The Staten Island Problem - Part 4: Wu-Tang vs. Shaolin

At the height of the secession movement, the Wu-Tang Clan forms on Staten Island. We take a tour of early 1990s hip-hop and reveal the hidden history of the group. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein from Business History. When the internet arrived, most people used it to look things up. Others saw what it could really do. The same is true with ChatGPT. ChatGPT work goes beyond answering questions. Give it a goal, plus things like notes, files, feedback, data, or project plans, and it can help create a brief analysis, deck outline, tracker, or workflow. You stay in control, reviewing the work and choosing the final result. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans.

• 0:39Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over the limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet, if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over

• 1:23Malcolm Gladwell?

  time without any extra effort. When you better understand your spending habits, it's easier to make your money work harder for you. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.74% to 27.99% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of October 1, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Pushkin.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  One of my favorite books is Middle March by George Eliot. It's about the life and manners of a small English town in the 19th century. It's also a cautionary tale for the kind of person I am.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  There's a character in the book named Edward Casabon, a dreary, middle-aged man who's engaged in a decades-long writing project. Casabon collects facts he writes on little sheets of paper that he stores in the pigeon holes of his library shelves. He claims that someday he's going to use these facts to prove that all the myths of the world are really one myth. He's obsessed. He calls it "the key to all mythologies." And he sees it everywhere. I'm not middle-aged, and I am fairly upbeat, but I fear that last bit is me. I see the Staten Island Secession Movement everywhere in our world today. I've carried my facts about the Staten Island Secession Movement around with me for quite a while now.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  They burn a hole in my pocket. I go to parties, and inevitably, I wind up in the corner with the Staten Islander who has suddenly revealed themselves. They look interested and then mildly concerned as I pull from memory the facts that I have stored in the pigeon holes of a document I have titled "Excellent Staten Island Facts." Did you know the towers of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge are so far apart that they had to take into account the curvature of the earth when they built them? Did you know that Staten Island claims to have been home to the true and forgotten inventor of the telephone? Am I Casabon? God, I hope not. I caution myself against seeing my project everywhere. Don't be the hammer to whom everything looks like a nail. Don't try to write "The Key to All Mythologies."

• 4:00Speaker 02

  And then I learned something like this. Wu-Tang Clan, arguably the most important group in hip-hop history, is from Staten Island. They made their first album, Enter the Wu-Tang 36 Chambers, entirely during the height of the Secession Movement. And it came out in 1993, just one week after the island was going to vote on secession.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  I began to listen to this record every day I worked on this project. On the ferry to the archives, on the subway to work. Shaolin, what they called Staten Island, is all over it.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Their music is all about their lives, what they witnessed on the island at the time. Like, listen to this from the song "Wu-Tang: Seventh Chamber." They bring up the projects in northern Staten Island where Wu-Tang formed, nicknamed "Killa Hill."

• 5:16Speaker 02

  It's all about their lives in New York City in the early 1990s, who they were becoming, and what it all had to do with being from the rugged lands of Shaolin.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  I considered putting this on my list of excellent Staten Island facts and leaving it at that, but I had no choice. I put on my headphones, I picked up the phone, I opened my notebook. Casabon rides again.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  You're listening to Revisionist History. I'm Ben Nataf Haferi, and this is The Staten Island Problem, a series about the movement that threatened to bring down the greatest city in the country.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  In this episode, I bring you the story of the rise of one of the greatest rap groups in history that happened all while the Secession Movement unfolded in the background.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  We're going to zero in on an entirely different experience taking place on the island at the same time, one that reveals just how entrenched The Staten Island Problem really is, but one that also, I think, might show us a way to solve it.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  This is episode four, Wu-Tang vs. the Shaolin.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  I should say off the bat that I was unable to reach the Wu-Tang Clan. For a brief moment, the manager of a lesser-known member of the group considered giving me an interview. Then he stopped taking my calls. Domingo, if you hear this, I'm ready when you are. But luckily, I was able to track someone else down.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  I was actually one of the first journalists to ever deal with Wu-Tang because their record label, Loud, called me up.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Skiz Fernando was a hip-hop journalist in the 80s and 90s. He covered Wu-Tang from the beginning. Had he ever considered the crucial overlap of Wu-Tang's formation and Staten Island Secession? He had not.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  I had no idea any of that stuff was going on at the time. I don't even know if they did, like...

