Word: wu
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...members of Wu-Tang are streetcorner scientists, experimenting, theorizing, pushing back the limits of what's possible in hip-hop. The phrase "experimental music" usually suggests that the work in question is somehow hard to enjoy and impossible to understand. Wu-Tang's lyrics and intentions can be perversely oblique, but their music manages to be both experimental and populist at the same time. Wu-Tang's songs have the loose but intricate feel of late-night jazz jams - they're artfully crafted but emotionally...
...band's 1993 debut album, "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" was rough and rambling, combining ragged street beats with lyrical imagery and audio samples drawn from Hong Kong martial arts flicks. At a time when West Coast gangsta rap was dominating the hip-hop scene, the arrival of the Staten Island, New York-based Wu-Tang announced that the East Coast was not to be ignored. The group's last major album, the ambitious 1997 double album "Wu-Tang Forever," was a challenging, complex work of urban sprawl, spilling over with rude wordplay, goofy ideas, bad attitude and mumbled...
...While all this may sound good - by 1998 Wu-Tang, Inc., was grossing more than $25 million a year - RZA, Divine and Oli Grant, the band's corporate brain trust, feel the group has spread itself too thin. "A few years ago, I told my brothers [fellow Clan members] that the W is gonna be like the Mickey Mouse ears," says RZA. For brands trying to be cool, though, ubiquity can be a bad thing - just ask Gucci. The W began showing up on too many things, while the band hardly showed up at all. It got to a point...
...band has taken other steps to be more corporate - all part of a plan, says RZA, to go public within five years (if the WWF sells on the N.Y.S.E., why not Wu?). Last year it bought office space in midtown Manhattan. It also owns property in New Jersey. Next year the group plans to buy a small film studio, a tie-in to its newest venture, Wu-Tang Filmz, which aims to produce big-budget movies...
...There's the larger question about whether this form of mini-media conglomerate can survive. The artist-as-mogul trend (see Puff Daddy and Madonna) has had a bumpy ride. Whether or not Wu-Tang winds up challenging the media giants, and whether or not the world domination thing pans out, the band has built something it may be able to live with. "Sometimes I wake up and say, 'Man, we came from nothing and look at what we've got,'" says Diggs. Clearly, he's seen the mountaintop, and he likes the view. Now send up the accountants...