philosophical references to Kung Fu and Tao. Immediately afterward, Wu mastermind RZA set about executing his fiveyear plan, which charted the precise path the group would take during this time on its journey to global dominance. Between 1993 and 1996, five solo albums by individual band members followed, all of which were based on the production techniques and sound of „36 Chambers,“mostly recorded with the same personnel, and thus could potentially have been full-fledged Wu-Tang LPs. Almost every one of these 5 releases is now considered a groundbreaking milestone, and not just because they had the most gripping beats, the most stirring lyrics and the most exciting arrangements of their era, but also because they were miles ahead of the rest of the scene in terms of sound.
And so the release of „Wu Tang Forever“was an event for which fans in the U.S. were willing to skip school to get the album on release day. So it‘s
no wonder that „Wu Tang Forever“became the best-selling entry in the band‘s discography: Four million (according to some sources even six million) copies were sold worldwide (half of them in the U.S. alone) [1], and the first single release, „Triumph,“whose bars many consider the best in hiphop history, became a hit despite its radio-unfriendly 6-minute playing time. Wu Wear, the clan‘s own clothing and fashion company, launched shortly before, enjoyed momentum, generating $10 million a year at its peak. [2]
Too little tension
Despite these undoubtedly impressive numbers, a certain disillusionment soon set in. On the one hand, there was the excessive length of the work, which with 27 tracks on two CDs in almost two hours threatened to go beyond the dimensions of audibility and reasonableness. With such a workload and his already unhealthy work ethic, even RZA couldn‘t guarantee every track was a killer. Especially since the lengthy second half of the disc featured some experimental contributions that seemed to destroy the band‘s so carefully constructed aesthetic. There was certainly no lack of creativity, but there was a little bit of determination to make everything that didn‘t fit together fit. As RZA later admitted, by the time the project was completed, he first lost track of it and then lost his passion for it. „It would be [...] absurd to criticize ‘Wu Tang Forever’ for being too long,“writes music journalist Paul Thompson, who specializes in hip-hop, in what is perhaps the best article on the album, „No matter how you cut it, you would always lose some of its most captivating moments in the process.“Yet, at the same time, he said, it‘s a victim of its opulence: „It‘s an album with a weak tension curve and loses momentum, especially toward the end.“[3]
It may be that, as in the communist countries from which the idea was borrowed, the concept of a five-year plan sounded better in theory than it did in practice. Beneath the surface of the Wu Tang Clan, however, things had been simmering for some time. On the one hand, in terms of collaboration between the musicians who were all distinct, strong-willed and idiosyncratic individual personalities. They were either vying for RZA‘s attention in the studio or were having troubles with him like Old Dirty Bastard, who was never there when you needed him because of his rampant drug use he partly simply not able to work. Shortly thereafter they were not only meeting in front of the microphone, but moreover in court, arguing about unpaid royalties and other inconveniences.
Shitty and distorted?
But more decisive was the criticism of the sound and the production of “Wu Tang Forever”. Despite all the undoubted redundancy, it was hardly possible to argue about the musical qualities. But the double album had its opponents right from the start. „When it comes to the vocals, this album always sounded like shit“, or „The vocals were already distorted on the CD“- such comments can be found on Discogs a lot. Even some who don‘t think the album‘s mix is bad, but just „different from everything else“admit that you actually need two stereos at home: one that only plays „Wu Tang Forever“and one for all the other albums.
In terms of mixing, „Wu Tang Forever“indeed represents a radical step. „Enter the Wu Tang“was dirty, otherworldly and warm, a thoroughly analog-sounding album that gained its charm from the use of soul, jazz and funk samples imaginatively cut up with the ASR-10, pitched down and reglued together. The groove often evolved out of the bass, the round, lush lines that wound elastically around the drums.
This is different on the new release. Here the focus was clearly on the drums, on cutting hihats and monstrous kicks. There were hardly any independent bass licks, the entire low frequency range was taken up by the bass drums, which came along so rich and smacking that you almost thought they were standing right in front of you. The samples have, as Thompson rightly writes, something clinical, which is probably due to the fact that they were partly already processed in the computer - later he should then completely do without samples and, like the entire rest of the scene, switch to synthesizers. Also, the disc is mixed significantly more undynamic, louder and brighter than the debut. The combination gives the impression of an album that remains distant and doesn‘t exactly invite the listener to dive in.
Own forms
The fact that the drums dominate the mix so much is of course intentional. Engineer Carlos „C12“Bess, along with Scott Harding, was responsible for recording live drums for RZA. Every day, Bess would sit down at his kit and drum for hours like crazy. [4] The recordings later became the grooves for „Wu Tang Forever,“which thus got far less of the classic swing than its predecessor and most of the other works of the classic early era.
The tendency was clear: After hip-hop had used the rich stock of black music for years and got off to an intoxicating start, it was now time to develop its own forms. For some bands, this turnaround meant, in a sense, the creative end - Public Enemy, for example, would never regain its former greatness and weight in the new, less sample-based era. For others, however, it simply meant a turn in new directions.
The comforting feeling of the early classics should not return. As a genre that had vowed never to stand still, rap now fully embraced the digital work process. Unlike pop and rock, this was not just a matter of production. The logical conclusion of the new approach was to increasingly buy beats and grooves externally, to treat albums like long playlists rather than carefully constructed journeys, to significantly increase the beat rate of release cycles. The productivity of a Drake rapping his way through a whopping 133 songs on six albums in six years would not have been possible without this move. Other genres of music, with the exception of techno and house, simply couldn‘t keep up and have inevitably lost ground in the process.
In a way, the album ends the era that „Sgt. Pepper‘s“had brought to life - at least as far as the musical mainstream is concerned. And so it‘s fitting that the album is finally being honored with an appropriately great-sounding vinyl version on the occasion of its 25th anniversary: On four LPs, all mastered perfectly flat, clean and dynamic, the album sounds as it perhaps should have always sounded. For some, a reminder of an exciting point in their musical journey. For others, younger or latecomers, possibly the beginning of a new passion. ⸬
Actually, you need two stereo systems at home: One on which you play only „Wu Tang Forever“and one for all the other albums.