on myth-making, comics, and hulu's 'wu-tang: an american saga'

Photos: HULU; Illustration: Dillen Phelps (for Decider)

By the time I had discovered them, I had already been listening to standard suburban (in my case, rural) white boy fare like the Beasties, Tribe, and Arrested Development, but even still, Wu-Tang was a first for me—a gateway drug, if you will. 

This was rap-rap. Street rap. Hard rap. Gritty tales of lives I couldn’t possibly relate to. 

And yet there was so much I could relate to. 

In addition to stories about dope dealing and hustling for money, Wu was also so much more: funny, mythic, mysterious, nerdy, messy, chaotic, and, perhaps most importantly to me, obsessed with kung fu and comics.

This last point clicked with me sometime after buying GZA’s Liquid Swords at a Best Buy or something during the ’96 Olympics in Atlanta. 

Or rather, it clicked after buying some Vans at an Atlanta skate shop and getting a Vans compilation that included "Shadowboxin'."

The beat damn near snapped my neck. 

Then the intro alludes to Ghost Rider. OK, OK. The first verse references a horror-movie director (!). The hook is a chopped clip from a kung-fu flick (daayum). The second verse shouts out a professional wrestler (whooooa). 

Here, on full dazzling display, was a comic book come to life. A kung-fu movie in my headphones.

"Shadowboxin'" was a show-stopper, so much so I immediately tracked down a Liquid Swords CD as soon as I could on that vacation. 

I bumped that album the rest of the summer and into the fall soccer season, especially on long bus rides between, say, Vincent, Ohio, and Point Pleasant, West Virginia. 

I was sucked into their oversized, mythic universe. It became, briefly, a new religion for me, a guidebook I’d obsess over for the next decade-plus by tracking down whatever new release one of the group’s various members had dropped and poring over the self-referential lyrics and obsessing over the vivid storytelling. 

I liked living in this world. And so even as the quality of records waned for a period, I stuck around, as willing as ever to be among friends, to return to worlds that feel lived in. 

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And now, a Wu resurgence might be upon me. 

Hulu’s new series, “Wu-Tang: An American Saga" gets everything about this iconic group right—and then some.

This isn't great TV for Wu-fanatics either.  

After one episode, it was clear “Wu-Tang” is one of, if not the best music biopics I’d ever seen. I’ve now seen the four that have been released and I can say—no spoilers—it never lets up in its beautiful myth-making. 

As you could probably guess by now, I'm so hyped to be back in this world, seeing the group's world-building from a different perspective.

• Wu Wednesdays: New episodes of "Wu-Tang: An American Saga" are released every Wednesday on Hulu.
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• Bonus: If you start watching, you might be confused about who's who (they don't use their rap names much, if at all, in the first four episodes), this Decider primer is where it’s at.