Why And How We Picked This Record

Andrew Winistorfer: This was a record that I pushed in our Record of the Month meetings, because it felt like it was almost overdue for us to do something Wu-Tang Clan-related, particularly since this will be the 23rd Record of the Month in our Rap & Hip Hop subscription. And I thought this would be the one to start with, since it was the record that introduced Wu-Tang’s solo players to the mainstream. They’d done Enter the 36 Chambers, but Method Man was chosen to go solo first, because he was the one who could get mainstream folks into the sound more directly than, say, GZA could.

Plus, it feels like people don’t revisit this as much as they should; it holds up better than a lot of the first run Wu solo albums. You expect it to sort of be full of the violent horrorcore-esque stuff he’d do later, but this one is a classic New York rap record, and should be as revered as Ready to Die or Uptown Saturday Night.

It also felt like there was some good symmetry with us doing our first Wu project on this, the first Wu solo album.

Cameron Schaefer: Totally. Hopefully the first of many Wu-Tang-related projects.

Package Details

This one comes on 180-gram black and bronze galaxy vinyl that matches the cover really well. It really looks like smoke clouds. And the cover for this is on a similar mirror-board to the OutKast cover from last month that’s super shiny. The stencil on this one is rad too; it’s got the Method Man Wu logo, going to be perfect for actual graffitti. It’s a good package for the album for its 25th anniversary.