Word: tang
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Last year Robert Diggs, a 31-year-old Staten Island, N.Y., native, made what he called a pilgrimage to China. After being forced from Tiananmen Square for displaying a self-promoting billboard, Diggs took to the hills. To be specific, he ascended Wu-Tang Mountain, where according to legend (his), he was received by kung fu masters at several monasteries. As Diggs exited a Shaolin temple, he says, a crowd of several hundred children awaited him. He proceeded to communicate the only way he knew--by rapping. "They didn't speak English, but I blew their minds and they...
That's how it goes with Wu-Tang Clan--part music sensation, part myth. And this is its paradox. It is a branded marketing juggernaut, instantly recognizable in remote corners of the globe but not quite able to convert its wide appeal to the mainstream. With its latest album, The W (see review), RZA hopes to harness the band's market power to better management in order to restage the Wu brand and set the Clan on a new growth phase...
...brand was born in 1992, when the group became an underground sensation by developing an urban-gangster-as-warrior persona based on old kung fu movies (RZA's passion). Wu-Tang has since evolved into a hybrid of Pokemon and Dungeons and Dragons, prepackaged for suburban teens and complete with video games, comics and, coming soon, animated films. It's all embodied in Wu-Tang's stamp of approval, a Batman-like chubby...
Early in the game, RZA convinced his fellow rappers that if they put their solo careers on hold, they'd share in a giant pot of gold via the vagaries of corporate synergy. He was right. The Wu-Tang brand blossomed under an unprecedented 1993 contract the band signed with Loud Records (Sony owns a 49% stake) that allowed each member to branch into solo projects on other labels. Every few years the group pulls together for an album, thus raising each member's visibility and bolstering the branding strength of Wu-Tang, Inc. It then launches a new crop...
...ducked out of a drug-treatment facility moments before a scheduled trip to the Los Angeles Criminal Courthouse. Now this modern-day Dr. Richard Kimble is making his way across the country, ducking Johnny Law and helping old friends. Last Tuesday, Dirty, a.k.a. Russell Jones, assisted his Wu-Tang Clan mates during a concert at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom. Much to the surprise of the audience and some of the group's nine members, Dirty, clutching a champagne bottle, performed two songs before addressing his faithful: "Y'all know they had the ODB locked down, right? Well...