• 7:26Speaker 02

  It was the... They must have. It was the biggest story on Staten Island.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  What was it going to be? Just like Staten Island was just going to be a city?

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. When the Wu-Tang Clan first formed, their label called Skiz to write their bio. So he connected with the group's de facto leader, a guy named Bobby Diggs, who went by the name RZA.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  And I was immediately struck by this guy. Like, I could detect, like, some serious intelligence in this guy.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  RZA was a former drug dealer with no professional prospects, living out on Staten Island. That alone was strange. In the pantheon of hip-hop, Brooklyn and the Bronx reign supreme. Nobody is from Staten Island.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  All of the five boroughs in New York were pretty representative in hip-hop. In the 90s, you had the, you know, you had like the Boogie Down Bronx.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  So obviously, Brooklyn.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  The money-making Manhattan.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  You know, Queens. You had Queensbridge Projects, produced so many amazing artists like Nas, Mob Deep.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  And like Staten Island, you know, who was from Staten Island? There was not a lot of acts coming out of Staten Island. You know, you had, oh, jeez, I'm blanking.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  This is all to say, Skiz was surprised. Here was this relatively unknown MC from the island with an encyclopedic knowledge of Kung-Fu movies and a crew of eight other MCs who named themselves after a form of martial arts invented by a Taoist hermit. Skiz was like, what?

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Wow, this guy is something else.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  So Skiz, journalist that he is, began a decades-long process of figuring out how exactly the Wu-Tang Clan came to be. RZA decided what he wanted to do with his life on America's 200th birthday. He was in the Park Hill Projects of Staten Island. It was July 1976, and there was a party in the courtyard. A DJ was spinning records and rapping over them.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  He dipped, dipped, dived, and socialized. I think those are the exact words that RZA remembered. And that kind of just, just that energy and just the excitement of that whole thing of seeing this free party happening in this environment, you know? All these kids running around and adults and it, and people just enjoying the music and enjoying each other's company. This was how, this was how hip-hop started.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  RZA was seven at the time.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  And when you're a young kid exposed to this, and this is like the excitement that's happening in your neighborhood, you want to be a part of it. And he, he wanted to be a part of it.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  He stayed up late into the night, transfixed.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  So immediately, he goes home and he starts writing rhymes, you know? And then, as soon as he could, he starts DJing.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  RZA moved around a lot as a kid. He was born in Brooklyn, spent some of his childhood in North Carolina, but he landed in the Park Hill Projects on the North Shore of Staten Island. The buildings were built in 1965, around the same time as the bridge and the expressway that split the island down the middle into North and South Shore. North was where the black people lived. South was where the white people lived. Several Staten Islanders told me the expressway was their equivalent of the Mason Dixon Line.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  People were like, where are you from? And I'm like, so I used to say, if I tell you, I have to kill you. And they're like, why? And then I'm like Staten Island.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  One day, when I was listing excellent Staten Island facts to a friend, she told me, you should meet Daphne McWilliams. She's a filmmaker from Staten Island.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  There were only three houses on my parents' block. And then across from the lake was Park Hill Projects.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Her parents were from Trinidad and Jamaica and didn't really know the intricate racial codes of Staten Island. Her family moved to the White Area across from the Park Hill Projects back in the 1970s.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  But when my mother found that house, she got a threatening, I guess, call or something where they were like, oh, you, something like, you better hope that you don't see your kids floating in the pond.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  By one estimate, there were fewer than 1,000 people of color south of the expressway. Daphne stuck out. She told me a story from when she was a kid about having a crush on an Italian-American boy named Billy. One day, she called his house.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  And his mother picked up and she was like, don't ever call this house again. So I went to school the next day. I was upset and I went and spoke to this priest. I don't know what I did wrong. I don't know what I did wrong. And I'm telling the guy goes, well, you see,

