Anniversaries: The W by Wu-Tang Clan
Wu-Tang’s underrated third LP showed the swords were sharpened, the beats brought back to the streets, and they lived to fight another day—still for the children, and still nothing to mess with.
Wu-Tang Clan were at a crossroads. The Staten Island collective had ascended to hip-hop’s pinnacle in the mid-‘90s on the strength of their 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), a raw masterpiece that redefined East Coast rap, and the commercial juggernaut of Wu-Tang Forever in 1997—but the years following Forever had not been kind to the Clan’s mythos. Their sprawling double-disc sophomore album, for all its multi-platinum success, had signaled a peak of influence that proved difficult to sustain. A series of solo albums from various members met with mixed results and waning enthusiasm. Standouts, including Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele (early 2000), rekindled some of the old flame, but others—Raekwon’s Immobilarity (1999), U-God’s Golden Arms Redemption (1999), Method Man’s Tical 2000, and more—failed to captivate the public or capture the magic of earlier Wu triumphs.
The Clan’s unity was strained; a disastrous 1997 tour with Rage Against the Machine had ended in no-shows and infighting, and the once tight-knit brotherhood seemed to be fraying. Meanwhile, ODB’s increasingly erratic, extra-legal saga—arrests, court cases, rehab stints, and tabloid infamy—often upstaged the music itself. The Wu’s dominance in hip-hop’s landscape was also challenged by changing trends: the late ‘90s saw glossy “shiny suit” rap and big-budget production (epitomized by the Bad Boy camp) seize the mainstream, leaving the Wu’s gritty aesthetic seemingly out of step. In short, the Clan entered the new millennium with their credibility intact. However, their momentum is in question, and they need to prove that their collective strength still burns as brightly as the legendary W logo itself.
Against this backdrop, The W arrived in November 2000 with a relatively low-key rollout by Wu-Tang standards—a deliberate contrast to the bombast that accompanied Wu-Tang Forever. If Forever had been heralded as a major cultural event, The W felt almost understated in its approach. This was fitting because the album represented a conscious shift away from grandiosity and excess, steering the Wu-Tang ship back toward the gritty, minimalist approach that first made their name. Group architect RZA—who had spent the late ‘90s exploring more elaborate sonic experiments and even stepping back from hands-on production on some affiliate projects—returned to the helm with a vengeance. He produced all but one of The W’s 13 tracks, reasserting a cohesive vision. Gone were the dense layers of strings, ornate orchestrations, and lengthy runtime that characterized Forever. In their place, RZA crafted a spartan soundscape built on scarred soul samples, eerie loops, and hard-hitting minimalist beats. The trademark Wu elements were still present—dusty kung-fu film dialogue, grainy dialogue snippets, and unpredictable sound effects—but the overall mood was darker and more intimate, evoking the feel of dimly lit project hallways rather than blockbuster movie sets.
This back-to-basics philosophy was not only a stylistic choice but a strategic one: by stripping the music down to its raw essentials, The W implicitly shifted the spotlight back onto Wu-Tang’s greatest asset—its collective of MCs, still one of the most formidable line-ups in hip-hop. On Wu-Tang Forever, the sheer scope and polish of the production sometimes overpowered the individual voices; by contrast, The W gives those voices room to cut through once again. The beats are often skeletal (a muffled soul loop, a ghostly chord, a crack of a snare), providing just enough structure for the rappers to shine. And shine they do: freed from elaborate studio excess, the Clan’s lyricists sound hungry and focused, rediscovering the fiery chemistry of their early days. Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and Inspectah Deck handle a lion’s share of the verses, each bringing their distinct flavor. Method Man’s suave menace, Rae’s streetwise storytelling, Ghostface’s surreal slang and emotional urgency, and Deck’s razor-sharp battle rhymes all find fertile ground here. GZA, the group’s cerebral elder statesman, appears more sparingly than fans might like, but whenever he pops up, his tongue remains as acerbic as ever, delivering layered wordplay that rewards close listening. Masta Killa and U-God likewise make the most of their brief cameos.
