“36 Chambers changed rap in countless ways, but among the most important was its explosion of a conventional and increasingly constrictive authenticity. The “gangsta rap” popularized by N.W.A. and its individual members had been an electrifying blend of fantasy and reality. But it had grown embattled since the 1992 LA riots, and a vicious feud between Dre and Eazy-E—which reached its nadir with the latter’s It’s On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa EP in fall of 1993—had devolved into an idiotic referendum on which millionaire could claim to have murdered the most people the loudest. 36 Chambers didn’t insist on its reality but rather obsessively dismantled and reconstructed it: The endless aliases, the elaborate and ever-murky mythologies, the dizzying forays into pop-culture flotsam. “Method Man” opens with a discussion of stabbing tongues with rusty screwdrivers (among other, less printable acts) and then careens through four minutes of references to Dr. Seuss, Looney Tunes, Fat Albert, Hall and Oates, peanut butter brands. 36 Chambers made it safe for hardcore rap to once again be what it had always been first and foremost: a feat of miraculous artistry and imagination.”

– http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_completist/2013/11/enter_the_wu_tang_clan_a_quixotic_attempt_to_listen_to_every_track_by_rza.html