After his diabetes had gotten so bad that it had almost killed him, Ghost left for West Africa, working with bush doctors because he didn’t trust modern medicine. Ghostface Killah started writing Supreme Clientele in a dirt-floor hut in Benin. At the dawn of a new decade, Ghost internalized and channeled all that Wu-Tang chaos into a true masterpiece of American abstract art. And then Ghostface Killah came through, eating seasoned giraffe ribs and dicking down Oprah and inviting all of us to walk with him like Dorothy.
#SUPREME CLIENTELE BOOK FULL#
C-list Wu-Tang affiliates were putting up major-label bricks full of turgid blustery yelling all over the place, and America’s white stoner teenagers were starting to learn that they couldn’t just keep throwing their camp-counselor and Sandwich-Artist paychecks at anything with the W logo on it.īy early 2000, Wu-Tang was an empire in decline, a chaotic mass of feuding clans and unrealized plans. GZA, Method Man, and (especially) Raekwon had all put out messy and inconsistent sophomore albums. A flood had destroyed RZA’s studio, annihilating many of the beats that he had made during his most creative period. The FBI was investigating Wu-Tang as a criminal organization. Some of his comrades were still struggling. Method Man, for one, had become a pop star. Even more miraculously, they’d succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, pitting labels against each other and developing a comic-book cosmology that made them every white teenage stoner’s favorite rap crew. Wu-Tang had formed, miraculously, out of a few different squabbling Staten Island cliques a few years before. You can’t have a successful nine-man rap crew without dealing with a few problems along the way.
Their narrative had gotten all fucked up. Ol’ Dirty Bastard had not counted on Puff Daddy emerging from the wake of Biggie Smalls’ murder to absolutely dominate pop music, finally moving New York rap to the center of the cultural universe. That album, filler and all, was huge, but something else was even bigger. They had just finished up their strange and unprecedented solo-album run, five different artists putting out incredible RZA-produced records on different labels, before reassembling for the massive blockbuster double album Wu-Tang Forever. The 1998 Grammys were supposed to belong to the Wu-Tang Clan because 1997 was supposed to belong to the Wu-Tang Clan. Shawn Colvin wasn’t the only one confused that night.
“I’d like to thank the gentleman from Wu-Tang for that clarification,” he smirked. Shawn Colvin looked around for a couple of seconds, giggled, and said, “I’m confused now.” When she finished her speech, the camera panned over to Kelsey Grammer, the evening’s host. Peace.” A frantic-looking white man in a tuxedo then ushered the Dirt Dog off the stage. I want y’all to know that this is ODB, and I love you all. So they let Dirty just keep talking.ĭirty had more to say: “We teach the children. Erykah Badu and Wyclef Jean, the award’s two presenters, didn’t know what to do either. She did a little dance on her way to the stage, and then she stopped in her tracks, confused, not sure what to do next. Shawn Colvin had just been announced the winner of the Song Of The Year statuette. It was 1998, possibly the last year when anything interesting happened at the Grammy Awards. “I don’t know how y’all see it, but when it come to the children, Wu-Tang is for the children.” This was Ol’ Dirty Bastard, resplendent in maroon, half-coherent.
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