ATCQ-that was there best album ever

WU-Tang-i really dont know where my life would be right now without this album

This was a great time to be down with hip hop. For the most part the country was all about Snoop and Dre, but these 2 records…..

Man alive.

I honestly didn’t get Wu Tang the first couple fo weeks. I loved protect ya neck, but it took a second. Once I got it….

As for MM, I still think LET is the better record, but MM defined what the rest of the underground aspired to for the next 10 years.

good times.

*puts on Jansport and puma clydes*

A tear just ran down my eye…this will never happen again…not by accident. Shit, even if you planned it, it wouldn’t be the same

I can recall getting the MM joint (on tape) at the mall with a friend. We had lunch and I remember him tripping on me looking at this tape the whole damn time we ate (trying to figure out who was who on the cover) anxious to unwrap that mug and pop it into the cassette. With the Wu..I had the “Protect Ya Neck” single tape and remember trying to hip peeps to the crew. I can vividly remember people asking me, “WTF is A Wu-tang Clan?!!” This shit changed everything…

Ironically, I first met Tribe and Wu a week apart.

December 3, 1993, Tribe performed with De La and Souls Of Mischief at a venue called Rockefeller’s West here in Houston. Probably still my favorite show ever. What impressed me the most was how approachable the artists were at the time. As soon as the show was over, me and some buddies climbed on stage and showed love to Tribe and co. They weren’t standoffish, and seemed genuinely pleased that people were willing to show love like that.

And to second Kari, even though Midnight Marauders was technically album, Low End Theory was my favorite.

I met Wu Tang exactly 7 days later on December 10, 1993. It was their first time in Houston and nobody really knew them. They were visiting a radio station that was adjacent to the studio that we were recording in. All (8?) of them were there, including Method Man, who had his hand bandaged because he’d lacerated it on a broken bottle or something. Didn’t recognize Ghostface at first because it was the first time i’d seen him without the pantyhose on his face. ODB was trying to hide some contraband. Raekwon kept talking. RZA was was in the “B” Room with us jacking tapes. We asked him how deep Wu Tang was:

“Deep as the Atlantic Ocean.”

No more questions for RZA.

damien: good times man, good times.

I remember listening to Midnight Marauders every morning for months getting ready for school. This was, and is one of the coldest Hip-Hop albums ever. I never get tired of listening to it. These cats had 3 straight albums of flawless material. Peoples Instinctive travels…, The Low End Theory, and of course Midnight Marauders. How do you have 3 consective albums, and between the 3 of them, there’s like 2 or 3 skippys?…at the most. Classic work.

“Devoted to…the arts of movin butts” I got the rhythm..you got the rhythm!!! LOL Still one of my favorite hip hop songs of all time.

…

i turned 14 on this great day in 93′ those were the days (even tho’ i didn’t pick the tribe album up until that summer. first album i bought. got it from a target mmmmmmmmmmmmm

MM In the Mornin is my ish!!!

I remember the day Midnight Marauders came out.I was 17 and I bought it on vinyl. They only had two copies of the album in the whole city on vinly,I got one and my friend got the other. I took it home ,and it changed the way I listened to hip hop altogether. There were only three albums so far that did that,and Midnight was one of them. When the Wu hit the scene,I read about them in the Source Magazine. Them I went to a underground party in my city. That night,they were promoting the hell out of the Wu. I got a promo 12″ of “Protect Ya Neck”. Took it home,and was blown away. That following monday,I had a Wu sticker on my backpack.In school people was asking me all day”Who is the WU-Tang Clan?” My boy Josh Kalis,now pro skater was the only one who they were because he heard them in Philly. No one knew the invasion that was comming.

Damn, I’m old. *sigh*

I’m young *sigh* lol

Well, i wasn’t listening to this music yet, in my lost country in Normandy, BUT i remember a chanel used to put some hip hop music video and i was always curious because this music was so strange to me, so i watched this chanel again and again and it was around 6pm that they were playing this music. I remember watching Scenario ( i know it isnt from this album ! ), some Wu tang stuff, the pharcyde, Black Starr etc. Then when i started listening to hip hop, I was like ” wait a minute, it sounds familiar” and i remembered the 90’s in my country town, far from everything watching this chanel that anybody knew, i found by chance and kept watching it again and again.

man oh man. I remember buying doubles of both albums on wax. I remember lookin at all the faces on the midnight marauders cover. mc. search had the bug out face. I miss those days man. good hiphop and just the whole feel of going to the record stores back then buying records.

