This was supposed to be a Wu-Tang gig – so where were the Wu-Tang Clan?

MUSIC
Wu-Tang Clan | Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber ★★★
Rod Laver Arena, March 27

How can Wu-Tang — a group that rewrote hip-hop’s DNA and the very meaning of cool — possibly live up to the nostalgia of their heyday?

They tried – starting by turning Rod Laver Arena into a gargantuan recreation of my bedroom circa 1997, where Wu-Tang was in heavy rotation. I hadn’t been in a room so choked with weed-smoke since my VCE.

And like me doing VCE, there was the distinct feeling of not being prepared to present to the class.

The elephant in the room: half of the group weren’t there. Although the Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber Tour was billed as “all living members, together for the final time”, Method Man, Raekwon, Cappadonna and Young Dirty Bastard were absent, without explanation. Rappers whose voices many of Wu-Tang’s greatest tracks hinge on.

So began a muddled speed run of one of the greatest discographies in history. The remaining members performed the lines of their other members in some songs, and abandoned others halfway through. In the high-energy dance set late in the show, radio hit Gravel Pit ran for a handful of bars until Method Man’s swaggering delivery would have been impossible to salvage through karaoke and simply … stopped.

Wu-Tang famously “form like Voltron” – greater together than the sum of their parts. Strip those parts out and watch Voltron’s wheels fall off in real time.

A few times the Clan walked offstage altogether to run recorded videos and skits. A mid-set in memoriam for fallen rappers set to a Barbra Streisand song? Touching, but baffling. Also: a trailer for RZA’s new movie? A QR code to vote Wu-Tang into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? Some kind of raffle? Why the heck not at this point?

GZA’s vocal delivery is as tight and powerful as ever. RZA remains one of the coolest men on the planet, doing incredible heavy lifting for the stripped-back clan. Sadly, the sheer brilliance of his beats – the sparse, iconic production that defined an era – was recreated by a live band that got lost in a sound mix that was both muddy and pitchy.

But when you could hear them, when they were hitting their bars, when the whole crowd bounced on ageing knees to immortal beats, it’s undeniable – Wu-Tang forever.

Messy, chaotic, flashes of brilliance; bad sound but great vibes, this was a show that felt both 35 years and five minutes in the making.

Reviewed by Liam Pieper

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