"C.R.E.A.M." is released

Why it matters

"C.R.E.A.M." came out as a single on January 31, 1994, from Enter the Wu-Tang. The title is an acronym: Cash Rules Everything Around Me. Method Man sings the hook. Raekwon and Inspectah Deck rap the verses. RZA built the beat around a Charmels sample ("As Long as I've Got You," a 1967 Stax/Volt deep cut) and a slow, almost gloomy piano loop that runs the length of the record. The two verses are master classes in autobiographical specificity. Raekwon opens with "I grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side / staying alive was no jive," which is the kind of bar a teenager writes when they have read the New York Times and have also been in a fistfight in the same week. Inspectah Deck's verse is one of the most quoted in rap history ("It's been twenty-two long hard years of still strugglin'"). "C.R.E.A.M." is the song that made even people who did not yet know what Wu-Tang was sit up and listen. It is also the song that put the acronym into common usage in American English. You have heard people say "cash rules everything around me" who do not know it is a Wu lyric. The song did that.