It feels good to be a part of history in early 90s hiphop. I grew up to Tribe,Dela , Jungle bros, Gangstarr,
3rd bass etc. early 90s was the ish!!!!

yo cookie head jenkins. Some how this tribe album reminds me of high school. lol! Bumpin tracks in the hallways rockin the dope polo!!! yeah

cratescienz, yep yep, those were the days! LOL!!

“Went to Carvel to get a Milkshake, this honey ripped me of my loot case”

yep…id just turned 12 and little did i know these 2 albums would go on to shape how i look at hip hop forever…

my pop had both of those albums when they came out, which says something, i’m just not sure what. that was my first introduction to them. i have stories about how i eventually came to know both of them in and out but, eh, who cares.

still got my MM cassette. titles are rubbed off, plays slow on some parts…bought it the day it dropped, spent my lunch money for the week (9.99@ Target, hey, i was in 8th grade). couldnt afford the Wu, so I just bought the Chessboxin’ CD single. wish i still had it…

I think of MM’s album cover more than the music. Althought the music on it was & still is my favorite stuff by Tribe. But I was always curious to know the behind the scenes on trying to get everybody on the cover. I miss those days. Hell I bought an onslaught of albums based on dope albums covers or simply a name & discoverd later that the ish was crap. But back then with no kid, no wife, no responsiblities, & no job have of the times it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t go back & change @ all.

I had this homeboy / rapper who wasn’t into this type of music until I hipped him to this Underground Show that was broadcasted on KPFT 90.1 on Sunday nights. One day he called me to tell me about Wu-Tang’s sound after I told him about them. He was really trippin off how Wu had this offbeat thing , these erie sounds, styles & terminology.
I remember listening to the radio station & they announced “Wu-Tang performing live @ Club Northside”. Bad promotion that sounded like a complete set-up cuz this is a crowd that could careless about this kind of vibe. Sho-nuff…shit went down. Bottles & shit was thrown @ Wu & from Wu shit was thrown back. I think thats how Method got his hand cup up. Anyway this album really had put a shift in things.

BTW, SoulOne, Marie, and Pea made me feel even older. Thank goodness Damien is on this site to help me feel a little younger (zing!).

But yeah, I first got into Tribe when Instinctive Travels came out. I’d go to Westwood Mall (yes, I said Westwood Mall for the Houstonians out there) and get tapes from time to time. I was of course watching Yo! MTV Raps every day and had seen the El Segundo video, but wasn’t sure how I felt about Tribe. The dude working there would always try to put me onto new music and he told me the album was really good, so I bought it. The rest was history.

But yeah, I’m also one of those that enjoys Low End Theory a little more than MM, even though both albums are still in rotation.

As far as Wu-Tang–I cannot front, I loved that album once it was introduced to me (I think Cashless, Les and Kari have a big hand in that)…but you want to talk about an album that has not aged well to my ears. I don’t think I’ve listened to that album in maybe 7 hears. But you can’t deny the importance it had on hip-hop at the time. After all, we may never have had “Brooklyn, Texas” without the existence of that album (I keed, I keed).

i didnt hear these 2 albums until about 1998-1999.

i was:
- in dallas, tx
- a high school sophomore
- 15-16 yrs old
- at the saratoga (thats the turning point for u non historians) in my life in terms of how i listened to music, isolating elements/breakin down beats/analyzing lyrics

i remember this being a really fun time, mostly because my friends and i really had to go our of our way to access the east coast, which made our discoveries all the more fulfilling. and it was a small group of people who actually cared, so we felt like we had our own little secret society or some shit. anyway, my closest friend and i discovered wu and tribe at a time when cash money and no limit were at their peaks, which was was a GREAT time to be in the south. being in high school through the cash money/no limit era… MAN… but thats a whole nother post…

anyway, its hard to describe these experiences cuz the sequence is all weird. when you find shit late, like i did, youd sometimes hear an artists newer, different sounding material first… so we didnt really have a real concept of what we were getting into until later.

