Wu-Tang Clan launch hip hop chess website
By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 2:08PM BST
09/06/2008
A notorious hip hop group noted for their violent lyrics and brushes with the law have developed an unlikely new sideline – online chess.
The eight-strong Wu-Tang Clan have launched a website called WuChess.com , which claims to be the “the world’s first online chess and urban social network”.
For £29 ($48) a year users can take on other rap fans across the world, set up their own chess “clans”, and even earn the right do battle with Wu-Tang Clan members and other chess-loving hip hop stars.
Players can compete to win prizes, or “just for the joy of flexing yer mentals”, the website says.
The project is a partnership between Wu-Tang Clan producer RZA and the ChessPark social network.
Source: The Telegraph
I have mixed feelings about this.
I feel like the effort is to make the rappers themselves more acceptable rather than make chess more accessable.
If they really want to make a statement, they should quit gangsta rap and promote chess full time as an outreach and apology for creating such destructive music.
Some would argue that gangsta rap is black culture, but I disagree. It is no more part of the black culture than the KKK is representative of southern white culture.
Many black children suffer from influence caused by gangsta rap and the ensuing cultural waste-land that surrounds it.
I work with the black community and have seen the effects of this music first hand. I have witnessed 6 year old children regurgitating rap lyrics describing female body parts, lewd sex acts, gang rape of women, and the celebration of drug use.
Before you criticize my comments, please walk in my shoes for a while.
Gangsta rap is a venomous cancer in the black community. There is no place for it in any community.
I only hope chess does not become equated with gangsta rap of any sorts. American chess has enough of its own problems, it doesn’t need new ones from a morally bankrupt musical style.
Sigh.
eye witness,
I understand what you’re saying,but I have to respectfully disagree. The members of Wu Tang Clan, especially RZA, are serious about chess. In fact, there was recently feature on the front of the New York Times website about him specifically and his chess initiatives. Making chess fun and accessible in communities that do not have many chess players is a good thing, and I don’t think it’s a publicity stunt.
I’m going to stay away from your other claims, except to say that if I were going to rank the problems facing urban communities, rap music would not be at the top of the list
“Making chess fun and accessible in communities that do not have many chess players is a good thing, and I don’t think it’s a publicity stunt.”
I agree with eye witness.
Rap artists promoting chess to urban communities is like the cigarette companies trying to teach children to avoid cigarettes or the porno industry teaching absitence.
I call your answer to eye witness the “Tupac defense”. Everyone likes to say how intelligent and “revolutionary” Tupac was, but in the end, he was another gangster thug who died like one.
No matter how much good RZA promotes chess, he is no different than the cigarette company or the porno industry. His product destroys lives. If you can’t see this then your point of view is what perpetuates the problems in the black community. It is called denial. I have no sympathy for gangster thugs. They are beyond redemption. Let chess be taught in schools by reputable people.
philanthropy by thugs is nothing but a publicity stunt to raise awareness for their vile products.
Anon 10:15,
It pains me to see anyone’s actions justified on the front pages of the New York Times.
I think I have had better results with toilet paper than with the NY Times.
At least I feel cleaner every time I use toilet paper.
The NY Times is biased and droning at best. I think it is the Enquirer magazine for the technically challenged who can’t get their news for the Internet.
“Making chess fun and accessible in communities that do not have many chess players is a good thing, and I don’t think it’s a publicity stunt.”
As always you gotta ‘Do the math’.
Why the big price tag? What ‘homey in the hood’ can afford $48 to play online chess? Obvious rip-off and money-maker for Chesspark.com.
It’ll end up populated by hordes of Vanilla Ice wannabes, watch.
If they were sincere, it’s be alot cheaper and priced to move for his audience.
eyewitness: I too work with the black community, and have seen what you described, but I come to a different conclusion. Gangsta rap is no more the cause of urban ills than is basketball. As I tell the kids, thinking that either is your “ticket” out is a stupid plan. Both are just entertainment for all but a few of us. Wu Tang is admired as successful artists. So if RZA’s interest in chess recruits more disciples to the game, than I am in full support of his efforts.
Has anyone who’s posted here ever heard a song by the Wu-tang Clan?
For instance, eye witness, maybe you’ve heard these lines:
“A man with a dream, with plans to make cream,/
Which failed: I went to jail at the age of 15,/
A young buck selling drugs and such who never had much/
Trying to get a clutch at what I could not… could not…/
The court played me short, now I face incarceration/
Pacing — going up state’s my destination./
Handcuffed in back of a bus, forty of us,/
Life as a shorty shouldn’t be so rough.”
This strikes me as a vivid description of the “waste-land” in which you work. If anything, it’s a warning against buying into drug culture.
In response to the anonymous poster who wrote,
“I call your answer to eye witness the “Tupac defense”. Everyone likes to say how intelligent and “revolutionary” Tupac was, but in the end, he was another gangster thug who died like one.”
Oddly, the answer you were responding to didn’t make anything resembling this claim. And being gunned down makes you a “gangster thug”? That’s bad news for murder victims. What’s more disturbing, though, is the apparent satisfaction you take in another human’s untimely death.
I agree, though, that the $48 price tag may be a deal breaker.
“That’s bad news for murder victims. What’s more disturbing, though, is the apparent satisfaction you take in another human’s untimely death.”
No, I gather no satisfaction from another human’s untimely demise, just Tupac.
Ha Ha!
How do you like these lyrics:
Worm Food for Thought: A Tupac Tribute by BIG-E-Brain Minor-It-Tea
“I used to rule the streets with a glock in my hand, but now I’m worm food!”
“I used to get rich off lyin’ to the people in da hood, but now I’m worm food!”
“The children stayed poor and I got richer, I taught them thug life, I was an awsome teacher, now I’m worm food.”
“I went bam bam bam and bang bang bang, now I’m Worm food”.
“My untimely death elevated Snoop Dogg to relevance but, now I’m worm food.”
“Idiots defend my life style and morally corrupt life on Susan Polgar’s blog, now I’m worm food.”
“I am not totally innocent, I am to blame, no fame or fortune for the hood, just more of the same, now I’m worm food.”
“ooooooooohhhhhhhhhh, I’m worm food! Yeah, ooooooooooh, IIIII’m Wooorm FoOoOoOoOoooOoooOoood.”
Thank goodness I’m dead. I am no longer a menace to society. Bon Appétit wormy!
God Bless Ronald Reagan!
MacGruder