In July, members of Vinyl Me, Please Rap & Hip Hop will receive an exclusive reissue of Tical, the debut LP from Wu-Tang swordsman Method Man. Our new edition has a mirror-board cover, and comes on 180-gram bronze and black galaxy vinyl. You can read our essay about how important the album was in the arc of Wu-Tang over here , and sign up to receive it here .

Why And How We Picked This Record

Andrew Winistorfer: This was a record that I pushed in our Record of the Month meetings, because it felt like it was almost overdue for us to do something Wu-Tang Clan-related, particularly since this will be the 23rd Record of the Month in our Rap & Hip Hop subscription. And I thought this would be the one to start with, since it was the record that introduced Wu-Tang’s solo players to the mainstream. They’d done Enter the 36 Chambers, but Method Man was chosen to go solo first, because he was the one who could get mainstream folks into the sound more directly than, say, GZA could.

Plus, it feels like people don’t revisit this as much as they should; it holds up better than a lot of the first run Wu solo albums. You expect it to sort of be full of the violent horrorcore-esque stuff he’d do later, but this one is a classic New York rap record, and should be as revered as Ready to Die or Uptown Saturday Night.

It also felt like there was some good symmetry with us doing our first Wu project on this, the first Wu solo album.

Cameron Schaefer: Totally. Hopefully the first of many Wu-Tang-related projects.