The Appeal of Cheesy Music

Nation, I have to admit to all of you that I can be a pretty miserable person, given there is a considerable amount of shittiness happening around me. All I need to do is go on facebook and see pictures of a girl I like with another guy and BOOM! I'm miserable. These days, whenever I pass a graveyard and it seems strangely appealing to me, all I need to do is blast some Wu-Tang shit and I'll snap back into a neutral state. But it wasn't always that way. Up until recently, I would always gravitate toward songs like the one above whenever I felt like an emo pansy. I'd say this kind of 3rd-wave emo was ineffective in helping my mood at all, so why was I so attracted to it?

Top 5 Reasons NOT To F*ck With The Wu-Tang Clan

Nation, I have to admit that I have a problem: I have Wu-Tang addiction. And will it subside anytime soon and allow me to take control of my life again? Maybe, maybe not. The “Shaolin Sound” produced by the RZA and the rappers who stomp all over it has become my obsession as is evident by looking at all of my school papers which are covered with the logo at the top of this post. "The Amazing Atheist" TJ Kirk said in a recent video that it's a good thing to have addictions, because if you don't, then you'll have nothing to fall back on. It's just a matter of choosing your addictions wisely. Is it wise to have become addicted to the Clan? I'd say so, because if I'm ever feeling lower than dirt I can just put on "Bring Da Ruckus", rock the fuck out, and I'll feel fine. 

CLASSICS: The GZA-Liquid Swords ALBUM REVIEW

 

   Out of the (what seems like) 137 members and affiliates of the Wu-Tang Clan, you would think that it would be hard to stand out from the Clan crowd and easy to be overshadowed by members that have more hype like the very popular movie and rap star Method Man, and sometimes it is (see the Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck), but if there's one member of the Clan that shines based on skill alone - with no help from movie and television popularity - it's the GZA aka the Genius, my favorite lyrical swordsman in the Clan and somenoe who I believes earns his name.

CLASSICS: Wu-Tang Clan-Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) ALBUM REVIEW

   There is hip-hop, and then there is this masterpiece of the highest degree. In my opinion, this is the greatest album in the genre's history due to how aggressive, raw, and just flat out enjoyable it is above almost all other hip-hop. There are a select few albums I'd put on about the same level as this gem (Fugees-The Score, Viktor Vaughn Vaudeville Villain) but 36 Chambers gets the edge for how important it was to the development of hip-hop as a whole. It literally changed the game and, at the time, defied categorization. It wasn't jazz rap, gangsta rap, conscious rap, or even traditional old school rap, it was just...a new sound for hip-hop entirely that came out of left field to ensnare everyone who would listen to its greatness, and I'm one of those people. In fact, this was the album that got the ball rolling for me when it came to hip-hop; it turned me from a jaded rap-hating rocker into to a fan of music well outside the rock spectrum.