so here we are these youngins trying to figure out what the hell wu tang is talkin about. we loved it. it made us look shit up, lol. more than any other group we discovered, wu really opened our eyes to the possibility of what was out there, made us realize we had so much to learn not just about music but life! the sound and what they were talkin about was such a departure from what we had been used to, so my boys really became hard core fanatics and 36 chambers was really one of those important albums that enhanced life. i mean any album that can make mofos rock timbs in the south… what.the.hell.

tribe… tribe might been too much of a departure the other way for us back then, lol. high school planted the seed, but i didnt really become a super fanatic of tribe until college. since, i def listen to a tribe album at least a few times a month. i cant imagine my life without em.

I remember my sister rockin’ MM…I was ten years old at the time.

Her, and this album, honestly, are what put me on to hip hop. It’s been no turning back since. I didn’t get into wu until a few years later – around 14 or so (which was also when I started djing).

I started picking up all of this shit on vinyl…just bugging out in my room every chance I had. I have double copies of both of these albums, that are incredibly beat up from years of use. Rosalinda, this was around the time that I started really breaking down music as well – not only from a lyrical standpoint, but from a structural standpoint as well. I still to this day find production on 36 chambers quite mind-blowing, considering the direction of many producers.

For anyone that djs…I think you will relate to the fact that there’s some shit that just never leaves your crate (assuming you still play vinyl lol). MM is one of those albums for me.

I’ve been coming back every so often to check what people have said, and it’s been great to look back on my own and the experiences of all of you.

I remember goint to the store for MM. Still have the tape also. I had the Protect your Neck single on tape. I remember making a bet with this girl in high school whoever lost had to buy the other a tape . I won she bought me the Wu-Tang album. Electric Relaxation was her favorite song so I bought her a copy of MM. it was like our 1st date damm she was cute………………………………………….We got married in 2001. Our son is 5 and he loves ATCQ. She has Electric Relaxation as here ringtone. Damm those are some dope albums

remember this week definitely, because i remember having to wait all the way until that Friday to get paid in order to purchase these two gems. I don’t know how many copies of these two I’ve had to buy since then, too many to count, they just grow legs and disappear.

Priceless

I didn’t really *pay attention* to music before I heard ‘MM’. I got it years after it was released, in 1998. Before I left home for college in Savannah, GA, I saw De La’s video for ‘Stakes Is High’ on Rap City and I really dug the beat (Dilla!) and lyrical message. I did some research on the track/group and came to learn of the Native Tongues. When I got to GA and realized there wasn’t much else to do but get wasted at parties (which I wasn’t interested in), I decided to get into some music, so I rolled to Best Buy lookin’ for De La’s album. When I couldn’t find it, I bought ‘MM’ instead. Nothing’s been the same since.

That was only weeks before ‘The Love Movement’ dropped. I got that. Then I got Black Star. Amazon.com’s recommendations then lead me to Hieroglyphics and The Roots. ?uest’s liner notes lead me to Jay Dee and Slum Village. A Slum Village interview lead me to Madlib and the Lootpack…

And it don’t stop

Kiddies, kiddies! I was the ripe old age of 23 when these jawns dropped. I was already into HIP HOP heavy. I was an emcee and aspiring writer at the time. Low End Theory got maaad run in the jeep so I was really looking forward to Midnight Marauders, I was not disappointed. The Wu…heard the Protect Ya Neck single first on college radio, then heard M-E-T-H-O-D Man on a mixtape. Protect Ya Neck was straight up crazy to me. I had just recently immersed myself into the MATHEMATICS (Peace to the Gods and Earths) and the wording and kung fu soundbites made me an instant fan. There’ll NEVER be another era equivalent. *sigh* those were the days! I agree with you all in the fact that those two albums changed the game sonically and literally . Throw up your ‘W’!

