Wu-Tang Clan - Da Mystery of Chessboxin'

A Game of Chess is Like a Swordfight: You Must Think First Before You Move

1. There are 64 squares on a chessboard. According to Wu-Tang mastermind RZA “64 is a very important mathematical number. You add six and four, of course, you get ten. You add one and zero, you come back around to get one - knowledge, the foundation for all things in existence.” As KRS-One would be pleased to remind us, knowledge reigns supreme over nearly everyone.

   Hip Hop's Avengers were alive on arrival and fully assembled. Each member is capable of standing alone, but why roll solo when it's so much more fun to bust heads together? There’s enough charisma, style, and lyrical dexterity on Wu-Tang’s debut album to murder William Shakespeare in a rap battle. That's not a joke. The research is in.

   The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once defined prose as "words in their best order," and poetry as "the best words in their best order." According to Tom Moon, Hip-Hop could then be described as the "best words in their best order over the best beat." If that is indeed the case, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) ranks as King Kong in the canon as a kaleidoscopic, Kung-Fu-inspired, C.R.E.A.M. of the crop that leaves me dizzy with excitement during and after each spin. Chessboxin’ is classic boom-bap Hip-Hop updated for the time. More than that, it DEFINED its time. In the plainest terms, it's wall-to-wall battle rhymes, braggadocio, and storytelling at a level no one had ever considered. Nothing sounded like this before or after. No one’s attempted this, considered this or approximated this since Wu-Tang. The degree of difficulty is too high for mere mortals.

   This technique attacks the immune system
   Disguised like a lie, paralyzin' the victim
   You scream as it enters your bloodstream
   Erupts your brain from the pain these thoughts contain

   Masta Killa, Da Mystery of Chessboxin’

2. There are nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan. Nine members times four chambers of the heart equals 36. Enter the 36 chambers. Why this track? Why not C.R.E.A.M. or Protect Ya Neck or Triumph? Because Chessboxin’ hits like a spiked bat verse after verse and doesn’t let up. It’s every key member going ham. Everyone knows their role. It goes so brutally, fantastically hard that the entire group shows up as their own hype man (men), and it sounds like a schoolyard chant. On The Who’s Join Together, the band bragged about being the biggest band you’ll find, as deep as it is wide. The Who was four. This is nine. Four times nine is 36. Enter the 36 chambers. Let us revel in the power of a united front.

   “Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!”

   -Emperor Palpatine, Return of the Jedi

3. Disregard all previous expectations about hooks and smooth production. Let’s rumble. Dr. Dre’s G-Funk came with a magnetic force. Tribe Called Quest and Del Soul moved us spiritually on the uptown Jazz line. Da Mystery of Chessboxin’ is straight bars. It's purposefully grimy and sparse. Verse after verse, these lunatic MCs suplexed Hip-Hop onto its own ears, neck, and ass. It's so lyrically dense with hyper-stylized Staten Island slang that one needs an annotated dictionary to piece this together. One requires an education in Kung-Fu flicks, Five-Percent Islam, Saturday morning cartoons, and ‘70s soul, and that’s just the 100-level course. This is the back-alley beat down of Hip-Hop tracks in the Golden Era of Hip-Hop by the heaviest of heavy hitters.