"I wouldn't want to get into a business relationship with the Wu-Tang Clan because it hurt my business, Universal Music's business, the record business. It hurt a lot of people when they wouldn't show up for music videos, for press. It (wastes) a lot of people's money. A lot of people got fired — the guys don't even know how many people got fired because of them.



"That's just not good business, and I'm a businessman. I need to keep my name clean, so I can go anywhere in the world and do anything and people know there's professionalism behind it."

While we'll undoubtedly see collaborations between the various members (RZA worked on Raekwon's long-in-the-works sequel to Only Built For Cuban Linx...), and maybe most to all of them will reunite one member's track someday, it does seem like the 8 Diagrams experience was unpleasant enough that there would be little impetus for the rappers to work together as a group. Have they ever thought about holding a Wu-Convention for all the Wu-nerds? They could even hold it at The Wu Convention Centre.

RZA Is Own Master [Calgary Herald via ProHipHop]
Wu-Tang Clan - Can It All Be So Simple? [YouTube]

It's surprising that the track's guest verse from Inspectah Deck is left off the video clip. While he doesn't pick up the Wu-history lesson where RZA leaves off, his claims of being unstoppable help extend the track length to the point where the credits (which include "co-directed by the RZA") would end less than a quarter into the video, rather than almost a third of the way through. In the abbreviated radio-ready edit, the RZA is seen standing on a rooftop and ignoring a Wu-signal before being groped by women on a throne (a la the cover to Digi Snax). Side projects are acnowledged (Achozen, his collabo with the bassist from System Of A Down, appears on a skyscraper) and ODB is RIP'd before Commissioner Gordon gives up and replaces the Wu-signal with a Bobby Digital-signal, which inspires Prince Rakeem to leap from his perch.

U can't stop this, and U can expect this for the next ten years.

RZA as Bobby Digital - You can't stop me now OFFICIAL VIDEO [YouTube via Smoking Section]

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: Following a very protracted leak, the (supposedly) full (supposedly) official version of the Wu-Tang Clan's comeback album 8 Diagrams hit the blogs today, with the Clan's fan club already arguing its legitimacy. Thanks to most of the 16 tracks trickling out over the last few months and the very vocal kvetching of various Clan members over the finished product, hardcore Wu followers are likely familiar with the bulk of 8 Diagrams. And shocking no one, even casual fans, these are not beats to inspire viral YouTube bedroom dancing or lyrics to be whittled down to monosyllabic ringback snippets. Even the cheesy radio pimp hook of "Starter" is backed by what sounds like Ethiopian jazz filtered through a bubbling bong hit.

The Wu still excel at the terse, dense, criminal versifying of turn of the '90s New York rap ("Rushing Elephants"), and when they do take their choruses, they're still in the form of R&B singing blunted into quavering eeriness ("Gun Will Go"). (Needless to say it will take more than our patented one-listen verdict to wade through the science being dropped.) But while 8 Diagrams is rich with familiar Clannish pleasures (mournful boom-bap, ever-unspooling metaphors, filched and faded exploitation flick dialogue), the beats are smudged and layered where once the RZA ground at a single loop until he almost exstinguished it. The production curveballs come at you like paranoid apparitions, the soundtrack to the Clan's minds playing tricks on them. On "Unpredictable," a groaning ribbon of metal guitar threads through b-movie strings slashing through the track's dank alleyway ambiance. The wicked fairy tale "Wolves" features George Clinton playing a Grimm brother over a high noon mariachi band beat. Rare for the word-addled Wu, the backing tracks, with their muddy neo-psychedelic soul details bleeding into each other, disorient as much as the rhymes.

THE BEST TRACK: "Stick Me For My Riches," which rides a Blaxploitation hook straight out of classic Bobby Womack over Southern rap snares for over a minute before making way for one of the tightest Method Man verses since he tried his hand at reality TV.

Well that's a... little better, even if our inner font fiend is still forced to give that typeface a thumbs down. A thumbs down with a wack drop shadow.

Wu-Tang - 8 Diagrams Cover (Official) [Nah Right]

Back when I was in college we got a crash course in Photoshop by a pair of stern professors who warned us that there would be stiff penalties (wrapped knuckles, public humiliation, latrine duty) if we abused the cheesy filters. Whoever designed this Wu cover would have been placed on academic probation and then pelted with rotten tomatoes. Drop shadow mania! They can go to all that effort to try and clear a Beatles sample/"interpolation" but they can't spend more than 30 minutes on the cover to their first album in six years?

It's a composition sample and not a master sample that you'll hear on the track, meaning that the Wu did receive permission to use Harrison's song, but not in its original, as-heard-on The White Album form. Rather, it's been "interpolated" — literally, changed by adding some new material — with new lyrics from Wu rappers Ghostface and Raekwon. Harrison's son, Dhani, plays guitar on the song.

