The greatest Wu-Tang Clan verses by every single member
The Wu-Tang Clan discography is, to put it very mildly, vast. Between group albums and the ten members’ respective solo projects, a lot of exquisite verses have been spat.
The Clan, despite inspiring so many rappers, have proven impossible to imitate. Even as artists have borrowed from their playbook, the Clan’s music has always remained firmly its own. Hardcore beats from the East Coast, mixed with lofty, philosophical ideas, kung-fu aesthetics, and the sharpest rhymes conceivable. Nobody else has ever matched them.
Each individual within the Clan brings something different to the overall project. Some members stand out on certain tracks more than others, but every single one of them has had their share of stand-out performances.
While it’s a thankless task overall, this is an attempt to point towards each member’s best performance on a Wu song. No list like this could ever hope to be truly accurate, given how many incredible verses each member has contributed through the years, but it’s an excuse to zero in on at least a selection of the very best.
10. RZA
RZA is the mastermind behind the Wu-Tang Clan, their leader and their primary producer. His beats have defined the group and made them what they are, but, on the other hand, he’s as skilled an MC as any of them. While RZA has, at times, been guilty of cramming too many words and ideas into a verse, at his best he’s performed some remarkable rhymes.
His contribution to GZA’s song ‘4th Chamber,’ which features on Liquid Swords, is among his best, summing up quite a lot of what RZA is about as a rapper. It’s a bit frantic and aggressive, cloaked in mysticism while still evoking a sort of violent realism. When he raps of “ninjas scalin’ your building,” the next line that there’s “no time to grab the gun, they already got your wife and children” hits hard.
9. Ghostface Killah
From Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, ‘Criminology’ begins with dialogue from the classic film Scarface, with Rae also teasing the track to follow. When it sparks to life, it’s not Rae but his album’s main guest star, Ghostface Killah, who delivers the opening verse and, for the first time in his Wu career, properly announces himself as the viciously talented MC that he is. This verse, as RZA remarked to XXL in 2005, is what “got him recognised.”
For Ghost’s part, he’s admitted that he doesn’t remember whether or not he was drunk when he wrote his ‘Criminology’ part. He just knows that when he went into the studio booth to lay it down, he was feeling energised. He had, in his words, “a battery in my back.”
8. Masta Killa
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… is widely considered to be one of the best Wu-Tang solo albums, if not the very best, and it’s not only because it allowed Raekwon to show off his skills. Ghost played a huge part in the whole album, but several other members also got their moment, too. Masta Killa, for one, grabbed his opportunity to show off with both hands.
‘Glaciers of Ice’ is an intense track with Rae and Ghost frantically leading the way, but, amid all that, Masta Killa comes in and slows things down. Without leaving the track feeling disjointed, the Masta rhymes carefully, at one stage even describing the process by which “thoughts roll down the shaft of the brain” to create motion. “Mental gives the signal to the physical,” he raps, somehow injecting a small dose of calm into an otherwise fierce song.
7. U-God
There’s a sense in which U-God’s rapping skills go somewhat underappreciated. The fact is that he is competing with some of the best MCs to ever do it, and his style can sometimes slip under the radar a bit. But he’s an incredible rapper, be it when he’s going hard and rough, as in his short verse in ‘Da Mystery of Chessboxin’,’ or when he’s delivering in a smoother way, as in Ghostface Killah’s song ‘Black Jesus’ from Ironman.
U-God’s flow on his ‘Black Jesus’ verse is frankly incredible. There’s a sensual pleasure to phrases like “finger rolling rhythm ride,” as U-God asserts himself as a rapper worthy of the Wu-Tang label. He is, in his own words, the “Renaissance rebel chatter-boxing your barrel.”
6. GZA
One of many highlights from GZA’s Liquid Swords, ‘Living in the World Today’ sees the Genius discussing “the world today” and many of its issues. The picture GZA conjures throughout the song is dark and even apocalyptic at times, filled with violence. But through all of this bleakness, his sheer talent for rhyming balances things out and keeps the listener hooked. His “motherfuckin’ style is mad murderous.”
