Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
It’s really not my fault that I didn’t like the Wu-Tang Clan. Nope. That fault rests firmly at the hands of one of my oldest friends, Titus … whose name has NOT been changed to protect the guilty. Because Titus isn’t innocent. You see when I was 15 years old and carless in 1995, Titus was the only friend who had a car, a brown Buick 1980-something Cutlass he called “Peanut Butter.” Being one of the few friends with a car meant that Titus had full run and control of the music that played. And Titus? Titus was 100 percent all in on the Wu-Tang Clan, especially Ol’ Dirty Bastard. For the final months of 10th grade and the entire summer of 1995, there was one album and one album only playing in Titus’ car, “Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version.”
Mind you, leading up to that life-changing summer, Titus obviously loved the Wu-Tang Clan. I guess most people did. I remember being on the fence. When “Protect Ya Neck” was released in December 1992, I was a 13-year-old living in Frankfurt, Germany, who was a huge fan of Pete Rock & CL Smooth and Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” album. The way I listened to music was very “clean,” and the Wu-Tang sound clashed mightily with my tastes at that point. In the summer of 1993, I moved to Madison, Ala., for high school, and I remember the sounds of the West Coast really running things until Outkast hit. Now, because where I lived was a military town, there were many transplants from all over so the hip-hop tastes of a lot of the folks there varied. For instance, I had a good friend who was really into the sounds of the Pharcyde and A Tribe Called Quest and other friends who only listened to the Geto Boys.
I vividly remember seeing the video for…
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