Wu-Tang Clan, “Wrath Of The Math” (Originally Published March 2002)

Over the past few weeks, rumors have been circulating that the almighty Wu-Tang Clan is set to make a return to hip-hop with a new album, A Better Tomorrow. While nothing has been officially confirmed—Raekwon recently told XXL that the Clan's members are still trying to sort out the business end of the process—fans have gotten to hear one new track from troupe, "Execution In Autumn." In addition, the Wu is slated to perform at this year's Hot 97 Summer Jam Festival on Sunday June 2.

With demand for the Wu to return at a fever-pitch, XXL decided to take a look back at our 2002 interview with the group, as it prepared to release it's fourth album, Iron Flag.

Written by Elliott Wilson

RZA is bent like a comma. Twisted and feeling jovial in the comfy confines of a creamy white limo en route to Philly, the leader of the Wu-Tang Clan throws in his two cents on hip-hop’s current hot topic, the lyrical wax war between Jay-Z and Nas. “It’s real hip-hop, but I don’t know why they’re going after each other,” he says. “They’re from the same mutha- fuckin’ block—the Empire state.”

It’s clear that despite his exuberance the leader of hip-hop’s truest dysfunctional family would rather discuss his crew’s abiliuty to unify in troubled times than the con- flicts between others. The Wu’s new album, Iron Flag, is also heavy on his mind. That’s why when he digresses back to the topic of battles, one can’t help but be shocked by his impassioned revelation. “Rap battles is funny,” he muses, head down in the midst of a roll-up of the sticky icky. “I lost a battle one time.”

At this, his fellow passengers—including Wu’s spiritual leader, a 46-year-old gentleman named Poppa Wu, the Bundini to RZA’s Ali—shoot him confused looks, ‘til he continues with a lengthy diatribe. Ain’t no shame in his game.

“I never believed I would ever lose a battle and shit. Plus the corniest nigga in the world beat me. The only reason why he beat me was because he was so stupid. It was at some Blaze battle. I was sick, plus I had been in court all day. I’m on my way home and I heard, ‘Yo, the rap battle is going on, stop by, your man Cappa’s over there.’ I’m in the audience and my man Cappa got burnt down. He repping Wu, so I felt offended. I was like, ‘Hold on! What the fuck is this shit?’ I just jumped in and joined the shit out of nowhere. I wasn’t on the list but I came in and defeated a bunch of cats in the name of Wu.

“And then it came down to the last three niggas. Me, the fuckin’ kid who won, and Craig G. It got down to us and they threw on a fuckin’ Master P beat. When they threw that on the kid was at home. He said some comedy shit. The crowd started laughing. And they saw a laugh as a victory.”

RZA snorts, still disgusted. He can’t stand when theatrics override true lyrical skills. It’s his pet peeve and today he’s still teed off. He has no regrets, though. If it hap- pened again tomorrow and one of his brethren was gettin’ served on the mic, RZA would jump in again—no matter the conse- quences. That’s what it’s like when you’re part of a team. One of us equals many of us. Disrespect one of us, you’ll see plenty of us.

“No rapper has really said nothing to match against Wu-Tang lyrics,” he stammers, rolling the limo’s windows up to dead the gusty winds. “If you take our lyrics and write them down, and you take every rap that was written and put them in books, and then compare, you will see who holds weight and who don’t hold weight.”

Reflecting on his L, the Digital cat continues, in case you don’t fully understand. “A nigga on stage will say, ‘I’ll punch you in your muthafuckin’ mouth and break your...’ That’s OK when you jumping all over the crowd yelling. But sit down and read the shit, then read the next man when he said, ‘I thread your needle.’ It sounds more intimate, ‘knawmean? It’s different. That’s how Wu-Tang is. If you take our lyrics and put it in a book you can refer- ence it back to our era and get more insight than a lot of these other rappers.”

Their reign at the top may have been short like leprechauns but who can forget the impact that was felt when nine grimy cats from the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island stomped their way through the rap game in the early-to-mid ‘90s? In the begin- ning, they dropped nuthin’ but classics. No hip-hop head’s record collection is complete without a few LPs like Enter The Wu- Tang: 36 Chambers, Liquid Swords and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... But eventually the Killer Bees’ sting ran out. Others emerged and, as the Clan members love to say, they lost their belts—the Heavyweight Rap Champions of the World.