GZA’s first verse is great, as is the chorus he performs with RZA and Method Man. But it’s verse two that really stands out, beginning, “My preliminary attack keep cemeteries packed
/ of n***as who think it ain’t like that.” It’s vicious, but so controlled. The Genius has a handle over the whole thing.
5. Method Man
Method Man developed a reputation on 36 Chambers and his own solo album Tical as a hard-hitting, aggressive sort of rapper, who pumped a lot of energy into his verses and hooks. But on GZA’s ‘Shadowboxin’,’ which formed a part of Liquid Swords, he revealed another side of himself across his two starring verses.
To call Meth’s delivery on ‘Shadowboxin’’ “soft” would be a mistake, but it’s certainly smooth and laid-back. He doesn’t push his verses too hard or too far, but they roll out of him. “I breaks it down to the bone gristle,” he languidly begins the first and best verse, delivering one of his greatest ever performances that he credits with changing his wider style.
4. Cappadonna
A late-comer to the Clan, the tenth and final member Cappadonna never made it onto 36 Chambers and thus wasn’t a part of the original nine-man line-up. He was in prison at the time, but, in the years that followed, he started popping up on multiple Wu projects and eventually was made a fully fledged member. He’s performed plenty of incredible verses in his time, but arguably his greatest was on Ghost’s Ironman track ‘Winter Warz.’
Slipping a word like “discombumberate” into a song without ruining the flow is an impressive act on its own terms, but even more so considering what Cap has claimed about this song. In a tweet sent out in 2014, he insisted that his ‘Winter Warz’ verse was a freestyle. “I didn’t smoke before,” he explained in the comments below, “so my mind was clear.”
3. Ol’ Dirty Bastard
It’s reasonable to describe every Clan member as unique, but the one who truly did things differently to literally everyone else is ODB. His style was so unpredictable that even now, listening to tracks that are decades old, it can still be difficult to predict where he’s going to come in or what he’ll do next. It’s chaos, yet he nonetheless always seemed to be in control of what he was rapping and screaming.
ODB’s verse on ‘Da Mystery of Chessboxin’’ is a classic. There are plenty of songs in which he completely steals the limelight, whereas ‘Da Mystery of Chessboxin’’ is a true posse cut for the Clan. ODB slots in alongside his bandmates, without necessarily taking all the attention for himself. But his verse captures his energy perfectly, presenting his humour, anarchic flow, and sheer, flaming intensity.
2. Raekwon
Raekwon has delivered some incredible verses, especially on his Purple Tape album that also allowed so many of his Wu-Tang bandmates to stand out. But for all of that, his performance on ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ has to be considered right up there with his very best. It’s one of hip-hop’s most iconic songs ever, and Rae more than played his part in it.
Raekwon’s rapping would become more sophisticated in the years that followed 36 Chambers, but it’s precisely the youthful rough edges to his ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ verse that endure. He’s telling tales of his youth growing up on the streets, and the fact he was still such a young man when he recorded it adds to the overall effect. The verse captures a moment in time.
1. Inspectah Deck
‘Triumph’ is the most epic of posse cuts, the only Wu-Tang Clan song to include every member. It’s quite the odyssey, and someone needed to spark it to life in the right way. That fell to Inspectah Deck, whose opening verse is probably his best and, arguably, the greatest overall Wu-Tang verse ever. Even Method Man has said he believes this to be the case.
“I bomb atomically,” Deck begins, “Socrates’ philosophies and hypotheses can’t define how I be dropping these mockeries.” Is there a better opening line to a verse ever? Deck once explained on Talib Kweli’s People’s Party podcast that his performance had blown his band members away so much that they didn’t know how to follow him up. “They was like, ‘You killed that shit,’” Deck recalled. “‘You bodied that shit. Damn bro! What I’m supposed to say behind that?’”