The Wu

The Wu-Tang Clan is the most vicious and lyrically profound hip-hop crew in history.  People tend to mistakenly say that hip-hop is dead, "How can hip-hop be dead if Wu-Tang is forever," asks the producer and fellow lyricist the Abbott, or RZA.  Wu-Tang Clan is a nine man rap group originating from Queens, New York.  Method 'Tical' Man, GZA (the Genius), RZA (Abbott), Inspectah Deck (Rebel INS), Masta Killa, Raekwon the Chef, the late Ol' Dirty Bastard, U-God, and Ghostface Killa make up this group.  All of them have also become succesful as solo artists along with attaing much praise and recognition for shaping hip-hop. 

RZA has been thought of as one of the pioneers for hip-hop production.  He uses an MPC (http://bit.ly/byeHkc) in which he takes samples from other songs and makes the samples his own.  Once he has all his sounds he starts the beat.  RZA has produced a majority of the other members solo albums.  His mind has been set to hip-hop since a very young age.  He was an avid freestyler among his friends as a child and qui8ckly grew for the genre.  His laid back flow and complex vocabulary and rhyming schemes make it very easy to pick out his verses in the songs. 

Inspectah Deck, however, foils RZA.  He has a very 'in-your-face' kind of flow and his multiple syllable rhymes are very complicated and interesting to hear.  He is very fast when he raps and commonly freestyles a lot of his material.  The INS came from a musical family so his passion and drive is fueled by his mother.  He is the only artist from the group who when he went solo, had another producer other than RZA, this being the Alchemist.