Wu-Tang Clan

The Five Best Songs That Sample the Beatles

Pop and R&B superstar Frank Ocean has recently opened up to MTV News that he's been on a Beatles and Beach Boys binge when seeking inspiration for his upcoming second full-length record. While it's not exactly surprising to hear of a young artist gorging himself on Beatles classics for ideas, it is ... More >>

Music That Will Officially Be Old In 2013

One of my favorite pastimes is reminding my friends how old we are all getting, partly because I am cruel, and probably because even I am astounded that actor Steve Guttenberg is now three years older than Wilford Brimley was when they filmed Cocoon together in 1985. We can all think of things tha ... More >>

Last Night: RZA at Warehouse Live

RZA Warehouse Live October 16, 2012 At three separate intervals of Tuesday night, Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA took to a table, grabbed a bottle of alcohol and declared, "Tonight isn't about me rapping -- it's about a celebration." Indeed it was. The Clan head and master of Shaolin had been hard at wor ... More >>

RZA

Happy Birthday RZA!: 5 More Creative Outlets For the Wu-Tang Abbot

The Wu-Tang Clan is full of big personalities we know and love. And while Method Man may have had the most success away from the group, Ghostface Killah is the most fun to parody online, and Ol' Dirty Bastard is the most beloved, in terms of influence on hip hop as a whole the most important member ... More >>

New Doc The Art Of Rap Spills Hip-Hop's Secrets

Rap wasn't always like Lil Jon's yelling his famous "What!?" and "Okay!", or repeating your name over and over throughout the song like Houston's own Lil Flip. Nowadays most see rap as lyrics telling a woman how to position herself or look for a man, rhymes about money and talk of toking up. But th ... More >>

Ol Dirty Bastard: 6 Reasons We Sure Miss That Guy

Ol' Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan is the only rapper to use his welfare card as an album cover; and the only rapper to take America along with him as he used the card to pick up his welfare check. Ol Dirty Bastard was a breakout star on the Wu-Tang Clan's debut album, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Ch ... More >>

Last Night: Wu-Tang Clan at House of Blues

It's probably not bad advice to say that if you're planning to catch a Wu-Tang show, you better be ready to lose control. Method Man, for one, hates lazybones. His twin requirements for an ideal concert: weed and energy. "The energy that you give to us, we gonna give back to y'all," Meth proclaims, ... More >>

Ask A Rapper: Picking Wu-Tang Tracks With DeVille

The hip-hop world is a less than sensible place -lots of times, you're even required to clarify when bad means bad and when bad means good- so once a week we're going to get with a rapper and ask them to explain things. Have something you always wanted to ask a rapper? Email it to sheaserrano@gmail. ... More >>

Friday Night: Smoker's Club Tour with Curren$y, Method Man, Big K.R.I.T. and DZA at Warehouse Live

Photos by Marco TorresMethod Man​The second annual Smoker's Club tour, which kicked off October 12, finally landed at Warehouse Live's ballroom Friday night with bountiful billows of smoke. One of the Smoker's Club tour mantras is "Bring your lungs." A line was still wrapped around the buildin ... More >>

Top Five Movies That Influenced Hip-Hop Culture

​Rappers love to imagine their lives as movies. They see bits of their lives on the big screen and turn to those cinematic treasures to help them make sense of their immediate environment: "If Tony Montana can rise to meteoric heights, so can I; if Frank Lucas can make it out of the game alive ... More >>

Childish Gambino

Childish Gambino

Promoter Mike Kelley: "Numbers Is Houston's CBGB"

Marco TorresWu-Tang Clan's GZA and Ghostface Killah at Numbers, December 2010​Numbers' credentials as a concert venue are undeniable - everyone from Siouxsie and the Banshees to Green Day to Type O Negative has played there. It's hard to argue, though, that the past decade hasn't been a rough ... More >>

Health Department Roundup

​Looks like it was a relatively slow week for inspections, with only a handful of places racking up serious (and entertaining) violations. Seeing a sushi restaurant, of all places, get a stamp of disapproval from the health department is a little disconcerting. Taiko Japanese Grill & Sushi (5 ... More >>

No Fools

Mingling Cat Power and the Cure, Warpaint brings glee to even their darkest songs.