WOW!!!!! I was about to turn 15 when these two came out. Low End was the first tape I ever bought w/my own money. I stole a bunch of my Mom’s asshole boyfriend{who was a scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates} baseball cards and took them to a card shop thata was in the same plaza as the record store…sold them shits and went and copped both of these. I remeber going home and listening to MM and HATING IT. Then thinking..give it a chance…it’s Tribe after all. Next Listen and by Steve Biko second verse…had me. MM is my fav album ever…”Lyrics To Go” and “God Lives Through” are the heaters on that album{along w/the obvious favorites}.

Enter36 was just some other shit..to me the only two albums that fucked me up production wise were”Sgt. Peppers Lonley Hearts Club Band” and Enter the 36 Chambers”. Still to this day I listen and go…”How the Fuck did they get that sound?”

As Ahmir says…it was the high water mark for hip hop…I couldn’t agree more.

It’s funny I turned 15 on Dec.2-1993 Midnight Marauders was my most played album…..turning 30 on tues. the 2nd and Q-Tip’s album is in the heaviest rotation……..the more shit changes the more it stays the same……

and as OPTIONS and a few others said…tribe and wu{and the Beatles} made me start listening..really breaking down music.

and as Options said..tribe to de la to common to roots to dilla to madlib to …and it don’t stop.

Thank you -Tribe thank you Wu. Thank you hip hop- thank you music.

I remember the first time I heard both Wu-Tang and ATCQ, both just a few years ago. It made me wonder to myself, “Why the hell couldn’t I have grown up with these groups?”

That was also the year I stopped listening to the radio on the whole, and turned my back on anything mainstream…

I got too many memories off Hip Hop, especially Tribe.
The illest feeling for me was AS A KID….wyldin off can I kick it then hearing the OG song(“take a walk on the wild side”)…shit blew me away cause I didnt know shit about a sampler or none of that yet all I knew was “thats the shit from can I kick it…oh shit”.
I was sure of the sounds but wasnt sure about what I was hearing…and tribe used to take me down that road plenty being that my pops was into roy ayers, irvine weldine, grover washington, bob james and all that jazz shit as much as the soul shit…

But wu tang though….aw man….I had no words to describe it back then….I think this was the evolution of also MAKING your own sounds in hip hop instead of just loops…..

I 1st heard ” Method Man” on hot97 in 93, The gritty demo version sounding like it was pressed off an analog tape (with the “now how brothers want wit salt or butta mutherfuckas” ending) flex ripped that shit for like 20min. straight!! on the radio!! niggas was wyldin!! nobody around my way knew what this guy looked like or anything about The Wu, all we knew was it was some new crew from Staten Island and he was down with em…and that voice…souded like he was 300lbs!!!
Flex was suckin them niggas off extra that entire summer but he didnt know alot about them either, all he kept sayin was “new york, I seen these guys perform, these guys roll deeeeep”…you didnt know who was who, they kept taggin in & out…it was really like the superfriends with the beats to match the lyrics…1 song had 2 niggas on it, the other had 5, the other had 8 and you couldnt put it all together yet….CRA-Z….

