4. “Protect Ya Neck”

Wu-Tang Clan: "Protect Ya Neck"/"After The Laughter Comes Tears" (Wu-Tang 12", 1992) and later on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (Loud/RCA, 1993); composed by Robert Diggs, Jason Hunter, Lamont Hawkins, Clifford Smith, Corey Woods, Dennis Coles, Russell Jones, and Gary Grice

Hip-hop is now twice as old as it was when this record came out, but its innovation still stands like Monk’s transmutation of “Just You, Just Me” into “Evidence” (or Webern’s “Five Movements,” for that matter). No one before or since has conceptualized a voice and beats matrix like Robert Diggs (RZA) did it here, with uncannily perfect pitch. A shuffling sampled backbeat with three spaced out (in every sense) single-note keyboard figures spanning two octaves illuminate a shifting set of dissonant fourths that refuse to resolve. (I just taught myself to play this on the piano. It held up.) The Wu acquired its initial notoriety in part because it could foreground (here) eight wholly distinct MCs (with their respective aesthetic peaks spread over two decades - and counting, in some cases). But the intrinsic tension of RZA’s sound world could have easily contextualized twice as many and just gotten tastier like a roux gets when the fat suspension is just right. Not even P-Funk could embody multitudes like this. And GZA’s line about “money getting stuck to the gum under the table” is the single best précis of dealing with record companies since Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Workin’ For MCA.”

Note: 25 secular essays (each one exactly 200 words long) about 25 songs, to appear one per day during Advent (or so) from Nov. 27 through Dec. 21.