A well written, well researched deep dive into the historical collection known as the Wu Tang Clan. By someone who was there for lots of it, no less.

Completing this book should qualify the reader for some sort of continuing education credit, and I say that as a compliment.

As opposed to an exhaustive dive into minutiae of each and every Wu-Tang album, Fernando, who himself is able to hold water as an expert on the group for several hefty reasons outlined in the introduction, lays down what's sure to be one of the definitive books on their history and cultural impact while also working hard to give a big-picture view on the kind of world that would produce these 9 rappers.

Now, there's definitely some breakdowns of albums (I'm guessing that Fernando just cherry-picked the ones he felt were the most notable) and, trust me, it gets down to the nitty-gritty, but it's an exceptionally educational and curious exercise, as I had no clue that "sampling" could get so finite, specific, and layered.

Adorning each of the members (and several more on the periphery) with backstory, key contributions, and referential material to help place rhymes and tracks into better context, it's a coherent masterwork that's as useful to a super-fan as it is to the totally unfamiliar.

At over 1000 pages, the story breathes and hardly gets redundant, although I can see if someone would get tired of reading after their 5 or 6th dissection of an album, but that sort of breakdown is one of the goals of the book, so it's quite beneficial to persevere. Toward the end, we do have mere mentions of some Wu albums that don't get the same treatment, and I'm not sure if that was a call to keep things tight, or if the albums were deemed that unimportant; at any rate, I don't think that the book necessary suffers because of those omissions, but fans of the group who were digging on that same picking apart of each song might've really dug on having a few more to "complete the set", as it were, at least up and until 2021.

Will it make the reader an instant fan? At the very least, I believe it'll gift them with a much greater appreciation for the work ethic and talent of The Wu, which is undeniable when considering the sum of their achievements. As someone who's bought something from the 36 Chambers website, I can attest personally to their business acumen, as their customer service goes above and beyond.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Hatchette Books for the advance read.