Shaolin Annex (More for the Map).

Hey readers!  If you're here for the regular scheduled entry on the Map, don't worry - my look back at U-God's The Keynote Speaker will be up by the end of the day Wednesday.  In the meantime, there's one quick thing we need to discuss.

If you've ever looked all the way back at the beginning of Map of Shaolin, maybe you noticed the last thing on it was tomorrow's U-God album.  This is because when I made the map last spring, it was the most recent thing that had come out.  Since then, six more Wu-related albums have been released:  Wu-Tang Clan's group album A Better Tomorrow, Ghostface Killah's 36 Seasons and collaboration album Sour Soul (with Badbadnotgood), Raekwon's Fly International Luxurious Art, Czarface's Every Hero Needs a Villain and Ghostface's Twelve Reasons to Die II.  As if that's not enough, it looks like Method Man is about to drop his next solo album, The Meth Lab, and I'm sure more albums will be released in the future.

So what do we do?  For now, I've made an extra map for the six albums that have come out in the last year - from A Better Tomorrow to Twelve Reasons to Die II, check out the new map!

I'll continue this blog project for the next six or seven weeks, keeping our look at the Wu-Tang catalog going until we run out of albums.  After that, I'll make a new entry whenever a new album is released.  A couple things:  First, it would probably be pretty stupid to make a new map every time a new album is released, so just bookmark MapofShaolin.blogspot.com and check back whenever you hear about a new Wu-family record.  Second, since hip-hop albums suffer from more delays than LaGuardia, I won't be hyping anything or promising any dates on reviews until I have an album in my hands.  That's why the new Method Man album isn't on the new map above - you never know when some shit's gonna get pushed back a week or two.  Third, the long-standing "Legacy" section of map entries - where I talk about the album's reception and impact on that artist's career since its release - is going to disappear in a few weeks.  It's hard to say how Twelve Reasons to Die II affected Ghostface in the long run since it just came out about three weeks ago, right?  Finally, whenever I get caught up completely (mid-September maybe?) I'll be writing a summary and "thank you" blog about this whole god-damn project.  So keep an eye out for that.

Alright!  Thanks for your continued readership everybody.  Keep it tuned here for more discussions about the remaining/recent Wu-family releases, more reviews to come etc.  See you for the next several Wu Wednesdays.