20 years and some odd days ago two albums were released: „Midnight Marauders“ by A Tribe Called Quest and „Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)“ by the Wu-Tang Clan. If memories of the Golden Age – be they first-hand or passed down – make you giddy or sweetly nostalgic: this one goes out to you. Because implicit in this information is of course „These two albums! On the same freaking day!“
Well, maybe. The number of „think pieces“ or eulogies about this anniversary has been mercifully low – or I just haven’t looked. Maybe because the people who can legitimately claim „I was there and knew what was up“ don’t want to write about Hip-Hop anymore or know that such such a a remembrance would be bullshit anyway. And perhaps the people who were late to the party – like me, though I could of course make up a touching story how at the age of four I got down to „We Can Get Down“ – have finally understood that this particular brand of nostalgia is ultimately poisonous? As if, to quote the Mid-Nineties.
That’s not to say that such a piece about the 20th anniversary of these two records wouldn’t be interesting, if done right. Taken together they certainly feel like a summation, a new beginning and a watershed moment. Partly because it is so hard to believe that they came out on the same day, not just for the coincidence. (Though I’ve been told that the „drop day“ wasn’t part of the rap experience back then – you’d go into a record store and be surprised by what was there, unless you’d seen an ad in „The Source“)
While I’m sure „Midnight Marauders“ sounded fresh and exciting back then – as it does now, of course – it seems to belong to a different era, like 1992. The era of De La, Jungle Brothers, Black Sheep. „Conscious“, if you pardon the expression. And „Enter the Wu-Tang“ might as well be from 1994, when „Ready To Die“ by Biggie and „Illmatic“ by Nas came out. Not just because they deal with crime but because of their bleakness, their spite, ultimately their sometimes buried sadness.
If you listen to the albums side by side it becomes clear that they’re from the same time. The intro to „Midnight“ from the Tribe album would fit right in with the Wu aesthetic, and Ghostface Killah is almost like Phife’s evil twin. You could also just take the titles and combine them, like Gummy Soul did with Tribe and Pharcyde: „Enter the Midnight“, „Wu-Tang Marauders“, „36 Midnights“. I would listen to any of these albums today, gladly. Would I still talk about them 20 years later though?