They’re still fighting though. “It’s like a boxer who’s been a champ all his life, and he knows he got about five or six more fights,” Inspectah Deck offers on the set of this mag’s cover shoot. “It gotta be quality fights, and you gotta give a quality performance. We at that stage right now. We’re gonna drop one, two, maybe three more albums. It’s at that point where the music is changing, the people are changing. They got a whole different language. But we know our role. We gonna keep educating the people, letting everybody know about the real world, away from the diamonds and the parties. You got important things, like single mothers and parents on drugs.”

After one listen to the Clan’s fourth LP, Iron Flag, it becomes crystal clear how focused the WTC is on takin’ things back to ground zero and recapturing love from the projects. But like critics and skeptics point out: How can a successful rapper maintain his street cred when he’s no longer living in his hood? Can you rap about the struggle when your bank account got more O’s than Jason Giambi?

Obviously Raekwon, one of the most outspoken Wu Gambinos, has an opinion on this. “A nigga can get paid and [he] still hood,” he shouts while navigating his whip to his hometown—the crooked letter-I. “Because the hood exists in [him]. Your persona alone speaks. And any live nigga? Any live nigga move humble.” Moving closer to the home branch of the bank he needs to do business with, Rae switches gears but not topics. “I’m Robin Hood. I comes back and I try to help brothers that I feel need that chance. I don’t go back just to prove to a nigga that I can rhyme like that. When I be listening to niggas say that, it’s like, come on, man. Get up outta here with that. You gotta go back to feel it? If you been through it, you know the struggles, you don’t gotta go back. Niggas always remember the tight Lees days.”

The third-most-often-asked question about the Wu-Tang Clan—after “Where’s Ol’ Dirty?” and “When is Meth’s album droppin’?”—is “When is the crew gonna break up?” It’s increasingly become a touchy subject for the fellas, who can’t even scream on each other in public without making internet headlines.

“The media said we broke up,” RZA recalls in reference to a MTV news item that ran last summer. The piece had quotes from Meth stating that he didn’t see another Wu LP coming out by December because of differencs in the fam. In fact, the record did come out Dec. 18 as RZA promised.

“People need to understand Meth is playing, 24-7 playing,” RZA insists. “He’s a serious nigga, though. But he’s playing 24-7. Somebody almost punched him in the face last week ‘cause Meth kept saying some shit. He was playing but people around him don’t play. Meth probably told... who cares what he say? It’s Meth.”

Obviously the notion of internal unrest being aired in the public troubles RZA. Still, members of the Clan acknowledge that things aren’t always hunky dory. The biggest problem: The basic divide of the eight members. Four are high-profile (RZA, Ghost, Rae and Meth) and four aren’t (GZA, Deck, U-God, and Masta Killah). This can lead to problems. And does. Just ask Rae.

“Somebody might call and just wanna fuck with me, might call and just wanna fuck with Meth and Ghost. So it makes other nig- gas feel like automatically, ‘Yo, hold up. We don’t get no fucking calls like that.’ But it’s like, yo, you gotta do your homework. You gotta really show muthafuckas that you wanna be involved.”

Still, Rae feels that things are never as bad as some portray. “It ain’t personal,” he continues. “If it gets personal, that’s when you gotta speak on it real fast. You gotta let niggas know, yo, before all this shit, all we got is us. Stop the bullshit, nigga. If you ain’t fuckin’ with me, you ain’t fuckin’ with me. If I ain’t fuckin’ with you, I ain’t fuckin’ with you. But if it ain’t nothing serious then, yo, yeah, we can go through our little hatin’ on each other for a month. But real niggas always respect who the fuck they came from and who they came with.”

When pressed on group tension, Masta Killah, the only member of the group to never drop a solo album, remains calm, humble and patient. “Before you jump into anything, you must prepare,” he insists. “That’s a wise way to do things. I’m a chess player. Before I move any piece, it’s well thought of. And I know my brother is me. So to see him there, I know I’m there. With that type of understanding, you can go anywhere and do anything.”

Teamwork and true tranquility are hard to come by, but Ghost points to the group’s stout religious beliefs—the crew all practice the teachings of the Five Percent Nation—as a positive force. “We know money is the root of all evil,” he says. “A lot of groups that break up be based on money and the next man wanting more fame than the next man. We know that we all dealing with equality. We know when to come together and communicate. We know not to let nothing distract us, whether it’s money or bitches. All you gotta do is just know common sense. But everybody is not meant to have common sense. But just knowing what’s good and what’s bad, and not falling victim to the devil’s civilization, you win. You can solve any problem. You just gotta go out and do it. Have the will.”

