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Wu-Tang Clan's debut album opens with a kung fu film, and the group goes into the Rock Hall on Saturday

Wu-Tang Clan is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 14 November 2026. Its 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), opens with dialogue from a kung fu film, and the group's name and the album's title both come from kung fu movies.

By Riffiter

RZA at Øyafestivalen, Oslo, 7 August 2013. Jørund Føreland Pedersen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wu-Tang Clan goes into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday, 14 November, at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The ceremony is taped for ABC and Disney+ and airs in December. The group's first album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), is the record the Hall credits first, and it opens on a clip from a kung fu movie.

The album starts on a film

The first track, "Bring da Ruckus", opens on dialogue from the 1983 film Shaolin and Wu Tang, before any beat or rhyme. A.V. Club wrote in 2012 that the album "opens not with beats or rhymes, but with a sample from an obscure kung-fu flick". The sample database WhoSampled lists a scene from that film on the track, and a scene from Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (1979) too.

The same film's dialogue is cut into other tracks, including "Clan in da Front" and "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'". The Rock Hall's own page for the group notes that RZA's production drew on kung fu film samples.

RZA of Wu-Tang Clan performing at Øyafestivalen in Oslo, August 2013
RZA at Øyafestivalen, Oslo, 7 August 2013. Photo: Jørund Føreland Pedersen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Where the names come from

The group took its name from that same film. In a 2019 Vanity Fair video, RZA said the Wu-Tang Clan name comes from Shaolin and Wu Tang because of the sword technique in it, and that the group felt it had the best lyrics in hip-hop, so it carried the Wu-Tang sword.

The album title comes from two more films. Wikipedia, citing Pitchfork, traces it to Enter the Dragon (1973) and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978). RZA said the same in the Vanity Fair video: the second film gave the group the title, and the word "Enter" came from the Bruce Lee film. He called The 36th Chamber of Shaolin one of his favorite films of all time and said he had seen it more than 200 times.

The numbers

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) came out on 9 November 1993 on Loud Records. It sold about 30,000 copies in its first week and peaked at No. 41 on the Billboard 200. It went platinum in 1995 and reached 4x platinum in November 2025. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 27 on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums, Pitchfork gave it a 10, and the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2022.

The Hall credits the album with putting New York back at the center of hip-hop. The Hall lists ten inducted members.

Wu-Tang Clan on stage with Nas and Busta Rhymes in September 2022
Wu-Tang Clan with Nas and Busta Rhymes, 16 September 2022. Photo: roninzer0, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Now

This year the group is on a farewell run called "Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber". On The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon held up a poster reading "2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Wu-Tang" before the group played "Bring da Ruckus" and "C.R.E.A.M.", per Rolling Stone.

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) sits at 4.3 out of 5 on Riffiter. If you have not rated it yet, do it before the ceremony.

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