the stories they painted in their records were too vivid to be considered fake
niggas were too grimy to be manufactured
but it's no surprise that some of these niggas are str8 street. Shit, Ghost talked about the shit he went through in interviews, shooting niggas, getting shot, stabbed, beating niggas down, hustlin', catching STD's and thinking he had the Monster, all that shit. Niggas got a little league football team worth of kids. It's not surprise they are hood and did hood things.
The official Wu Tang Clan were somewhere around 700+ deep on the roster. The only ones with money or recognition enough to get mainstream were the 8 Diagrams (The Wu Tang Clan). I had a list of the main players and all of their affiliates by subgroup and individual names.
Here's the Wiki entry for all of the affiliates and even this is constantly changing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wu-Tang_Clan_affiliates
Shit is deep...