POPSCREEN: The Wu-Tang Clan

A musician’s career can’t last forever, but a well-managed franchise is eternal. The Beatles are a good example: their record label’s maneuvering has kept the group profitable long past their final album. The Wu-Tang Clan, a group with similar franchise potential, was unable to sample “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” for their newest song due to strict copyright restrictions. So, with the help of Dhani Harrison (the late George’s son), Erykah Badu, and John Frusciante, they “interpolated” the classic Beatle’s song as “The Heart Gently Weeps” The rap is still solid, but the video shows that the Wu-Tang Clan has become a bit camera-shy. As the gap widens between the aging members of the Wu-Tang Clan and the hyperbolic stage personas of their earlier careers, the group’s visual presentation has shifted toward the timeless appeal of guns, drugs, and money.

The video opens with a geisha twirling onstage under fake snowfall, playing a slow acoustic intro while singing new words to Harrison’s melody. She spins her fan, and the video cuts to a spinning tape recorder. Raekwon gets the first verse as stacks of cash change hands in an anonymous smoke-filled backroom. Everyone knows the Wu-Tang Clan loves martial arts, but it’s unclear why they’ve chosen a traditional Japanese dance performance as the backdrop of their shady business deal.

RZA seems to be enjoying the show, but shit gets real during Ghostface’s verse when the deal in the back room turns violent. As Clan members rush to the back room pulling heat, a geisha enters with the “merchandise.” Here, the symbolic function of the geisha emerges. The pale-faced woman, spinning a fan like a tape recorder while being showered with kilo upon kilo of white powder, unites sex, drugs, money, and music in a single image. The geisha, not the Wu-Tang Clan, is the focal point of this video: she is the ideal of a high-rolling hip-hop lifestyle, an ideal that will long outlive the rappers who made it famous.

—Mark A. VanMiddlesworth