What is the only Wu-Tang Clan song to feature all members?
The Wu-Tang Clan is one of hip-hop’s great collectives, if not the very greatest. The members complement each other’s styles so perfectly, but actually fitting them all into one song is a tall order.
In fact, it can be said it’s only truly happened once: on ‘Triumph’, from the Clan’s second album Wu-Tang Forever.
It’s necessary, first things first, to establish who the official members actually are. There are dozens and dozens of Wu affiliates, many of whom have appeared on official Wu-Tang tracks, but, in terms of actual members, we’re looking at ten individuals.
It begins with the core trio of cousins, RZA, GZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard. As kids, they formed a group together that was first called Force of the Imperial Masters, and later the All in Together Now Crew, and they used different names than the ones they are today known for. They were Prince Rakeem, aka The Scientist, The Genius, and The Specialist.
The young trio tried to build up their careers, and, individually, RZA and GZA found moderate success, without ever truly taking off, but the RZA eventually started working with someone the world would later come to know as Ghostface Killah, and together they decided to create a group that touched on a kung-fu aesthetic, comic books and the teachings of the Five-Percent Nation. The Wu-Tang Clan, in other words, was beginning to take shape.
The group truly coalesced when it came to making ‘Protect Ya Neck’, which was envisioned by RZA as a posse cut involving the initial core members and other rappers in their orbit. They were Inspectah Deck, Raekwon, Method Man and U-God. As Method Man once remarked to Vanity Fair, this is the moment that made RZA realise “there’s strength in numbers”. The Clan was truly born.
But there were still two people missing from ‘Protect Ya Neck’. Masta Killah hadn’t yet joined the group, but he would just in time to make it onto the group’s debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). He appeared only on the song ‘Da Mystery of Chessboxin’’, which meant his contributions to the album were minimal. But they were more significant than those of Cappadonna, who missed out entirely.
Cappadonna had been a part of the wider crew for a long time, and he’d even mentored U-God. But he was in prison when 36 Chambers was being made, so he missed out on becoming a member. He later started appearing on official Wu material, before becoming an official member around the period of The W, the group’s third album.
Fitting each of the ten members onto a single song has proven a difficult task, rendered impossible now since the death of ODB in 2004. It technically happened on ‘9 Milli Bros’, but that was a Ghostface Killah solo track produced by MF DOOM. ODB appeared on it posthumously alongside the other nine, but it’s not technically an official Wu-Tang song.
The Clan’s sixth album, A Better Tomorrow, released in 2014, also features all members on ‘Ruckus in B Minor’. But, again, ODB’s credit is posthumous, having occurred a full decade after he died. He’s on the track, certainly, but without the same presence as if he’d been alive. So, in that spirit, ‘Triumph’, from their second album, is the only time it happened and is the only time it ever will.