• 12:41Speaker 04

  he says something to like, almost like there's a, there's a little heaven for white kids and there's like a little heaven for black kids.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Heaven is segregated.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  I was like, oh my God, like I had no idea. When I look back and think about it, we always stood out because we were always the, the black family.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  My parents didn't raise us in a segregated mindset. We just never, it was, it was the community that, that made us feel different, especially as you get older.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  But the truth is, all of New York City was segregated then. It seemed like there was a defining race riot every year, very do the right thing. The reality that Mayor Dinkins's vision of a beautiful mosaic obscured is that if one bit of colored glass from the mosaic crossed another, someone might end up shot or run over, and then the riots would begin again. But Southern Staten Island was a particularly dramatic case. It may as well have been the Deep South. When one Wu-Tang member went to Daphne's area, he remembered getting chased out by white kids with motorcycles. They spray painted KKK on the rocks to warn the black kids away.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  This was the Staten Island RZA grew up on, but he had a way of escaping that reality: hip hop.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  By the time RZA was in his early twenties, hip hop had gone stratospheric from the courtyards and rec rooms of the New York City projects to the top of the billboard charts. The labels were grabbing at any artists they could. RZA got a deal. He brought his new label a bunch of songs and they said, we think girls will like you. So we wound up releasing an EP called Ooh, We Love You, Rakim, a record that presented him as a sweet ladies man named Prince Rakim.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  It was an attempt to do something extremely commercial, totally inoffensive and upbeat, and also fundamentally false and corny. And maybe for that reason, it bombed. RZA got dropped from his label and he was back to zero.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  That's when he started dealing drugs and almost went to prison for attempted murder. He argued self-defense and beat the charges in the end, and he had $10,000 left.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  It was enough to buy some drugs and sell them, but he had a kid on the way. He had to make a choice. And this choice became so legendary that he's still talking about it. Here he is on a recent episode of a podcast called Flagrant.

• 15:27Speaker 05

  I had 10K and the gag was, the plan was to get a brick. So we, so we figured, yo, if we flip this 20, we could at least get 80. The thing was, yo, I had a baby in the oven, or maybe just born, right? So life was like, what are you going to do? Um, but then I was like, nah, I have a second chance.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  That's when he started calling himself RZA, RZA. He would later say it was short for Rakim Zig Zag Zig Allah. While everyone else zigged, it was time for him to zag. And so, living on a Staten Island that was in the middle of its own very big zag, he began to make a bold plan for an independence movement of his own, something called Wu-Tang Clan.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein from Business History. Imagine Henry Ford trying to create the assembly line. He had factory plans, production schedules, supply information, research, and ideas coming from all directions. His team spent years studying how to make the process work. Now imagine having ChatGPT work. ChatGPT work can help with big projects that have lots of steps. You give it the goal along with real information like notes, files, reports, feedback, and project plans. It can use approved apps, connected tools, and files to help turn all of that into something useful. A plan, an analysis, a tracker, a presentation outline, or a workflow you can keep improving. And you stay in control.

