The grim reason why Cappadonna wasn’t an original Wu-Tang Clan member
While the list of Wu-Tang Clan affiliates, or Killa Bees, is too unthinkably long to reproduce here, the core membership has remained generally stable through the decades. There’s only one person who’s upset the apple cart a bit.
Cappadonna is the only additional person to make it into the Clan as an out-and-out member, officially entering the fold in 2007 on their fifth studio album 8 Diagrams. He had previously appeared on Wu-Tang Clan songs before this point, but only as a featured artist. Now he was plainly a part of the group.
8 Diagrams was also the first Wu album to be released since Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s death three years earlier, so Cappadonna’s incorporation meant the number of living members remained at nine. In a sense, it could be said that Cappadonna was replacing ODB, but that somewhat obscures Cap’s pre-existing connection to the group.
Cap had grown up alongside the rest of the Clan, and it’s said that he was even a rap mentor to U-God. It’s believed he was initially meant to appear on 36 Chambers as a member, but he ended up getting arrested and sent to jail.
Stuck behind bars, Cappadonna was unable to record for the album. He was instead replaced by Method Man, who became one of the most popular members at the time.
One can imagine how painful it must have been to be locked away as your friends become superstars, but Cap has claimed he took it in his stride. He told POW Magazine in 2013 that he “felt great for them,” while he was personally just trying to survive the prison experience. He was “in combat mode.”
Cap insisted that he was at peace with initially missing out on the Clan, saying that, in any case, people knew he was closely linked with them. He was happy enough with the association, and, even after his release from prison, he apparently didn’t even try to pursue a music career. “I was just a hustler man, you know?” he said.
But slowly but surely, Cap started to reintegrate into the Wu-Tang fold as a rapper. He jumped onto ‘Ice Cream’ from Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, before going on to appear as a listed featured artist on the cover of Ghostface Killah’s Ironman. His first contribution to an official Wu-Tang Clan group song was on Wu-Tang Forever’s ‘Triumph.’
Cap contributed heavily to The W, the Clan’s third album, but his contributions on the follow-up Iron Flag album are extremely minimal. But with fifth album 8 Diagrams, he had become an official member at last.