Wu-Tang Clan has been eligible for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame since 2017, but hasn’t even been nominated yet. According to de facto group leader The RZA, this is an egregious oversight because Wu-Tang and hip-hop have “the same spirit of rock and roll at the end of the day.” In a recent interview with Rolling Stone to wax philosophical about the crew’s legacy ahead of two different series about their early ascent, RZA says that he and Wu-Tang Clan were actually making rock and roll all along, despite ostensibly working in the rap genre.
““Listening to a song like ‘Bring da Ruckus,’ I thought I was making hip-hop,” he said, “But sh*t, it has a motherf*ckin’ rock & roll groove like a motherf*cker. I don’t know how the f*ck I did that. I go back and listen to some of the Beatles progressions and some of [Led] Zeppelin’s progressions and movements, like, okay, I was on some sh*t, though.” RZA thinks that hip-hop and rock both share traits, despite coming along at different times: “Rock & roll has a certain spirit; it was the spirit of the Sixties and Seventies youth. Hip-hop is the Eighties, Nineties, up to now, the youth. It’s called hip-hop, but it’s in the same spirit of rock & roll at the end of the day. Lyrical, stories, music, unorthodox, dissonant sometimes, energetic, all the things that rock is and was, hip-hop embodies.”
RZA and Wu-Tang Clan will be the subjects of two shows coming to television this year: Showtime docuseries Of Mics And Men and Hulu’s scripted drama Wu-Tang: An American Saga, as well inspiring a horror film called Angel Of Dust.