• 17:16Speaker 00

  You give direction, review the work, approve actions, and choose the final result. Would Henry Ford have built the assembly line faster with ChatGPT? We'll never know. Ford didn't have ChatGPT. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting work mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

• 17:39Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is a paid message from Apple Card. It's easy, I think, in the hubbub of our lives to lose track of our spending. We pay the bills and move on and don't understand the deeper patterns in our spending, the many different decisions we're making knowingly or unknowingly. You have to understand where your money is going in order to make better decisions about it. That's one reason Apple Card stands out to me. You can earn unlimited daily cash back on every purchase you make. I also appreciate the simplicity. Apple Card doesn't have annual, late, or over the limit fees. No fees ever. There's even an option to open a high-yield savings account through Apple Card. And while I haven't done it yet,

• 18:21Malcolm Gladwell?

  if I do, my daily cash can grow automatically over time without any extra effort. When you better understand your spending habits, it's easier to make your money work harder for you. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 17.74% to 27.99% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of October 1st, 2026. Existing customers can view their variable APR in the Wallet app or card.apple.com. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Savings and Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch,

• 19:04Malcolm Gladwell?

  Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  After he beat his charges, Bobby Diggs, aka The RZA, began to walk around Staten Island. And he started to take these long, drawn-out walks, day after day.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  So I'm walking and I'm thinking, yo, and I'm walking all, I'm walking to Staten. People, people thought there was, I learned this, people thought I was losing my mind because I'm walking and I'm talking to myself.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  He would walk the island and think. Staten Island was more than twice the size of Manhattan, and RZA could just walk and walk. He would start at the projects on the North Shore, then maybe journey along the coastline through the suburban streets.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  RZA was ready to make music again, but the first time out with his Prince Rakim project had gone badly. But the idea he was coming up with now was going to be different. And I want to argue here that it has everything to do with Staten Island.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Let me share with you some writing from RZA's book, The Tao of Wu. "I spent my formative years on an island, Staten Island, which is a blessing I've taken with me through life."

• 20:25Speaker 02

  In Staten Island, Wu-Tang were set apart from all the influences and fads that were happening in the other four boroughs. A nine-man hip-hop crew based on mathematics, chess, comics, and kung fu flicks wasn't springing up in the middle of a Manhattan art scene. Only on a remote island can something like King Kong grow to his full capacity.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  But the projects in Staten Island were a difficult place to live. A few of the Wu-Tang members have written books. And reading them, it's clear that it wasn't just the remoteness of Staten Island that led them to the Wu-Tang Clan. It was also what they experienced there, especially in the projects. One Wu-Tang member, Yu God, wrote about the first time he saw somebody die. He was five years old, sitting with his mom, listening to Loving You by Minnie Riperton play on the radio outside. When he heard a crowd forming in the courtyard, he ran out to look. A woman was standing on the roof screaming. He watched so long, his neck went stiff. Then she jumped or fell. Yu God wrote in his book called

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Raw, "I was a toddler. The sound of her hitting the concrete steps would resonate with me forever."

• 21:40Speaker 02

  So when RZA walked Staten Island, it wasn't just this utopian vision of the isolated island where you can dream big. It was also the deeply segregated place where kids living on their own little island watched adults fall to their death. A kind of paradox. And my theory is that paradox was expressed in the word Shaolin.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  When RZA was a kid, he and his cousin used to go to a Times Square porno theater. Sometimes, it showed Kung Fu. And one movie that they loved in particular, The Thirty-Sixth Chamber of Shaolin. But sir, all the Manchu's are well armed. What can we do?

