Welcome back to The Five Spot. Every Friday, we'll examine a recent bit of music news and list five reasons why it's either brilliant or dumb-assed. Send tips to [email protected].
So, earlier this week we heard the new Wu-Tang greatest-hits, Wu: The Story Of The Wu-Tang Clan, whose release will coincide with the November 18 release of the DVD documentary of the same name. It's not near as encompassing as the title would have you believe; 62 percent of the songs are from the Wu's first two monster LPs, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Wu-Tang Forever. Nevertheless, it's still thoroughly enjoyable, as is this 2007 Brandon Perkins article, "Widdling Down Infinity."
We're not quite sure if this is "Brilliant" or not, but the Wu always gets the benefit of the doubt. And since we assume everyone has the exact same musical tastes as we do, here are five Wu-Tang songs that didn't make the LP but should have.
1. GZA, "Liquid Swords": Not a single song from Liquid Swords, arguably the strongest Wu solo effort to date, made it onto the compilation. That's like throwing a UGK party and not inviting Bun B. Or a Redundant Party and not inviting Mike Jones.
2. Raekwon, "State Of Grace": Quite possibly the greatest lyricist of all time, the Chef's "State Of Grace" isn't his best song but it makes it on this list because we stole at least four bars from this song when Cody, the douche that lived down the street and had what seemed to be approximately 1 million more Nintendo games than us, challenged us to a freestyle battle. Shoulda spent some of that money on Cuban Linx, turd.
3. Ol' Dirty Bastard, "Brooklyn Zoo": It's like, blaow! Big Baby Jesus always scared the shit out of us, except when he did "Got Your Money" with then-unknown Kelis. Then we thought he was funny and we referred to ourselves as Joe Blow The Lover Man every day for like, three weeks. (Which surely annoyed no one.)
4. U-God, "Bizarre": The stepchild of the Clan. We were never exactly sure why U-God's career never took off. Clearly it wasn't because he was lacking a sleeveless leather jacket.
5. Wu-Tang Clan, "Ice Cream": It's crazy to think that a song that recites ice cream flavors as the chorus isn't horribly annoying, but there is not one single thing wrong with this song. Well, we suppose you could collaterally blame this song for 50 Cent's "Candy Shop," but that's about it.
And because the omniscient powers at YouTube knew we were really looking for Fiddy's "How To Rob" while we perused Wu videos, we present that to you too. - Shea Serrano