The crew sounds re-energized as a unit, trading bars with an esprit de corps that had been diluted on some late-’90s projects. It’s as if returning to the gritty template reconnected them with the essence of the Wu-Tang sword style—sharpened rhymes over raw beats, each MC pushing the next to step up his game. As the title implies, “Chamber Music” feels like a direct bridge to the classic Wu sound—chaotic yet disciplined, each rapper entering in sequence to test his skills. Veteran swordsmen trade braggadocio and wisdom; GZA offers a scene-setting couplet (“Each one adjust to his own environment/Formulate this great LP, a hundred rounds spent”), emphasizing simplicity and focus as the new modus operandi. Method Man slices through with a standout verse, playfully threatening to “hold my mic sideways when bustin’,” as if firing a gangsta’s pistol—a subtle nod that the Clan is armed and ready for Judgment Day.
Easily one of the darkest recordings in the Wu-Tang catalog, “Careful” unfolds like the soundtrack to a nightmare in the stairwells of a haunted housing project. The production is startlingly minimal: a slow, muffled boom-bap rhythm echoed by distant, distorted strings and what sounds like the drip-drip of leaking water reverberating in the background. The verses are awash in vivid menace. Ghostface Killah, in particular, steals the show, brandishing his lyrical box cutter and unleashing a torrent of slang-laden imagery so dense it borders on surrealism. “Climb like the deficit, profits,” Ghost begins, his flow urgent yet conversational, painting scenes of danger and upheaval with abstract flair. “Death threats to Israel slid through Bethlehem/Bong, on one wheel,” he continues, piling Biblical and street references atop one another. The meaning of Ghost’s cipher-like bars might be elusive, but the tone leaves no doubt—it’s like listening to a stickup preached as poetry. Elsewhere on the track, even typically laid-back Cappadonna sounds alarmingly intense, as if the claustrophobic production has everyone on high alert.
After that harrowing detour, the album offers moments of soulful reflection that balance out the brutality. “Hollow Bones,” for instance, rides a mournful loop lifted from Syl Johnson’s “Is It Because I’m Black?”—all plaintive wails and twanging guitar echo—creating a somber bed for Raekwon, Deck, and Ghostface to reflect on the emptiness of fast money and violence. The track’s vibe recalls earlier Wu classics like “Tearz” or Ghostface’s own “All That I Got Is You” in its sorrowful undertones. The MCs swap visceral vignettes of hustling and loss, conveying a weariness behind their hardened exteriors. Ghostface’s emotional range in particular shines here; he tears through his verse with the urgency of someone trying to outrun fate, giving the street narratives an undertone of regret.
If The W at times feels like a haunted, nocturnal affair, it’s not without its bursts of pure adrenaline and classic Wu braggadocio. “Protect Ya Neck (The Jump Off)” arrives like a jolt of electricity about mid-way through the album, deliberately invoking the title of the Clan’s debut single from ‘93. This new “Protect Ya Neck” is not so much a remake as a reunion lap—the Clan posse cut in full effect. Over a dusty, uptempo beat that swings with retro funk energy (RZA reportedly built it from chopped snippets of old Albert King blues tracks, spiced with sharp violin stabs), each member takes a quick turn on the mic to remind us of their singular personas. Inspectah Deck opens the track, “Dance with the mantis, note the slim chances/Chant this anthem, swing like Pete Sampras,” he proclaims with slick confidence, setting an urgent tone. One by one, the crew barrels through short, spirited verses as if storming a fortress in relay. The brevity of each part keeps the momentum high—no one overstays their welcome, and there’s a crackling feeling of competition.
Not content with one round of battle, the Clan double down on intensity with “Do You Really (Thang, Thang),” another of The W’s high-octane bangers. Produced not by RZA but by his close disciple Mathematics, this track maintains the stripped-down ethos while injecting a dose of club-bounce into the Wu formula. Over a bruising bass line and snappy snares, the hook chants “I heard you ladies got them thang-thangs, do you really?” in a hypnotic, almost teasing cadence. On “Redbull,” the ever-affable Redman leaps into the fray, joining Method Man and Inspectah Deck for a rowdy cipher. Given Redman’s longstanding friendship and chemistry with Meth (the two had a hit collaborative album, Blackout!, the year before), his presence feels natural—like a cousin crashing the family reunion. Nas makes perhaps the most impactful guest turn, appearing on the ominous “Let My Niggaz Live.” This song is the album’s emotional core in many ways—a claustrophobic, dense tour through crime, paranoia, and despair in the inner city.