Last Night: Wu-Tang Clan At Numbers

Photos by Marco TorresMethod Man presses the flesh. See a slideshow of the Killer Bees (and several of H-Town's finest, who opened) here.​Wu-Tang Clan Numbers December 12, 2010 Sunday night's Wu-Tang Clan show ended around 2:30 this morning, after five or six openers and more than five hours ... More >>

Meridian Wu-Tang Tickets Worthless; Hundreds Left For Numbers

​Rocks Off has good news and bad news about Sunday's Wu-Tang Clan show. First, the bad news: We have heard reports of people who bought tickets when the show was scheduled for Meridian calling and going down to that venue looking for refunds, as have people with tickets to David Allan Coe, Smi ... More >>

Wu-Tang Clan's Best Pop-Culture References

​Rocks Off can't rightfully remember the last time the whole Wu-Tang Clan was ever in Houston, if they ever have been. For some reason, we keep wanting to think they came once with Rage Against The Machine around 1997. In 2007, they came to Dallas on the Rock The Bells summer tour with Nas, Ta ... More >>

Wu-Tang Clan

Meridian's Problems Persist; Wu-Tang Moved Back To Numbers

Photos by Marc Brubaker​Just when it seemed like Meridian was on the comeback trail, a mysterious power outage and shows both canceling and relocating to different venues over the weekend have raised more questions about the problem-plagued venue at 1503 Chartres. Sunday, My Onstage Events an ... More >>

Bands Named After Movies, Characters & Other Film Stuff

​Ever wonder which of your favorite bands are named after movies? So have we. So we went out and did a little bit of research. BANDS NAMED AFTER ACTUAL MOVIES My Bloody Valentine: The seminal shoegaze act took their name from a low-budget 1981 horror movie about a guy who really, really hat ... More >>

Five Groups We'd Pay To Break Up

​Why do people support so much bad music? What if people paid awful bands to quit instead? Weezer fans are willing to try. Sick and tired of being let down by his favorite band, last week a fan jokingly offered Weezer $10 million to split up. Naturally, this had Rocks Off thinking of other ac ... More >>

The Weak Links In Seven Great Rap Crews

Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothin' to fuck with... except maybe U-God.​Logic suggests that being surrounded by artistic brilliance would give the less endowed a natural boost. But if talent were contagious, failure wouldn't exist, and neither would this list. Every rap group, big or small has one memb ... More >>

"Rap Song Or Murder Ballad" Revealed

​ Rocks Off is really enjoying these little quizzes we've concocted, because it gives us a chance to revisit some of our favorite rap tunes and bask in the comforting knowledge that, whatever their time, place and circumstance of origin, songs about killing are pretty much all the same. We only wi ... More >>

The Kids Are All Right: Hip-Hop Finally Comes of Age, Part 2

​5. DOOM, Born Like This (Lex) The man behind the metal mask, Daniel Dumile, emerges from a mysterious exile to turn in his best effort since 2004's Madvillainy collaboration with Madlib. The dense verbiage and the beats (some of them reclaimed from the late J. Dilla) are familiar, but DOOM's time ... More >>

Modern-Day Jedis - or Wannabe Jedis - In Pop Music

​"For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times... before the Empire." - Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Sounds pretty impressive, doesn't it? Almost like there somebody had put together a detailed, well thought-out s ... More >>

ACL 2009 Day One: The Knux Rock Our Sox

Craig Hlavaty​Waking us up out of our Sixth Street-induced coma were The Knux from Los Angeles, by way of Nawlins on the Xbox 360 stage. The hip-hop trio were decked out in leather and spat out grimy Wu-Tang style rhymes with intermittent old-school Cure riffs thrown in for sick measure. Our favor ... More >>

He Said She Said: Hot, Sweaty, Angry Workout Songs

​When it comes to exercise, men and women don't have many different reasons for doing it. Mainly, both genders want to look better naked if perchance they find themselves without clothes on around a stranger they want to sleep with. Life expectancy, general health, and mental well-being are all se ... More >>

Five Spot: Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin' Ta Fuck Wit... Still

Turning the Screw: Lil Wayne, Hip-Hop and the Election, Wu-Tang Clan, Danity Kane, The Kanye

GZA

Our Favorite Albums of 2007

Panning for gold in an avalanche of 2007 releases

Wu-Tang Clan

8 Diagrams

Ghostface Killah

Is Ghostface as dumb as he wants you to think he is?

Speaking of Umbrellas...It's Bumbershoot Time

This Just In: Rock the Bells Canceled

Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, UGK, Pharoahe Monch, David Banner, Immortal Technique, Jedi Mind Tricks, Supernatural, Rahzel

Rock the Bells goes down Wednesday, August 8, at Reliant Arena, 1 Reliant Park, 832-667-1400.

Blog Critics' Greatest Rap CDs List

More of the same

Beat Kings

Beat Kings: The History of Hip Hop

Snap to It

Comeback kids, rhymin' Limeys and songs about partying defined Hip-Hop Nation in 2006

Ghostface

Saturday, April 1, at Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel, 713-225-9483

ODB

A Son Unique

Pell-Mel

Anything goes at this DJ show at the Proletariat

Dishing the Dirt on Dirty

We chronicle the greatest moments of Ol' Dirty Bastard

Killah Priest

Thursday, July 3

Various

DJ Drank's Greatest Malt Liquor Hits (Hip Hop History)

Lil' Bow Wow

Beware of Dog (So So Def/Columbia)

Rotation

Rotation