• 22:24Speaker 04

  No man's so weak. He cannot help.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Most people came to that Times Square movie theater to jerk off, sniff glue, or shoot heroin. But RZA would later say in interviews that he and his cousin were locked in on this poorly dubbed movie about a small village in China that was being oppressed by a distant government. The hero of the movie is a villager who journeys to the Shaolin Temple in China to learn to fight back. RZA saw this movie over 300 times. He hadn't realized that kind of oppression happened to people who weren't black. This is from The Thirty-Sixth Chamber, when our hero learns what Shaolin is.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  Shaolin school is restricted. Only monks are taught that. If Shaolin techniques could be taught here, and the people could use it to fight the Manchu troops, that would be good.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  At some point, RZA started to call Staten Island Shaolin, the place he learned his secret weapon to fighting oppression, hip hop. But Staten Island was also a version of that distant oppressive government he saw in the films. And as he walked the island, trying to come up with his next play, he didn't decide to start a group called the Shaolin Clan. He came up with an idea for something called the Wu-Tang Clan, named after Shaolin's rival. This is from another Kung Fu movie they loved, called Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  Isn't it true that you think you're better than us? But you're afraid that one day the Wu-Tang will overtake you. So you used your special poison to get rid of my master, who was your biggest threat? Nonsense. No, it isn't. I saw it with my own eyes. Shaolin aren't afraid of the Wu-Tang. We Wu-Tang will fight. Listen to me. Someone is trying to frame me.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  RZA kept walking and thinking. Shaolin, Wu-Tang, Thirty-Six Chambers. Shaolin, Wu-Tang, Thirty-Six Chambers.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Wu-Tang biographer, Skiz Fernando, knew all about those walks RZA would take.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  That's one good thing about Staten Island. You can walk around in these nice neighborhoods with Victorian mansions. You don't have to worry about getting mugged necessarily.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  And what would have been on the lawns of all those Victorian mansions RZA was walking by? Signs that said, "Vote yes for the city of Staten Island." "Secession means a better life." Billboards for secession above the streets. The same thing as was on the front page of the paper all the time. The same thing the NAACP of Staten Island was hosting meetings about, worrying that this could be really bad for black people living on Staten Island. Let me be clear. I have never found RZA himself talking about Staten Island's secession. But in my Casabon mode, I see a connection. Because as he walked a Staten Island that felt like it wasn't welcome in New York City and was striking out on its own, this guy, who would have every reason not to feel welcome on Staten Island,

• 25:20Speaker 02

  formed a plan for an unlikely hip hop group from Shaolin that was about to do the same. Maybe, he thought, they could skip the whole major label thing that had screwed him before. Maybe he didn't have to sanitize his life and character to succeed. Maybe there could be a hip hop group from the forgotten borough that made it all happen on its own. And that group would be called Wu-Tang Clan. He began to assemble his crew. And the core ideology for RZA, I think, had a whole lot in common with the secession movement. It's the exact same fantasy. If some central authority is dominating you and you don't like it, what do you do? Go away to Shaolin, learn the truth,

• 26:04Speaker 02

  build a movement, and go to war with the oppressor, till you remake it in your own image.

• 26:19Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein from Business History. Imagine Henry Ford trying to create the assembly line. He had factory plans, production schedules, supply information, research, and ideas coming from all directions. His team spent years studying how to make the process work. Now, imagine having ChatGPT work. ChatGPT work can help with big projects that have lots of steps. You give it the goal, along with real information like notes, files, reports, feedback, and project plans. It can use approved apps, connected tools, and files to help turn all of that into something useful. A plan, an analysis, a tracker, a presentation outline, or a workflow you can keep improving. And you stay in control.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  You give direction, review the work, approve actions, and choose the final result. Would Henry Ford have built the assembly line faster with ChatGPT? We'll never know. Ford didn't have ChatGPT. You do. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Let me put my Casabon robe back on and bring you back into my library. Please, sit at the table, have a mug of tepid tea. I believe that the fantasy Wu-Tang Clan had was that there's a way to strike out on your own independently and take over the forces that oppressed you. And that's the exact fantasy of the secessionists emanating from the exact remote island at the exact moment so many people on the island experienced it. And it was the spirit of what Skiz, that Wu-Tang biographer, told me that RZA did next.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  He took the whole mythology that was in the movies, and he appropriated it to his current conditions of a black man living in Staten Island, doing battle in this game called rap against the music industry.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Walking the island, RZA had come up with a five-year plan. He'd go to the greatest underrated MCs he knew on the island and band them together into the Wu-Tang Clan. He'd been burned by the labels before with that Prince Rakim album, so now he wanted to go it alone. He'd take the $10,000 he'd saved and use it to start a production company.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  These guys had absolutely no future. They're all caught up in the street game. They're all selling crack. You know, two for five on the street. They didn't want to be doing that.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  The guys all went out to a diner on Staten Island. They toasted Wu-Tang with a bottle of champagne. Each member put up $100 for studio time. The next day, they started recording what became their first single, Protect Ya Neck.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  Putting eight MCs on a track and making it all blend together is as difficult as making five boroughs feel like one city. The difference is that RZA was about to pull it off. It took days of recording, until all the verses were in place. Like students at Shaolin and Wu-Tang, each MC was trying to one-up the other, pushing farther and farther beyond the reaches of what existed in hip hop at the time. RZA knew each one's style and how to draw out what made them unique. It was the opposite of some oppressive label telling him, "We think girls will like you," and neutering his art. He didn't need the label. By December of 1992, the song was finished. The group took the cassette of Protect Ya Neck to the hottest hip hop radio show in town,

