Alright, friends, in honor of attending the (alleged) last-ever Wu-Tang show at Madison Square Garden, I thought it appropriate to tell the story of the time I got to see the greatest, most hype, most chaotic energy hip hop show that I've ever seen, or that I ever will see: the last time all nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan appeared together on one stage together.

At that point in my career, I was working at a small company that did online music promo, and we were lucky enough to work with Loud Records, which was releasing The W, the third full album by the group. The internet was not yet central to album launches at that point (Napster had just come out the year prior, and this was still the period when the major labels were convinced that the Internet was the devil) so we'd only been involved in the periphery of some of the lead-up work. GZA had come by our offices a couple days earlier to record some promo voiceovers and brought his kid along (if I'm helping the Genius' kid with math homework, does that make me a genius also by the transitive property? I think so.) and I figured that was as exciting as things could possibly get around this album rollout.

Then we got invited to the album release concert.

The show was high-energy from the start, opening with crowd-pleasers like Protect Ya Neck to take folks back to where it all began. But this was also sort of what you'd expect from an album release party, with three or four tracks in a row from the new record right after that. I wasn't yet super familiar with the new songs, so I was more watching the crowd, and the thing I remember most was that there were a ton of dudes milling about on stage, and the crowd was incredibly hyped up considering that they had rapped every word of the first song along with the guys on stage, but didn't yet know the new ones the same way.

The vibes around the record release overall had been a bit fraught. In the prior years, all of the members of the Wu had put out their solo records, which were usually excellent, but that made people wonder if the group was ever going to get back together at all. And then just in the months before the album release, O.D.B. had gotten arrested and his only contributions on the album had been made by recording his vocals over the phone from prison. At the time of the performance, he had been on the run, having left a mandatory rehab stint in California with his whereabouts unknown. Only the other eight members of the group were onstage, along with whatever hangers-on they had invited to come up with them. (I remember Redman dropping in to do Da Rockwilder with Meth, too, because I still love that song.)

But being up in the balcony (RZA said it was only industry types sitting up where we were), it was hard to make out exactly who all was on stage; what I remember was that nearly every dude on stage was wearing all black. Except after a couple of songs, I noticed that one guy was in a BRIGHT ORANGE parka. After that initial set of songs from the new album, RZA had started hyping up the crowd a bit while the orange parka dude started moving to the front of the stage.

And then, the piano part from the beginning of Shimmy Shimmy Ya started up. The reaction was, to this day, the most insane, explosive, hyped-up response from a crowd I've ever seen at any hip hop show, ever. Everybody in the building lost their goddamn minds. Old Dirty Bastard, on the run from the law, had shown up on stage. All nine members of the Wu were in the building.

The only record of the moment I've ever found is this potato-quality recording of the show, which doesn't nearly do justice to the feeling or the emotion in the room, but it was as ecstatic a collective expression from a crowd as I've ever felt — and not just during a live music performance. Even 25 years later, I can remember getting shivers from that moment, which is even more striking given how ridiculous and over-the-top O.D.B.'s lyrics and onstage persona were in the moment.

O.D.B. stuck around just long enough for the guys to start Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing ta Fuck Wit, but word pretty quickly got out that he was at the show, and during the set he slipped offstage and was back on the run. By the time the group closed the show with Gravel Pit (which was the brand new single at the time), he was long gone. Being up in the balcony, we saw the cops come in and run through a few times during the rest of the set, and there were all kinds of rumors flying about where he was headed, or whether he was going to pop up again, but O.D.B. was gone for good.

A week later, still on the run, O.D.B. was arrested in Philadelphia. Four years later, he was gone for good. As I'd noted on the night of the show, I knew it was the last time we'd see all nine members onstage together.

Still, I'm excited to see them close a chapter tonight, as the greatest hip hop supergroup of all time. I didn't think I'd ever get to see them again, and 25 years goes by a lot faster than you'd imagine!