Revisionist History #1: Two Alternate Takes on Wu-Tang Forever (1997)

An idea I had been toying with for a long time, but only for the better part of a year as a serious endeavor, is a new series that will be referred to, for now anyway, as Revisionist History. With this, yet another excuse for me to not write an album review (I'm not exactly hurting for those, right?), I aim to explore just how important an album's sequencing is for its success. Putting songs in a specific order on any project is an art form, one that I am currently practicing through the trial-by-fire that is recording any episode of RandoMax Radio, and the way one song flows into the next deeply impacts how it is received by the listener. Or at least it does when the artists gives a shit.

Not that sequencing even seems to matter in the streaming era, when anyone can simply just hit 'next' whenever they don't want to listen to a thing, but there are some artists that do seem to treat this seriously, and I wish to honor them by, basically, trying to make their projects sound better.

I plan to do this through a combination of editing and re-sequencing - the "editing" being, simply put, getting rid of the filler shit that doesn't work for me, while the "re-sequencing" is exactly what it sounds like. The first entrant into this series is the Wu-Tang Clan sophomore album Wu-Tang Forever, which has been redone by both myself and Lord AAA (of the No Knockoffs Radio Wavecast and Boom Bap Reviews), also known as frequent contributor shoe-in.


A double-disc effort released in 1997 that marked the end of ringleader The RZA's five-year plan, Wu-Tang Forever may be one of the only such projects within our chosen genre that has a right to exist in the first place - with nine official members (at the time) in the crew, along with several affiliates, there's an obvious need of space in order to provide a showcase for every single person. And yet, while it was massively successful, cementing the group's legacy in the music industry, there's an awful lot of tracks on this motherfucker that could have been left on the cutting-room floor, or at least released as part of a separate bundle, as the project's sprawling nature threatens to upend the ongoing narrative of the Wu on multiple occasions.

First up is my own hatchet job, where my editing skills helped chop twenty-seven tracks (or twenty-nine, for all my overseas readers) down to thirteen. Thirteen. I gave myself pretty heavy restrictions here - my rules for this re-do were as follows:

(1) Every member of the Clan must appear at least once;
(2) I looked at every other "official" Wu-Tang Clan project (so, not The Saga Continues or Once Upon a Time In Shaolin) and took an average of the songs on each, coming up with fourteen tracks, which I wanted to limit myself to as a part of this challenge. I ended up with thirteen as a fluke;
(3) I had to only use the songs on the project itself. No alternate takes, no songs recorded during the same sessions but released elsewhere, and no remixes (I may relax this rule in possible later entries).

What I ultimately carved out of this monster is what I believe to be a tighter, much more aggressive set (one that almost certainly removed some of your favorite tracks from the project) that shows off both the lyrical skills and the boasts-n-bullshit the Wu excel at. And I say that even with the inclusion of the intro from the second disc, which I feel makes much more sense as the kickoff to the entire project, since it features The RZA (and GZA) talking about how much the group has progressed since you saw them last, and, of course, how much shit has been stolen from them since their rise.

MAX'S WU-TANG FOREVER:
1. Intro (from Disc 2)
2. Reunited
3. Heaterz
4. Hellz Wind Staff
5. As High As Wu-Tang Get
6. Severe Punishment
7. Older Gods
8. Triumph
9. Impossible
10. For Heavens Sake
11. Deadly Melody
12. A Better Tomorrow
13. It's Yourz

Due to Mixcloud restrictions, I'm not posting this as a continuous mix (which, sadly, means there will be some interludes that lead nowhere, so try to ignore those and maybe I'll do something about it soon? Hint hint?), but this is supposed to be an album anyway, so below you can listen to my reconstruction on Spotify. (Also, while you're here, why not follow RandoMax Radio on Spotify? I plan on doing some more stuff over there. Could be interesting.)



Lord AAA, on the other hand, went by his own set of rules, which boiled down to eschewing any and all introductions and simply tossing aside the songs he thought were bullshit while rearranging some of the others. He opted to break the tracks down into one of four different suites, which I'll let him sort-of explain:

"1-9 is the 'bombastic flex' suite, fittingly the longest because that's what Wu[-Tang] Forever was supposed to be any damn way, with 10-12 slowing down to the jolting 'wake-up' suite. 13-18 is the 'mean-mugging' suite, while 19-21 is the 'somber reflection' suite. It'll make sense when you hear it."

LORD AAA'S WU-TANG FOREVER:
1. Triumph
2. Reunited
3. For Heavens Sake
4. Cash Still Rules / Scary Hours (Still Don't Nothing Move but the Money)
5. Visionz
6. As High As Wu-Tang Get
7. Severe Punishment
8. Older Gods
9. It's Yourz
10. Sunshower (NOTE: This song isn't available on Spotify, so the link leads to YouTube instead.)
11. Impossible
12. Little Ghetto Boys
13. Deadly Melody
14. The Projects
15. The MGM
16. Duck Seazon
17. Hellz Wind Staff
18. Heaterz
19. The City
20. Bells of War
21. A Better Tomorrow



Maybe you feel like the length of the project is perfect the way it is, or perhaps you appreciate trimming it down to a single-disc effort. Regardless, I want you both to give the two alternate-universe Wu-Tang Forevers a spin, and let us know in the comments which one you prefer, or if you'd rather ride with the original album. Feel free to share these revisions on social media, as well: Lord AAA's Twitter handle is (at) lord3aaa and his Instagram is found (at) NarrativeFanatic, while my Twitter is still (at) hhid_Max, where you can still argue with me if you wish.

Enjoy, follow RandoMax Radio on Spotify, and if you have a pitch for a future entry in this series, let me know! It doesn't have to be limited to just double albums, mind you.

-Max