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Stretch and Bobbito. Bobbito was alone in the studio.

• 30:05Speaker 04

  I'm not quite sure how members of the Wu-Tang Clan got into our hallway, but I hear a knock on the studio door. I open it, and there's five dudes out there, and they're not smiling.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  They shoved an unmarked record into his hands.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  They're like, "Yo, man. Yo, you gotta play this. You gotta play it. Yo, we played it right now." I was like, "Yo, fellas," like, I can't. I felt like I was being strong-armed to play their record immediately. I was like, "Aight, fellas, cool." So I took the record. I threw it off because I was intrigued. I was like, "How did these dudes mysteriously get into the studio?"

• 30:49Speaker 02

  He listened to it privately first.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  And I hear the

• 30:55Speaker 04

  you know, the martial arts. And I'm like, "Oh, this is dope." You know, I'm gonna play it.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  It was the premiere that launched the Wu-Tang Clan.

• 31:13Speaker 04

  But yeah, I mean, immediately the phone lines lit up. Immediately. I'll never forget, my friend, he called up and he was like, "Yo, Bob, what the F is that?" I was like, "Yo, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the record is."

• 31:26Speaker 02

  All right, I love this song. And my favorite part is the final verse, when Jizza explains the entire philosophy of Wu-Tang is that they don't need some centralized music industry to take over the world. They can do it all on their own.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Basically, you had your chance, you lost it. We don't need you. It's our time now. The song blew up.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  You know what I want to hear, right? What you want to hear? I want to hear that Wu-Tang joint. Wu-Tang again? Ah, yeah, again and again.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  So of course, the labels came knocking. But this time, RZA was ready. No more Prince Rakim. He was the king. And he had a plan for world domination. They would make a deal for Wu-Tang as a group. But he would do something totally unprecedented in the industry. In the contract, there would be a clause. Though all the MCs in Wu-Tang might be consolidated under the name Wu-Tang Clan, and Wu-Tang might sign a record deal, each MC was going to retain local control of their own career. Each one could make any deal he wanted with any other record label. Loud Records agreed to RZA's terms. Skiz Fernando again.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Revolutionary deal in the music industry. The whole first round of Wu-Tang solo albums was like that. All on different labels and different artists. But like, all the Wu-Tang is on each album. So they're using the major label system to spread their own brand out there. That was the genius of it. Like, no one had ever done anything like that before.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  On November 9th, Wu-Tang Clan played their album release show for Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers at Webster Hall in the heart of Manhattan. Skiz was there.

• 33:24Speaker 03

  The floor was packed with people. They were showing 36 Chambers, the original, on the big screen. And then, when the group got on to perform, honestly, it seemed like all of Staten Island was on stage. You didn't know who was in the group and who wasn't. Because it was just like, the whole stage was packed. The whole floor was packed. That whole floor was just bouncing up and down. These wooden rafters. I thought the whole thing was going to collapse. It was just like, people were ready to tear shit down. The energy, the excitement.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Because they came from Staten Island, it was like a sneak attack. Like, no one saw it coming.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  RZA executed his plan flawlessly. Wu-Tang released their debut album, an absolutely bizarre, hour-long hip-hop record. Full of Kung-Fu samples and weird jazz and nine unheard-of MCs, most of whom hailed from a forgotten island, an island they'd renamed after a Chinese martial arts school. And it went quadruple platinum. Here's Method Man on TV.

