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It’s arguably one of Method Man’s great songs, typical of his hard-hitting style in the mid-’90s. ‘PLO Style’ is as gritty and bass-heavy as any of the Wu-Tang Clan’s classic tracks, but, lyrically, it delves into a contentious subject.

The “PLO” in question is the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, a coalition of groups internationally recognised to be the representatives of the Palestinian people in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories. It was initially founded to fight for an Arab state over all of the territory that was once Mandatory Palestine, which would, in effect, abolish the new state of Israel that was violently established there in 1948.

After decades of conflict between the two sides, the Oslo Peace Process of the mid-’90s saw the PLO recognise Israel for the first time, while Israel, in turn, recognised the PLO as the legitimate authority representing the Palestinian people. Both sides pledged to end their conflict, with a self-governing Palestinian state set to be established on a small fraction of the lands of the former Mandatory Palestine. Israel, meanwhile, would retain sovereignty over the rest.

In order to achieve this aim, the Israeli military would have to withdraw from the Palestinian territories that it had been illegally occupying since 1967. Authority would be transferred to a Palestinian administration, while the status of Jerusalem and Israel’s illegal settlements would be negotiated down the line.

There was opposition to the Oslo peace deal within Israel, particularly among those on the political right. Settler communities feared they would be evicted from their illegal settlements established on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, while there was anger at the fact that Israel was negotiating with the PLO at all, which many Israelis considered to be a terrorist organisation.

Some Palestinian groups including Hamas opposed the Oslo accords, too, on the basis that it would mean Palestinian refugees forced from their historic lands when Israel was established would not be granted the right to return. The PLO, then, is viewed negatively within certain strands of Palestinian society, as well, of course, as in Israel.

The peace that was intended by the Oslo Accords never came to fruition, as we have witnessed playing out all too viscerally over the last number of years. Israel never ceased its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and the possibility of a Palestinian state never coalesced in reality. The failure of the peace process led, ultimately, to the ongoing bloodshed today.

All of this is to say that the history of the PLO is complicated and very contentious, both from within Palestinian society and without. That’s why it was bold for Method Man to wade into the subject with his track ‘PLO Style’ from his classic album Tical. But, as he once explained to the filmmaker Sama’an Ashrawi, his intention was to honour the history of Palestinian resistance, which he saw as standing in parallel to Black people’s struggle against racial oppression in America.

Meth explained that, in his Staten Island neighbourhood, there was once a store in which pro-PLO iconography was on show. Meth said that he and his Wu-Tang crew came to respect their show of resistance—their “PLO style.”

“The same way Wu-Tang respected how the kung fu dudes was doing their thing and shit, we respected how the PLOs got down,” he said. “They’re freedom fighters and we felt like we were fighting for our freedom everyday, too, where we lived at.”