The legendary rap outfit Wu-Tang Clan are one of the shining lights of hip-hop, least of all because of the training individuality within the group. The mystique of its members, most notably Raekwon, has only ever grown. One of the foremost rap groups of their generation, Raekwon, RZA, Ghostface Killah and ODB changed pop culture as we know it with their abrasive and abusive hip-hop style.
But, of course, that doesn’t mean that the group weren’t already standing on the shoulders of giants. Finding fame sin the 1990s, the group’s native New York had already been producing hip-hop greats for decades, many of which Raekwon has considered some of his biggest inspirations.
Walking the earth as such a bastion of creative genius for hip-hop culture has given Raekwon a hefty opinion. It also means that whenever someone like Raekwon speaks, the hip hop world collectively listens. When that opinion is shared on the greatest hip hop albums of all time, then the whole world pays attention. In recent years, he has used his position to highlight some of the perhaps now more forgotten heroes of the foundational moments of the genre, including Big Daddy Kane.
The Brooklyn icon, Big Daddy Kane, has long been heralded as one of the first and foremost New York heroes. Beginning his career as part of the Juice Crew in the late 1980s, Kane would go on to become a successful solo artist in his own right and inspire a generation of rappers who would make the 1990s their own and start hip-hop’s domination of the mainstream. For Raekwon, Kane is an undoubted icon.
Speaking with Consequence, the Wu-Tang man picked some of his favourite albums of all time, including doffing his cap to Kane and his record Long Live The Kane from 1988. “I was a kid. The videos and everything that were coming on TV at that time, Kane was one of those guys,” explained Raekwon, noting how much Kane’s style would influence the streets.
But it wasn’t all style over substance, “He had the lyrics, he had the style, he had the jewelry, he had the charisma, he had the wordplay. These are guys who kept us wanting to listen to music because everything they were saying, it was relatable, it was clever. It was about just being dope on the mic. That, to me, was one thing that I’d always wanted to do, to be as powerful as those guys.”
Kane was an idol to Raekwon, and showed him a way forward to become an all-time great in hip-hop. Thankfully, a great moment would come when the two men met in person: “I seen Big Daddy Kane one day. He told me, ‘Yo, you don’t have to do anything else; you’re in the books already, congratulations.’ It was like being in the hall of fame.”
There can be no doubt that Raekwon’s in the pantheon of hip-hop greats, just as there is no doubt that without Big Daddy Kane, he would never have got there.
