Wu Tang always has stayed true to its Shaolin roots. Something missing from today's game.

In today’s game filled with redundant, cookie cutter types like Drake overhyped like a WWE has been, sometimes one needs to only look back at what rap/hip hop once was.

It peaked in the 90′s due to mc’s like LL Cool J, 2Pac, Biggie, Nas, Jay Z, Ice Cube, Busta Rhymes, Snoop Dogg, Redman, DMX, Eminem, Jadakiss, Big Pun plus overlooked AZ and groups such as A Tribe Called Quest, NWA, Cypress Hill, De La Soul, Beastie Boys, Mobb Deep, House Of Pain and Onyx. No bs. Just telling stories that mesmerized the audience with lyrical genius. Something we rarely get today. Thanks mainstream!

There also was this kickass group from Staten Island. Everyone knows them. Wu Tang are as legit as it comes, combining a unique blend of talent featuring Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, GZA, RZA, U-God, Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck and deceased legend Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Wu is more than just talented rappers who lay it all on the line, collaborating on memorable hits like C.R.E.A.M., Protect Ya Neck, Ice Cream, M.E.T.H.O.D. Man, Gravel Pit, Bring The Pain, 7th Chamber II and Bring Da Ruckus. They represent their Shaolin roots, shooting hard from the street. The way rap should sound, in a style all their own. When you hear one of their songs, you know instantly who it is and that’s for the right reasons instead of the wrong.

While it’d be easy to criticize who’s being pushed in our faces, I have to put the real blame where it belongs. On the media and radio stations. This is what they want kids to listen to. Who cares about other alternatives like Meth archrival Joe Budden, Mos Def, Lupe Fiasco, Young Jeezy, Juelz Santana (minus Lil Wayne), Taleb Kweli and Common. Today, everything all about bling bling. That’s not what we grew up on.

Let’s kick it back oldschool and listen/check out Wu’s “Triumph.” Just listen to the passion they bring. Oh. And the video is off the charts, shot perfectly. Gangsta! As real as it gets.

Wu Tang: “Triumph”

[Ol Dirty Bastard]
What y’all thought y’all wasn’t gon’ see me?
I’m the Osirus of this shit
Wu-Tang is here forever, motherfucker
It’s like this ninety-seven
Aight my niggaz and my niggarettes
Let’s do it like this
I’ma rub your ass in the moonshine
Let’s take it back to seventy-nine

[Inspectah Deck]
I bomb atomically, Socrates’ philosophies
and hypothesis can’t define how I be droppin these
mockeries, lyrically perform armed robbery
Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me
Battle-scarred shogun, explosion when my pen hits
tremendous, ultra-violet shine blind forensics
I inspect you, through the future see millenium
Killa B’s sold fifty gold sixty platinum
Shacklin the masses with drastic rap tactics
Graphic displays melt the steel like blacksmiths
Black Wu jackets queen B’s ease the guns in
Rumble with patrolmen, tear gas laced the function
Heads by the score take flight incite a war
Chicks hit the floor, diehard fans demand more
Behold the bold soldier, control the globe slowly
Proceeds to blow swingin swords like Shinobi
Stomp grounds and pound footprints in solid rock
Wu got it locked, performin live on your hottest block

[Method Man]
As the world turns, I spread like germs
Bless the globe with the pestilence, the hard-headed never learn
It’s my testament to those burned
Play my position in the game of life, standin firm
on foreign land, jump the gun out the fryin pan, into the fire
Transform into the Ghostrider, a six-pack
and (A Streetcar Named Desire), who got my back?
In the line of fire holdin back, what?
My peoples if you with me where the fuck you at?
Niggaz is strapped, and they tryin to twist my beer cap
It’s court adjourned, for the bad seed from bad sperm
Herb got my wig fried like a bad perm, what the blood
clot, we smoke pot, and blow spots
You wanna think twice, I think not
The Iron Lung ain’t got ta tell you where it’s coming from
Guns of Navarone, tearing up your battle zone
Rip through your slums

