I was too young to remember this but when folks say nothing was like it when it came out care to explain what was out at the time? I thought stuff like Naughty by nature, cypress hill, onyx, etc were bringing the rawness to the screen? Please school this younging
They kinda touch on it a little the show, but West Coast music was still really popular. Deathrow still had the radio on lock in most places. You mention Cypress Hill. They were around and they made raw music, but the sound an feel of it was way different than the Wu. For example, Black Sunday dropped a little bit before Enter the 36. They had Insane in the Brain and Illusions in rotation. Both are dope songs, but nothing that would prepare you for the Wu.
The game was starting to shift back east, so there were popular NYC acts at the time, but again, you have to take account for the sound.
You mentioned Naughty By Nature and Onyx. They did have songs poppin around the same time as the Wu came out.
So from a rap standpoint, Naughty was bringing heat with the rapping but their music sound polished not raw. Onyx had the energy, and that defined them more than anything else. You also had other groups like the Boot Camp Click acts that made good East Coast rap but it just didn't bowl you over. The show actually mentioned some other stuff too.
So those are posse cuts. They are pretty raw, and they came out around the same time as the Wu stuff. So it's not to say that the Wu was unlike anything at the time. That said they kinda combined everything that's good about all those other acts and took it to a level that no one else was doing it. I mean you could compare Scenario to Protect Your Neck in terms of posse cuts, but you have to acknowledge that Scenario was a collab between two groups. You wasn't going to buy a Tribe album and hear a bunch of songs like that. Same thing with Headbanger. The Hit Squad was a crew, but they weren't making albums together. You wasn't going to be an EPMD album and get that same feeling from half the songs on it. Wu basically combine everything that all those other groups were bringing to the table. They had the energy. They had a raw sound. They had a group of niggas that could rip the mic. They also had things that no one else had like Rza production and a gimmick that stood out and made them unique. When you put all that together, it just made them feel like something new even among a bunch of other good East Coast acts.