"In this case, the Beatles' master sample is not being used and has not been approved by Apple Records," the Beatles' label, said Randall Wixen, the founder of Wixen Music Publishing, which handles publishing rights for the Harrison estate. "The composition of 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' has been interpolated into the Wu-Tang song. The elements have been replayed by Dhani Harrison.

"There's nuance to [the Wu-Tang's] claim. They have not [been] cleared [by] the Beatles, they have cleared a song made popular by the Beatles," Wixen added. "All I know is that we were authorized to proceed with the Wu-Tang Clan."...

"EMI freaked out about this whole thing, but it's less about a major corporation talking to another major corporation, it's more like two friends — RZA and myself — talking about working together," Dhani Harrison said. "[The RZA] asked me to see if he could use the song, which is owned by us [the Harrison Estate], and we said yes. It's not the original master — they've never been cleared — but the song is used compositionally.

"I play a bit of guitar on it, John Frusciante played some guitar too, and Erykah is on there," he continued. "I haven't heard the final version, but whatever capacity the RZA wants to use all of those parts in, I'm sure he will."

The Wu-Tang Clan has stepped back from the original claim, using the term "interpolation" for the way they've incorporated "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." But the funny thing? 8 Diagrams is still coming out on Dec. 4, despite the "magnitude of the sample and the History being made" being slightly dimmed. (The song, however, is very very good.)

Wu-Tang Clan's 'First-Ever Cleared Beatles Sample' Claim Is Incorrect [MTV]

As the Wu members point out, they've been around long enough to have parent-and-kid teams of fans, and that's generally not a quality that implies success in the rap world. So why do something that smells like a flop? Well, because they work so well together, it seems like—or to be less charitable, because nobody's doing that well on their own now. Ghostface used to be a minor member, but now his modestly selling (and critically acclaimed) albums are the most successful solo efforts the Wu's got going. Method Man released an absolute clunker of an album earlier this year, RZA hasn't done a non-soundtrack album in four years, and Raekwon's gearing up for, of all things, a sequel. (Which may end up being great, but still.)

Everybody in the group's got issues, whether with each other (the eight diagrams of the title are each member's different agenda, and just getting together for the reunion shows involved something of a struggle) or with himself—aside from the aforementioned depression, everyone seems very defensive, especially Meth, and for a bunch of guys who can rightly be called legends, that's awfully strange. So what they're doing, seems like, is both embracing the fact that they do work best as a unit, and trying to redefine what success means—since, after all, certain people think you're not actually making hip-hop if you don't go platinum. In the end, though, all that'll really matter to old fans and new ones alike is if the album's good. Here's hoping.

Wu-Tang Clan EPK [OnSmash]

Media Downloads [wutang-corp.com, via Spine Magazine]
Earlier: Idolator's Instantly Outdated Guide To Internet Music: How To Nab Fifty Songs In Twenty Seconds

U-God's list, in all its all-caps, merch-hawking glory, after the jump.

1.HOW TO COOK YOUR LOVERS FAVORITE MEAL .

2.HOW TO BE AFFECTIONATE WHILE BEING SEXUAL .

3.HOW TO SHARE YOUR FELLING WITH OUT DUMPING THEM ON YOUR PARTNER.

4.HOW TO DO THE LAUNDRY WITH OUT DESTROYING YOUR PARTNERS CLOTHING .

5.HOW TO BE SUPPORTIVE WITH OUT CONTROLLING .

6.HOW TO LISTEN ACTIVELY INSTEAD OF PASSIVELY .

7.HOW TO GROW TOGETHER INSTEAD OF APART ,

8.HOW TO BE INDEPENDENT WITH OUT BEING DISTANT

9.HOW TO BE DEPENDENT WITHOUT BEING CO DEPENDENT

10.HOW TO TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELING WITHOUT USING (PSYHCHO-BABBLE)

11.HOW TO MAKE LOVE IN THAT SPECIAL WAY THAT YOUR PARTNER LOVES SO VERY MUCH.

12.HOW TO GIVE A REALLY SKILLFULL Massage .

13.HOW TO KEEP YOUR RELATIONSHIP YOUR NUMBER 1 PRIORITY AMIDS LIFES MANY DEMANDS .

14.HOW TO CHOOSE GIFTS THAT YOUR PARTNER WILL LOVE

P.S THIS FOR ALL THE COUPLES OUT THERE IF YOUR NOT IN A RELATIONSHIP YOU MIGHT NOT UNDRSTAND (THIS IS GROWN FOLK SHITE )OR PEOPLE WITH SOME TYPE OF SENSE TO MAKE THERE LOVER HAPPY UGZILLA COP THOSE WU HOODIES FOR THE WINTER I GOTTEM $$$$

U-God [MySpace]