Given the random uncertainty of 2020, we wouldn’t blame you if the news of Staten Island hip-hop legends Wu-Tang Clan and Glasgow pop rockers Texas working together sounded like a joke, but no, this one is on the level.
They may sound like unlikely bedfellows, but actually fans will know that the two acts have a shared history, dating back to the late ’90s, when Method Man and RZA remixed Say What You Want, the first single lifted from Texas’ hugely-successful White On Blonde album. Method Man from the Clan even appeared live onstage with Sharleen Spiteri’s band at the BRITS ceremony in 1998, a memorable culture clash referenced in the opening seconds of the video for Hi, a brand new collaboration between the two acts. The video, directed by Fenn O’Meally, stars upcoming British actor Kadeem Ramsay, who recently featured in Top Boy and Small Axe, and is pictured below with
Hi is the first taste of Texas’ forthcoming tenth studio album, which is scheduled for release in 2021.
In 2015 Spiteri spoke warmly of working with Wu Tang Clan, recalling a “great night” with the hip-hop collective.
“It turned surreal when we got a phone-call from our manager the next day saying we’d been banned from the studio because we apparently had guns and were doing crystal meth,” she remembered. “We were like ‘What?’ Only a couple of people in the band even smoke and I certainly don’t carry a gun.”
