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. A Wu-Tang Clan Member's "Solo" Album Made Rappers Think They Needed Five Names
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The last thing anyone needed from a rap ensemble that fluctuates between eight and 10 members at any given time was a few more names to remember, but that's exactly what we got when Wu-Tang Clan cohorts Raekwon the Chef (already with the names) and Ghostface Killah released the super-duper classic album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (their spelling, not mine). If you think the name is stupid, wait until you see what kind of shenanigans they got up to in the studio.
Photobucket
Hint.
Because The Godfather is a great movie and the Wu-Tang Clan at least pretend to be relatives, the group took on the crime family name "Wu-Gambinos" for the entirety of the album. The individual members also took on new names. So long, Method Man. Hello, Johnny Blaze. Goodbye, Raekwon the Chef. Hello, Lou Diamonds, which would eventually evolve to "Lex" Diamonds, presumably after someone in the group finally saw La Bamba.
The list of names went on and on. At around the 0:50 mark of this video ...
... you can hear the group, clearly enamored with the idea of getting their new monikers entered into the historical record, awkwardly struggle to get all 15 to 20 of them shouted before the song fiiiiiinally starts about two minutes later than it needs to.
Here's the thing, though: None of that matters at-fucking-all because Only Built 4 Cuban Linx was a masterpiece. Although it's more accurate to say that the name game didn't matter at all for that album. For rap music as a whole, the decision to inexplicably change Inspectah Deck's already dumb name to the even dumber but more historically significant "Rollie Fingers" sent shock waves through the rap world.
And probably through the real Rollie Fingers' world also.
Seemingly overnight, every rap collective with more than three members not only had a second name for their group, but also had alternate identities within that group. Perhaps no rapper was influenced by the album's fascination with name changes more than the aforementioned Nas. As you may know, he often goes by the name "Nas Escobar," which is, of course, a reference to slain Colombian soccer star Andres Escobar.
Getty
Incorrect.
Now, with the accurate portion of the preceding information in mind, can you guess who the first non-Wu-Tang-affiliated rapper to appear on a Wu-Tang-related album was? If you said Mary J. Blige on the Method Man classic "You're All I Need," your definition of rap is probably racist! The correct answer, of course, is Nas. He delivered one of the finest verses in the history of words that rhyme on the Cuban Linx track "Verbal Intercourse," because this was obviously a concept album about awesome things with terrible names.
It was his brief sojourn into the Wu-Tang's alternate family that earned Nas that Escobar nickname, and he really liked it. A lot. A brief but undetermined but also perfectly Googleable amount of time after appearing on that song, Nas released his second album, which was chock-full of crime family references and mentions of that new last name of his.
You may also note that he's significantly more well-dressed here than when we saw him in the previous entry. Go figure.
Once Nas latched onto it, the extra-name fetish spread like wildfire (aka Burny Trees). By the time his second album rolled around, even the Notorious B.I.G. was in on the fun, regularly calling himself Frank White, a reference to Christopher Walken's drug lord character in King of New York. Nowadays, rappers like Lil' Wayne seem to have an infinite supply of new names they'd like you to call them from week to week. It's maddening, and it's all because of, arguably, the best Wu-Tang "solo" album of all time.
Read more:http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-classic-rap-albums-that-ruined-rap-music/#ixzz2JCmU1dpW
Getty
The last thing anyone needed from a rap ensemble that fluctuates between eight and 10 members at any given time was a few more names to remember, but that's exactly what we got when Wu-Tang Clan cohorts Raekwon the Chef (already with the names) and Ghostface Killah released the super-duper classic album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (their spelling, not mine). If you think the name is stupid, wait until you see what kind of shenanigans they got up to in the studio.
Photobucket
Hint.
Because The Godfather is a great movie and the Wu-Tang Clan at least pretend to be relatives, the group took on the crime family name "Wu-Gambinos" for the entirety of the album. The individual members also took on new names. So long, Method Man. Hello, Johnny Blaze. Goodbye, Raekwon the Chef. Hello, Lou Diamonds, which would eventually evolve to "Lex" Diamonds, presumably after someone in the group finally saw La Bamba.
The list of names went on and on. At around the 0:50 mark of this video ...
... you can hear the group, clearly enamored with the idea of getting their new monikers entered into the historical record, awkwardly struggle to get all 15 to 20 of them shouted before the song fiiiiiinally starts about two minutes later than it needs to.
Here's the thing, though: None of that matters at-fucking-all because Only Built 4 Cuban Linx was a masterpiece. Although it's more accurate to say that the name game didn't matter at all for that album. For rap music as a whole, the decision to inexplicably change Inspectah Deck's already dumb name to the even dumber but more historically significant "Rollie Fingers" sent shock waves through the rap world.
And probably through the real Rollie Fingers' world also.
Seemingly overnight, every rap collective with more than three members not only had a second name for their group, but also had alternate identities within that group. Perhaps no rapper was influenced by the album's fascination with name changes more than the aforementioned Nas. As you may know, he often goes by the name "Nas Escobar," which is, of course, a reference to slain Colombian soccer star Andres Escobar.
Getty
Incorrect.
Now, with the accurate portion of the preceding information in mind, can you guess who the first non-Wu-Tang-affiliated rapper to appear on a Wu-Tang-related album was? If you said Mary J. Blige on the Method Man classic "You're All I Need," your definition of rap is probably racist! The correct answer, of course, is Nas. He delivered one of the finest verses in the history of words that rhyme on the Cuban Linx track "Verbal Intercourse," because this was obviously a concept album about awesome things with terrible names.
It was his brief sojourn into the Wu-Tang's alternate family that earned Nas that Escobar nickname, and he really liked it. A lot. A brief but undetermined but also perfectly Googleable amount of time after appearing on that song, Nas released his second album, which was chock-full of crime family references and mentions of that new last name of his.
You may also note that he's significantly more well-dressed here than when we saw him in the previous entry. Go figure.
Once Nas latched onto it, the extra-name fetish spread like wildfire (aka Burny Trees). By the time his second album rolled around, even the Notorious B.I.G. was in on the fun, regularly calling himself Frank White, a reference to Christopher Walken's drug lord character in King of New York. Nowadays, rappers like Lil' Wayne seem to have an infinite supply of new names they'd like you to call them from week to week. It's maddening, and it's all because of, arguably, the best Wu-Tang "solo" album of all time.
Read more:http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-classic-rap-albums-that-ruined-rap-music/#ixzz2JCmU1dpW
