Photo Courtesy of Wu Tang Clan official blog
Wu-Tang Clan has embraced the age of digital file-sharing, recently announcing they’ve chosen to share their raw music files on a music exchange platform called Blend. The Wu-Tang family, known for having one of the largest vocabularies among all hip-hop artists, claims to have “always been a champion of open-source creative processes”. They’ve taken this idea of open-source collaboration even further by sharing their raw, un-mastered music files on Blend, a network that allows artists all over the globe to colaborate on unfinished music projects. Essentially, Wu-Tang is giving a digital generation access to their original music files. Producers, DJs, perhaps even rappers can alter, manipulate, and add-to these tracks as they please on Blend.
Oliver Grant, a.k.a. Power, says that the move to digital collaboration is one way to keep “hip hop and the culture as a whole moving in forward directions that actually work and compliment the culture without taking away the essence of it.” Hip-hop has a history of sharing and borrowing in the creative processes. Sampling classic soul records, re-purposing beats from funk and jazz tracks, and producer, DJ, and rap collaborations are all part of the culture and process.
Wu-Tang also chose to debut a clip of one of the first tracks on the Wutang Parental Advisory album on Blend. The track is titled So Many Detailz, and will be available in sharing formats ProTools, Ableton Live and Logic, to encourage a ‘wider talent pool’ to collaborate. Power explains “we’re giving it to you, you guys take it and throw it back on us and lets see what sticks ,” adding that “the stuff that sticks could be some good sh*t!”. The genre is unimportant to Wu-Tang, they’re only “looking to be shocked”, so if you think you have the skills to impress the Clan, check out the ‘So Many Detailz’ project on Blend here, and add what you will.