Multi-membered Staten Island rap crew the Wu-Tang Clan have revealed details of their forthcoming album, A Better Tupperware. Capitalizing on the success of Inspectah Deck’s game-changing 8 Diagrams line about how “Wu-Tang keep it fresh like Tupperware”, the Wu have formulated an entire concept record based around the long-thriving manufacturer of plastic food containers.
“You think I’m kidding? That’s where I keep my sandwiches / One I filled with tuna and the other’s got ham in it”, spits Deck on the album’s centrepiece, ‘Pioneer the Tupperware’. Ghostface Killah follows this with four verses narrating the biography of innovative Tupperware sales representative Brownie Wise (1913-1992). Ghostface’s moving tribute concludes with the heroic lines, “Wise by name, wise by nature / Her Tupperware parties sure took the lead / Truth be told, her food don’t get old / Only Brownie I ever loved that wasn’t full of weed”.
Other highlights of the album include Method Man blessing the Clan with his presence by briefly popping his head through the studio door between shooting scenes for some TV cop drama. Admittedly going slightly off the food preservation topic, Meth’s verse is still a remarkable 20-second tour de force during which he manages to compare himself to a wolf, a horse, a serial killer, another wolf, Muhammed Ali, Barack Obama, a werewolf (that by day is a wolf), all four of The Beatles, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Gillespie, several Al Pacino characters (not the Cruising one), a couple of superheroes, Genghis Khan, Mahatma Gandhi and Shan-Yu from Disney’s Mulan.
Musically, A Better Tupperware sees RZA utilizing classic Wu tropes while also evolving the aesthetics of the crew’s backing tracks. His compositions use field recordings taken from large Tupperware factories, samples of Tupperware lids popping on and off and back on again and, having now exhausted dialogue from every vintage kung fu movie ever made, several soundbites from Chris Farley’s 1997 martial arts comedy flop Beverly Hills Ninja.
Unfortunately, the RZA could not find any archive recordings of deceased Wu member Ol’ Dirty Bastard rapping specifically about Tupperware. Nevertheless, he still felt it necessary to shoehorn in a few scrapings of poorly-recorded ODB vocals retrieved from his increasingly bare barrel of demos. “Dirty, dirty, dirty”, announces a gruff voice virtually obscured by the static fuzz of a cheap phone-line, “dirty, dirty, dirty...” It’s the ODB reduced to single-word, two-syllable, single-minded monotony. “Dirty, dirty, dirty,” continues Ol’ Dirty, “dirty, dirty dirty / Here comes Dirty / He’s dirty, dirty, dirty / You’d better watch out / Fo’ dirty, dirty Dirty...” This goes on for about four minutes before Raekwon interrupts with, “That’s enough, son / I think yo’ dead, son / But truth be told, son / I think we’re all done”.
A limited edition pressing of the album will come sealed in an authentic ‘Wu-ware’ Tupperware container retailing at 3000 times the price of a standard storage tub.