Few seem willing however to discuss the status of Cappadonna within the group. Not an original Wu member, Cappa has recently found himself on the outs. In late December, at the Clan’s album release party in NYC’s Hammerstein Ballroom, he was all but ignored—even when he jumped up on stage. “I got the word that Cap ain’t official Wu no more,” Rae offers. “I don’t know if that was his decision or if that decision was made for him.”

There’s no question that decisions like this are left to the RZA, who’s called in like a hostage negotiator when discrepancies seem beyond repair. “One thing about the God, everybody love him,” Rae reveals. “Everybody got a special love for that nigga. He might paint his own picture like niggas is going against him, but he knows that niggas would never go against him, based on the fact that yo, where we came from. He hold the shit together, like, ‘Go through it, but at the end of day, know that y’all niggas is real to me.’ So you might be right, he might be right. But the whole thing is, yo, don’t let the shit tear you apart.”

The tragedy of 9-11 was artistically a blessing to the Wu. Not looking to be the first cats to hop on a plane, the Clan stayed home and RZA coaxed the team into Sony Studios to make more history.

“The beauty of the whole thing was the brothers was stuck in New York,” RZA says. “LA is different, man. We made the last two albums in LA. There you got fly bitches everywhere, cats be like, ‘I just seen Halle Berry in the mall. I got her number, I’m ‘bout to go downstairs.’ In New York it’s like, ‘Yo man, I’m ‘bout to punch this muthafucka in his fuckin’ face.’ “But it really felt good to do this album up here in New York because everybody gets to drive from their hood and just go and get your bag of weed or your bag of digi or go get your bitch out the hood. Niggas is happy in the hood.”

So happy that it wasn’t easy to get them in the studio. Especially one of the Clan’s pillars. “GZA was one of the absentees from the class,” RZA remarks. “Most of the songs were done without GZA. He was making me nervous. GZA was the only one that was kind of lacking, and Ghost was busy with his album. Ghost would still come though and went sleepless for two or three days in a row.”

Still, GZA’s impact would be felt on the LP. Some of his best verses in years can be heard on tracks like the Ron Isley-assisted “Back In The Game.” “I did the vocals on my own, in my own crib,” the Genius reveals. “I got a little set-up and I submitted my vocals through Pro Tools files. Thankfully, I was able to take the music home and really sit with it by myself. It’s like I’m one of those children that just can’t focus in class. He has it in him—he’s smart—but it’s just his attention span. It was more comfortable for me this way.”

Although RZA wasn’t pleased with some individuals’ actions, he doesn’t hold a grudge, because of his pride in the end result. He knew however that there’s no Wu album without the GZA and was thankful that he came through in the ninth inning. In turn, the Genius knows that although he’s an elder statesman, RZA’s word is final. “We leave a lot up to him to make decisions, especially if we’re not around,” GZA says. “We can’t complain about a track if we wasn’t at the mastering. RZA put in a lot of work. He’s pretty right, the majority of the time. We don’t always agree, but I think most of all, he earned that.”

Back at famed photographer Jonathan Mannion’s digs, all is rowdy on the set. There they are in all their glory. Bitching one minute, cracking jokes the next. There’s Meth, being a bigger brat than Shannen Doherty on 90210, refusing to get into the picture until everyone else has. U-God’s just finished tellin’ you why the whole music industry world is shittin’ on him. Diagnosed with diabates, Ghost is visibly under the weather. At a picnic-sized table, Rae’s polly- ing with label folks for plush hotel accomo- dations if they expect him to do more press. If you look hard enough, you see GZA just playing the back, barely noticeable. And then there’s RZA. Like Paul McCartney at the Let It Be sessions, he remains optimistic throughout any and all chaos or turbulence.

Posing for our flick that’s meant to capture the feel of the 1968 Olympics when those two brothers protested the Vietnam war with their Black Power fists in the air, RZA deliberately situates himself in the front. His posture is stern and structured. More conscious than anyone of how he wants the end result to look, he sits stiffly— right in the middle like Monie. Surrounded by his brothers, for the moment, there’s no other place he’d rather be.