“It’s a system, and the system needs to be fed.”Īs for the whereabouts of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, the Wu’s still-unreleased double-album, the fellas have no idea when it will see the light of day. “It’s not just hip-hop, it’s young people they’re targeting,” says RZA. Attorney’s Office closed the book on their case, ending their nebulous crusade against the Wu-Tang Clan.
13, 2004, of a drug overdose-a mix of cocaine and tramadol-the FBI and the U.S. According to the Feds, following the testimony of an unidentified person arrested in connection with the murder, the Bureau reported, “It is believed that sometimes carry out enforcement actions for the WTC, which include beatings, shootings, and murder.” The FBI’s Wu file also alleges that they laundered drug money through their label (supplying no evidence in support of this), that an unidentified informant suspected ties between “the drug business of the Bloods street gang and the Wu-Tang Clan,” and that the group was tied to another murder-that of Jerome “Boo Boo” Estrella, on June 20, 1999. If music is that tool where you start to see people who are not designed to win start to make it, then you’re going to target that system and try to find a way to control it,” Masta Killa tells me. “When you have things designed and in place for a certain group of people to not succeed and you start to see them rising, you want to know how they’re doing it. The Feds claimed that, “Johnson was an associate of the WTC who had a falling out with the group and it is believed that his murder was ordered by someone within the WTC,” though didn’t offer up any further evidence. One of those guns was said to be used to murder Robert “Pooh” Johnson in the Wu’s stomping grounds of Staten Island, New York, on Dec.
1 on the Billboard charts, rocketing the Wu to global stardom-the FBI alleged that the group “purchased numerous guns from the Steubenville, Ohio, area” and that the sellers had ID’d the rappers in photos presented to them. In 1997, the same year Forever was released-which debuted at No. RZA and 4th Disciple-accompanied by Ghostface and ODB-would occasionally record rap demos on a 4-track in the basement of 4th Disciple’s grandmother’s house, and 4th eventually worked as a turntablist on the Wu’s debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), as well as a producer on their sophomore album Wu-Tang Forever and various other Wu-affiliated solo projects. It was also there that he met 4th Disciple. There, he got into drug-dealing and various other crimes, culminating in an attempted murder charge where he faced up to eight years in prison (he was acquitted). Though born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, the Wu’s de facto leader, RZA, went to live with his mother in Steubenville at the age of 10. They might have been trying to observe us, but they were observing everybody.” “And we ain’t never got in trouble with the Feds.
“That’s false,” adds Cappadonna of the FBI’s claim that they were a gang. And when the rap icons ran into Comey backstage, they snapped this smiling photo with the ex-G-man: The main guest on the program that evening was none other than James Comey, the former FBI director turned unlikeliest of #Resistance heroes. “You’ve got no business keeping that record to yourself.” The cookie would not budge. “That album belongs to the people,” Method Man said to the cookie. government after its owner, pharma-grifter Martin Shkreli, was convicted on two counts of securities fraud. You see, the album, made over six years, stored in a high-security vault at the Royal Mansour Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco, and sold at auction for a record $2 million, was seized by the U.S. Last April, during an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, two of the most prominent members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Method Man and Ghostface Killah, appeared in a comedy sketch wherein the rappers demanded back the lone copy of their mythical hip-hop album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin from a cookie resembling Attorney General Jeff Sessions.