The Method Man joined the Wu-Tang clan as a stand out artist with a unique style, gritty voice, and hard sound give credence to his name. Also, known as Clifford Smith Jr., The Method Man, got his name from the 1979 film “Method Man”. This inspiration for the name continues the support for the claim that these films had great influence over their lives, and were very important to them for escaping their circumstances.
About mid-way through the album, the track “Method Man” focuses on just, that. The Method Man and his style. This deviates from the group-centric focus of each member with different verses. For about the first minute, a skit between Raekwon and Method Man depicts joking brutality. This transforms into the beat, and the GZA starts the intro after the skit. The Method Man fills all of the song elements expect for the outro, which is a restatement of the intro, with the RZA, Ghostface Killah, and Method Man. The main musical elements in this track are the stand out piano riff that outlines the mid-range. A boom-bap style drums and kicks help support this riff, into a beat.
“Bring Da Ruckus” starts with a sample from the Japanese film Shaolin vs Wu-Tang, that tells of “Shaolin shadowboxing and the Wu-Tang sword style (“Bring Da Ruckus”).”. This transitions into a dark piano melody with snaps keeping tempo. We get back to back verses of different members, including Raekwon, Inspectah Deck, the GZA and the RZA. Their lyrical references to issues regarding their marginalization show some of their political and societal ideals. Aswell, their sampling references help depict the commonalities of the groups childhoods, and films they grew up with.
The track titled “C.R.E.A.M” also utilizes the technology used in many ways. It utilizes a catchy piano lick for the main heart of the beat. With this a heavy bass pattern as well as a drum kick. While the beat is relatively simple in modern terms it still carries a heavy texture and substance with the wide range of frequencies utilized.
The meaning behind the song can be seen in the title. The acronym stands for Cash Rules Everything Around Me. This means a few things. Cash can be seen as ruling their upbringings. With the choice to seemingly either hustle and sell drugs or make music, after seeing family members incarcerated, the members soon realized that music was the path for them. Also, it also represents the world around them, and the saying “Cash is King” resonates with this song and its meaning.
These tracks display their use of technology in different ways and the musical elements that attribute to this. The synthesizers and sampling workstations come together as tools for the group’s expression.