Wu-Tang Clan releases 'C.R.E.A.M.'

Why it matters

"C.R.E.A.M." as a single moved a little under platinum in raw sales, which is decent but is not the reason you have heard of it. The reason you have heard of "C.R.E.A.M." is the acronym. Cash Rules Everything Around Me. Five words. Once Wu put them in that order, in that song, in late 1993, they became a permanent piece of American English. You see the acronym on t-shirts. You see it on coffee mugs. You see it stenciled on the side of bodega awnings. Bankers say it in jokes. Sportswriters use it in columns. The phrase has detached from the song and from the Wu and become a kind of generic shorthand for the entire American relationship with money under capitalism, which is a thing one short hip-hop hook does not usually get to be. It happened anyway. The song is six and a half minutes of Raekwon and Inspectah Deck rapping about specific street-level economic conditions in Staten Island in 1993, and the chorus is five words you cannot stop saying. RZA produced it. He has produced many great songs. The acronym is somehow bigger than all of them.