We have a pair of tickets to see Wu Tang Clansman GZA perform his legendary 1995 solo album Liquid Swords beginning to end at The Troc on Saturday for the lucky 13th reader to sign up for our mailing list (to the right of this post, under the masthead). Signing up to our mailing list gets you special content alerts and early warnings about special promotions and concert ticket giveaways. And rest assured your email address will never be sold or shared with anyone, we promise upon pain of death. Us not you. So, let’s get you into a pair of GZA tickets. Good luck and godspeed!
RELATED: Liquid Swords is the second solo studio album by American rapper and Wu-Tang Clan member GZA, released November 7, 1995, on Geffen Records. Recording sessions for the album began mid-way 
through 1995 at producer RZA‘s basement studio in the New York City borough of Staten Island. The album heavily samples dialogue from the martial arts film Shogun Assassin and maintains a dark atmosphere throughout its course, while it incorporates lyrical references to chess, crime and philosophy. Liquid Swords features numerous guest appearances from the entire nine piece Wu-Tang Clan. Upon its release, Liquid Swords peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200 chart, and number two on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. On January 11, 1996, it was certified gold in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[1] The album initially received favorable critical reviews for its lyrically complex and musically hypnotic style. Over the years, its recognition has grown, with a number of famous publishers proclaiming it as one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. In 2007, the Chicago Tribune cited it as “one of the most substantial lyrical journeys in hip-hop history”.[2] Along with Raekwon‘s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…, Liquid Swords is often cited as the best solo work by a Wu-Tang member. In 2010, GZA and RZA announced that they are working on a sequel to commemorate its 15th-year anniversary. A remastered deluxe chess box set version was released on July 24, 2012. MORE
RELATED: The New York Times recently spent some time with RZA, who’s gearing up to release his directorial debut, the Quentin Tarantino-produced kung-fu film The Man With The Iron Fists. The profile pivoted around the rapper’s long-standing love of film and kung-fu rather than his rap career, but the Times has followed up with an interesting addendum about the possible future of the Wu-Tang Clan. RZA, always a powerful force behind Wu-Tang, explained that he’s considered a reunion under a few circumstances. MORE
NEW YORK TIMES: Based solely on his Wu-Tang years, when he channeled his youthful obsessions with movies like “Five Deadly Venoms” into potent rap albums like “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),” RZA, who is 43, would seem to possess unquestionable kung fu credentials. Since then, his movie roles (as in “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai”), soundtrack contributions (“Kill Bill”) and books (“The Wu-Tang Manual”) have given him broader canvasses on which to blend his hip-hop sensibilities with Eastern culture, combat and spirituality. Now his artistic wanderings have led to a $20 million movie, “The Man With the Iron Fists,” which RZA directed and stars in, and which Universal will release on Nov. 2. As befits its creator’s eclectic style, the film is a martial-arts mini-epic set in a mythical Chinese feudal state, where a dispute between a monarch and a nefarious gang draws in a rogue British soldier (played by Russell Crowe), a madam (Lucy Liu) and a humble blacksmith (RZA). For RZA, “The Man With the Iron Fists” is a substantial and risky step into the feature-filmmaking world, where he wants to stake out a new career. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: According to a recently released cache of FBI files, [Old Dirty Bastard] was also—along with members of the Wu-Tang Clan—allegedly “heavily involved in the sale of drugs, illegal guns, weapons possession, murder, carjackings, and other types of violent crimes,” lending credence to their celebrated song, “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta Fuck Wit.” The 94-page FBI file, released following a Freedom of Information Act request, says detectives sought the assistance of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to attempt to build a case against “the WTC Organization” that included “federal charges and a RICO prosecution.” MORE