Then Protect ya neck 12″ came out……AHHHHHH….
From the wu tang book on the cover, that wu tang sword, and that infamous W with a simple ‘protect ya neck’ on it…no pictures, no fancy artwoork just 100% RAWNESS…You didnt know what to expect…
side 1, soon as the kung fu shit kicks in and the “wu tang clan comin at ya.., with dirty sayin ‘watcha step kid’ in the background….the fuckin snare on that shit…the sounds, the bassline…Deck….”swinging through ya town like ya neighboorhood spiiiiderman…” it actually FELT like a whole new era was happening while listening to that shit, I used to rewind that shit in my walkman hyped to hear it again.
it was that ill.
And the bloody version had a different ending than the shaolin version….ah man…it was like a journey…And only the 12″ had Method Man on it….not sure about MAXISINGLES (remember those)…
I didnt know nothing about being no STAN or none of that corny shit.
Not sure it existed in hip hop yet cause EVERYBODY was on hip hop if you wasnt, YOU SUCKED.
Stans exist in the pop world, and thats what this shit has become, thats why people talk like that now.
All I knew was this wu tang shit was the soundtrack to MY life and they had a new group or song like every other month and I couldnt get enough of it.
.
Then the album dropped…jesus H christ…I didnt know which joint I liked the most…..all these weird sounds…and the kung fu…kung fu theater was the SHIT back in the 80’s with EVERY kid so I was already hooked…
1st it was protect ya neck based off what I had heard but then “shame on a nigga”…then “clan in the front’…but then I heard CREAM, that fuckin sound, its sounded like heaven on earth…Then”the mystery of chessboxing”……
goodness gracious. Then I had seen the actual flick….damn. RZA is a genius. Niggas just wasnt sampling MOVIES yet…it was just mind blowing how he freaked it…
Those drum patterns were only being used by the beatminerz at the time…the boom boom bap pattern…but RZA took that shit to another frontier….
New niggas wonder why RZA is worshipped the way he is, thats because you have no fuckin clue what reshaping a genre really means!! EVERY producer after him got some RZA in him…from Kanye to whoever….EVERY producer, even if its unintentional. Jayz’s blueprint was Ghostfaces/raekwons blueprint….see “ironman” or “…cuban linx” my nigga…nobody could filter their sounds like RZA.
Then to be dusted all day and to come up with shit like “criminology” or “verbal intercourse”….eeww.
You didnt get to hear “I gotcha back” or “diary of a madman” or 4th chamber, “the riddler” with the slowed down batman theme…or brooklyn zoo or NONE of that shit like we did. You just click and listen and its done in 2008. Find the file and listen. no more no less. I feel so sorry for you and your kids man…lol…your gonna pass down your …weezy memories? autotune? heartbreaking shit… for YOUR life.
Im content being a “old head/hater” …whatever they call it…Thats a cop out to lacking skill or jealousy if you ask me…Theres not too many cats from my cloth who go along with all this crap in hip hop now anyway…
ATCQ was nothing like the wu but it still caught you cause it had feeling to it. Niggas do it now to put their hood on or for money and fame. It wasnt like that back then. It was but wasnt.
The entire native tongues crew dressed weirder than the kids do nowadays just to stand out, difference is the music was fresh. And it was only considered weird cause they wasnt sampling james brown like everybody else at the time, they was looping light rock and shit. unheard of in 89.
Back then it was all about huddling in front of the radio to catch the new shit or copping the newest clue TAPE at the time. Thats what made clue blow up…playing niggas unreleased joints, DJs wasnt doing that yet NOWHERE….like I heard the method man remix on a clue tape WAAAAYBEFORE Meth’s 1st album dropped…same with biggies who shot ya and the Mobb deep survival of the fittest remix.
Back then you HAD to soak up all the hip hop you could get cause it wasn’t all over the place like it is now.
every single Wu tang release from 93 to 98 was golden. All of them.
Thats what hip hop WAS, when you talked about 1 you had to talk about the other…cause as much as the Wu took my breath away…I was in awe of Nas who at the time was still in the block, I got to see him perform ‘halftime’ “represent( not the version on illmatic)” ‘live at the BBQ” and it aint hard to tell” that year in the QB community center (lucky me)…I think that was the only time I was at a party and niggas was just tuned in to the MC… Say what you want in 2008 but he’s a headache for YOUR favorite MC NOW, and always has been. Nas is a poet.
Biggie too…I wasnt a huge fan but at the time you couldnt go NOWHERE in NYC without hearing “1 more chance” the OG version or the dreams joint….Like I said I didnt even like BIG at 1st, there was just something about this guy…and his name sucked to me….some cats was calling him Biggie smalls some called him the Notorious B.I.G. but he damn sure stood out amongst all your redmans, Nas’s, wu tangs etc.
man oh man those were the days…..These 2 albums stir up a thousand and 1 memories for me….
damn…15 yrs already and that shit still got me open….
All I’ll say is, these new niggas look at everything with a who cares mentality but you wonder why you dont got real respect or sell big numbers anymore, you wonder why ALL record sales are down…

when you care maybe we will again….
Maybe todays fans will wanna shead a tear when they recall1st hearing “a millie” or “pop champagne”…lol…yeah fuckin right…ok….you can cry now….

Qunyc, very well typed. The Wu are legendary and so is A Tribe Called Quest. If you think what the Wu brought to hip hop, you will realize it can never be duplicated.