The Wu also ventures into new sonic territory with “One Blood Under W,” a surprising detour into dancehall reggae flavors. This track grants the Clan’s quiet secret weapon, Masta Killa, his first true solo showcase on a Wu album—seven years after he first made a splash with one verse on “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’.” Over a skanking mid-tempo groove laced with piano stabs and a pattering drumbeat, Jamaican singer Junior Reid reprises the hook from his own classic song “One Blood,” his patois-laced wail giving the track a revolutionary Rasta spirit. In a sly nod to then-buzzing rapper 50 Cent—who had cheekily dissed the Clan in a song—Masta threatens, “How dare you call the Gods in vain?/I’ll shoot a hole in a 50-cent piece to test my aim,” flipping a literal coin reference into a warning shot. “The Monument” recruits Busta Rhymes—another longtime friend of the Clan—for a brief but blistering posse cut. Busta kicks off the track with an exuberant opening salvo (threatening comically to “smack a nigga right in the face like this was handball”), providing a jolting energy. But it’s GZA who emerges as the star here, anchoring the song with a tightly wound verse that boasts his unparalleled eloquence.
“Some assuming they paid dues and joined the union
Lost nigga couldn’t rumble in this wild jungle
Quick to crumble, the type to be on the stand and fumble.”
Yet for all its highlights, The W is not without flaws and patchier moments. Chief among these is “Conditioner,” the much-buzzed track that features the album’s lone contribution from the inimitable Ol’ Dirty Bastard. The production is a sluggish, loping piano-driven beat that might have worked as a quirky interlude but drags on too long. Snoop Dogg drops in for a guest verse—a curiosity in itself, pairing the West Coast icon with the Wu—and while Snoop delivers his lines with a laid-back gangster charm, even he can’t fully save the track from derailment. The real issue is ODB’s uneven vocal turn: he sounds distant and disengaged, his rhymes slurred and recorded in lo-fi quality. In fact, the backstory is that ODB’s vocals were literally phoned in from prison (or rehab), explaining the muffled, tinny sound of his verse and the impression that he’s barely keeping time with the beat.
The Clan regain their footing with “Gravel Pit,” released as the second single, lightens the mood dramatically—arguably to the point of goofiness. Over a frenetic beat built on a 1950s-style doo-wop sample and retro-funk flourishes, Method Man, U-God, and Ghostface throw a block party in Bedrock. The song’s now-infamous music video depicted the Wu members time-traveling to a prehistoric age, decked out in furs and gold, fighting off ninjas amidst dinosaurs—a clear sign that not everything about The W was deadly serious. The track itself is catchy and upbeat, with Meth leading the charge and even interpolating Cameo’s 1980s hit “Back and Forth” in the hook. Some fans at the time scratched their heads at “Gravel Pit,” finding its playful tone and R&B-style chorus a bit out of character for the typically grim Wu.
The true conclusion of the album comes with “Jah World,” a soulful closer that circles back to the themes of pain and perseverance. Over gentle, melancholy instrumentation, Junior Reid appears again to deliver a haunting chorus about the suffering of the streets and the solace of faith. Ghostface contributes an emotionally charged verse, practically weeping over his bars as he laments fallen comrades and systemic injustice. It mirrors the heavy spirit of “I Can’t Go to Sleep”—an earlier track where Ghost and RZA rapped anguished verses over the sweeping strings of Isaac Hayes’ “Walk On By,” confronting the toll of violence and poverty on their psyches. It re-centered the group when they were in danger of losing direction, proving that the Clan could still make vital music together without chasing trends or bowing to commercial pressures. Upon its release, the album was a commercial success (eventually going Platinum) and a sign that the Wu’s fanbase remained loyal despite the rocky interlude. More importantly, it restored a sense of focus and identity: the Wu-Tang we hear on The W sounds like themselves again, not the inflated mythos or scattered solo stars of the late ‘90s, but an actual clan united by beats and rhymes.