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Wu-Tang Clan has been named as the rap collective that brought about a renaissance of New York hip-hop culture. Still cemented as one of the greatest – if not the greatest – hip-hop groups of all time, it’s interesting to see their impact on today’s music scene and to see their releases that have reached astronomic heights.

Formed of nine members in total and assembling in late 1992, the group released ‘Protect Ya Neck’ which built a sizable underground following. The group struggled at finding a suitable record label that would allow each member to produce their solo albums, whilst still remaining part of the group. But eventually Loud/RCA came to a deal, helping to release their debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in November 1993.

In an interview with Power, RZA calls Method Man ‘The Master of Hooks’ and attributes him to having come up with the renowned line ‘cash rules everything around me’. This hook was quickly favoured by the group over the early working title of the song: ‘Lifestyles of the Mega Rich’.

The song’s first drafts could have diminished the greatest-of-all-time quality that ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ maintains even today. It was originally supposed to feature different members, RZA and Ghostface Killah. However, as a result of RZA’s alleged assault case early on in his career, he took a step back from the track, and it went through several more revisions before settling on the song that was recorded and released in 1993.

Method Man easily and quickly identified that ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ was his favourite Wu-Tang song to perform, stating: “That’s what really put us on the map”. With lyrics detailing the hardships of living in New York and how obsessed hustle culture is with making money, it instantly resonated with a heavily East Coast audience. This obsession with money intimidates the rappers Raekwon and Inspectah Deck on the verses as they describe different situations from their experiences of this type of pressure in New York.

In an interview with This Is 50, Method Man instantly followed up that the esteemed Wu-Tang song, ‘Protect Ya Neck’ was the song that “got us in the door” to the beginning of their almost three-decade-long careers. He also fondly recalls: “Inspectah Deck could barely sing his verse ‘cause the crowd knows it – regardless of what country we are in. They don’t even speak English, but they know that.”

It was also the use of sampling that the Wu Tang Clan became known for. In ‘C.R.E.A.M.’, the group sampled The Charmels’ 1967 song ‘As Long As I’ve Got You’ and takes inspiration from Jimmy Spicer’s 1983 track ‘Money (Dollar Bill Y’all)’.

This combination of uniting samples and interpolations with contemporary experiences of New York created a nostalgic, timeless feel to the song and cements it as a hip-hop great that has stood the tests of time.