Twenty-nine-year-old mic-controller Remedy enters a room Wu-Tang style: loud, unabashed, and accompanied by his Wu brethren.
The greasy smells of cheap Chinese take-out follow as Wu-Tang’s newest dart-spitting lyricist pulls up a chair and lowers his dinner in front of himself in a conference room of his management company’s office just north of Times Square.
He apologizes for not introducing everybody before diving into his eats. Skratch and Lounge Lo add to their belated introductions with a couple of head nods.
“That’s the kid that named Method Man right there,” Remedy says with a finger pointed towards Lo. “Nobody knows little shit like that.”
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Soon they will. Lounge Lo appears on Remedy’s highly anticipated debut LP album, The Genuine Article (Wu-Tang/Epic), which was scheduled for release April 17, alongside Wu swordsman Cappadonna and Wu-Tang Clan patriarch Rza who both lend their wordplay to the record.
In familiar Wu-Tang fashion, the lyrics on Remedy’s album are sharp and the beats remain rugged. There is, however, something strikingly different on the latest effort for global domination by the member of a clan known astronomically for Witty Unpredictable Talent And Natural. Remedy is white.
“Some people don’t think that a white kid can rhyme or something, like it’s not real,” he observes.
The rapper from middle-class Staten Island fuses lyrics on Jewish culture and pride, politics, and round the way street hustle with equivocal insight and credibility.
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“There’s so much shit out there, all you need is the information and you can do anything,” Remedy says, visibility catching himself after uttering that one piece of vernacular. “I probably can’t curse in here, right?”
Remedy’s apologies are in the manner of a linebacker offering a helping hand to an opponent he’s just flattened. Practically everything he says is underscored by a sense that he can and will whup someone’s ass if he decides to. But perhaps this is just another trait that he shares with the rest of the Clan.
Dedicated Wu listeners remember Remedy from 1998’s Wu-Tang Killa Bees: The Swarm LP, where in “Never Again” he delivered his chilling coming to terms with Holocaust atrocities:
Never again shall we march like sheep to the slaughter / Never again leave our sons and daughters / Stripped of our culture, robbed of our names/Raped of our freedom and thrown into the flames/Never again.
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Remedy speaks candidly about the discoveries he’s made of his heritage.
