Enter the Wu-Tang

Enter the Wu-Tang changed hip-hop, and even today it’s hard to believe an album so uncompromising and uncommercial could go multi-platinum. Wu-Tang leader RZA assembled the best MCs from around his home turf of Staten Island (including his cousins Ol’ Dirty Bastard and GZA, and his roommate Ghostface Killah) and with their help orchestrated a lean 12-track album that redefined New York rap. “Protect Ya Neck” and “Bring da Ruckus” are muddy and mangy, like something hatched in a subterranean bunker. At the time, no one was used to hearing nine rappers on one album, but each member had such a distinct and forceful persona that Enter the Wu-Tang immediately felt like a cast of all-stars, not a collection of unknowns. The group was renowned for an arcane lexicon of slang and reference points (many drawn from the group’s love for kung-fu, crime, and exploitation movies they had watched as kids roaming Times Square), but songs like “C.R.E.A.M.,” “Can It Be All So Simple,” and “Tearz” also presented poignant and truthful pictures of young black life in the projects of New York.