[Cappadonna]
I twist darts from the heart, tried and true
Loop my voice on the LP, martini on the slang rocks
Certified chatterbox, vocabulary ‘Donna talkin
Tell your story walkin
Take cover kid, what? Run for your brother, kid
Run for your team, and your six camp rhyme groupies
So I can squeeze with the advantage, and get wasted
My deadly notes reigns supreme
Your fort is basic compared to mine
Domino effect, arts and crafts
Paragraphs contain cyanide
Take a free ride on my dart, I got the fashion
catalogues for all y’all to all praise to the Gods

[Ol Dirty Bastard]
The saga continues
Wu-Tang, Wu-Tang

[U-God]
Olympic torch flaming, we burn so sweet
The thrill of victory, the agony, defeat
We crush slow, flamin deluxe slow
For, judgment day cometh, conquer, it’s war
Allow us to escape, hell glow spinning bomb
Pocket full of shells out the sky, Golden Arms
Tune spit the shitty Mortal Kombat sound
The fateful step make, the blood stain the ground
A jungle junkie, vigilante tantrum
A death kiss, catwalk, squeeze another anthem
Hold it for ransom, tranquilized with anesthetics
My orchestra, graceful, music ballerinas
My music Sicily, rich California smell
An axekiller adventure, paint a picture well
I sing a song from Sing-Sing, sippin on ginseng
Righteous wax chaperone, rotating ring king

[RZA]
Watch for the wooden soldiers, C-Cypher-Punks couldn’t hold us
A thousand men rushing in, not one nigga was sober
Perpendicular to the square, we stand bold like Flare
Escape from your Dragon’s Lair, in particular
My beats travel like a vortex, through your spine
to the top of your cerebrum cortex
Make you feel like you bust a nut from raw sex
Enter through your right ventricle clog up your bloodstream
now terminal, like Grand Central Station
Program fat baselines, on Novation
Getting drunk like a fuck, I’m duckin five-year probation

[GZA]
War of the masses, the outcome, disastrous
Many of the victim family save they ashes
A million names on walls engraved in plaques
Those who went back, received penalties for the axe
Another heart is torn as close ones mourn
Those who stray, niggaz get slayed on the song

[Masta Killa]
The track renders helpless and suffers from multiple stab wounds
and leaks sounds that’s heard
ninety-three million miles away from came one
to represent the Nation, this is a gathering
of the masses that come to pay respects to the Wu-Tang Clan
As we engage in battle, the crowd now screams in rage
The high chief Jamel-I-Reef take the stage
Light is provided through sparks of energy
from the mind that travels in rhyme form
Givin sight to the blind
The dumb are mostly intrigued by the drum
Death only one can save self from
This relentless attack of the track spares none

[Ghostface Killah]
Yo! Yo! Yo, fuck that, look at all these crab niggaz laid back
Lampin like them gray and black Puma’s on my man’s rack
Codeine was forced in your drink
You had a Navy Green salamander fiend, bitches never heard you scream
You two-faces, scum of the slum, I got your whole body numb
Blowin like Shalamar in eighty-one
Sound convincin, thousand dollar court by convention
Hands, like Sonny Liston, get fly permission
Hold the fuck up, I’ll unfasten your wig, bad luck
I humiliate, separate the English from the Dutch
it’s me, black nobled you Ali
Came in threes we like the Genovese, is that so?
Caesar needs the greens, it’s Earth
Ninety-three million miles from the first
Rough turbulence, the waveburst, split the megahertz

[Raekwon]
Aiyyo that’s amazing, gun in your mouth talk, verbal foul hawk
Connect thoughts to make my manchild walk
Swift notarizer, Wu-Tang, all up in the high-riser
New York Yank’ visor world tranquilizer
Just a dosage, delegate my Clan with explosives
While, my pen blow lines ferocious
Mediterranean, see y’all, the number one draft pick
Tear down the beat God, then delegate the God to see God
The swift chancellor, flex, the white-gold tarantula
Track truck diesel, play the weed God, substantiala
Max mostly, undivided, then slide in, sickenin
Guaranteed, made em jump like Rod Strickland