• 34:38Speaker 06

  And we tried to lock down the industry, which you cannot do, because they already set in their ways, like I said before. So what we have to do is build our own industry to make it right.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Wu-Tang's still playing together. So for me, in this series on Secession, it's a lesson in how to keep a group of people together. Not that the Clan's without its problems, but the genius of the whole thing is that RZA figured out how to showcase each rapper's own personality and give them their own career. He went on to produce a round of solo albums for each of the MCs in the group, hit after hit after hit, each one on different record labels who were feverishly trying to ride the Wu-Tang wave. Method Man on Def Jam, platinum. Old Dirty Bastard on WMG, platinum. Raekwon on RCA, platinum. Ghostface Killa on Epic, platinum. Jizza on Geffen, gold. Six hit albums in three years.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  Wu-Tang Clan ran the industry. These guys, who had so much working against them, went to Shaolin, came back on their own terms, and toppled the oppressor.

• 35:46Speaker 06

  Don't think that because he has a solo deal and I have a solo deal. This man may get a solo deal that we all just separating and breaking up. It's not that type of thing, man. We just expanding because the talent is so great. It's like, we have mad talent in this, you know? And we just got to spread out. You know, you can't come out of one chamber. You just got to spread.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  This is the fantasy of Secession. You break away. You come back with a crew of guys from Staten Island, and you dominate. That's what Wu-Tang did. That's what the Staten Island Secessionists dreamed of doing. It's the zeitgeist, the key to all mythologies. Some force in the early 90s of New York City was shouting, "Secede, succeed." Oh, and by the way, the vote on Secession? It happened seven days before the Wu-Tang Clan put out their album. And that vote was going to leave an even bigger mark on our world today. That's coming up on the last episode of The Staten Island Problem.

• 36:49Speaker 04

  Live here on Channel 77 from Secession headquarters at the island chateau. Channel 77 bringing you that live, happening as we see it. It's so parallel. Who gets to be in this position? What's fair and what's not? Who gets to wield power? Who doesn't?

• 37:06Speaker 07

  These sentiments show up in so many places and parts of our population, right? That sense of low-boiling resentment towards the people in charge? Like, who doesn't feel that right now?

• 37:25Speaker 02

  You realize, as a city that can plan for its own and doesn't have to say, "May I? May I do this and may I do that?" We will be doing it. What are we standing on top of right now?

• 37:36Speaker 07

  We're standing on the story of New York City. If you lived here between 1948 and 2001, you're here somewhere. Maybe not in this exact mound, but some piece of you, even if you just passed through, some piece of you is underneath us.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  The Staten Island Problem is written and produced by me, Ben Nataf Haafrey, with Lucy Sullivan and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakurji. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Fact-checking by Sam Rusik. Sound design and mastering by Jake Gorski. Original music by Stellwagen Symphonette, Luis Garra, Jake Gorski. And thanks to Todd Reynolds for his track, "The Solution," from the album Outer Borough. Special thanks to Malcolm Gladwell. I'm Ben Nataf Haafrey.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Hear episodes of Revisionist History: The Staten Island Problem, early and ad-free by subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Sign up on the Revisionist History show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus. Pushkin Plus subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive binges of true crime podcasts throughout the year.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  Michael Lewis here to tell you about my new book, Blockers, which gives you an inside look at the Trump administration and the public servants who stood in its way. These were people who were securing our most sensitive data, keeping the public safe from all sorts of threats, and engaged in life-saving scientific research, until they were told they no longer belonged. And the question to me is, if they can't survive in our government, then what does it say about us? Get Blockers only at blockers.fm.