from the LP Enter the…36 Chambers, Loud Records, 1993“Cash Rules Everything Around Me, CREAM, get the money, dolla dolla bill ya’ll…” My feelings about federal-level politicians all being douchebags was firmly validated with the recent passage of the so-called “financial reform bill” in the Senate, with all signs already pointing to the inevitable removal of the one good thing left in there (that being derivative regulation) during committee in the House; as feeble as this bill is, it still annoys Wall St., who will unlikely dump all their money into the GOP as punishment, having done the same thing for Obama with the DNC just 2 years ago. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have no limit on how much they can donate to political campaigns, it’s certainly shaping up to be one hell of an ugly autumn on television! Fuck it, I’m stuffin money under the mattress, yo. Staten Island may have been the last NYC borough to catch some rep in the hip-hop game, but that didn’t stop the Wu-Tang Clan from coming out of the gate as if they owned the whole fucking scene; wise move congealing into a “…sick tight clique…”, because nobody’s going test a whole pack the way they might with a lone wolf. Raekwon the Chef & Inspectah Deck deliver some fresh verses while Meth holds down the famously memorable chorus, but it’s RZA’s piano-laced beats that caught every head’s attention, transforming the intro from an obscure 1960s soul number (the Charmels’ “As Long As I’ve Got You”) into an eerily haunting soundtrack for the oft-told, but no less real, tales of selling drugs to get by in the hood. Wu-Tang’s plan of an all-out assault for their introduction into the world of professional rap worked amazingly well, giving every member of the Clan a lengthy solo career of their own, albeit to varying degrees of success.
