Popa Wu is the only dad some Wu-Tang Clansmen have ever known.
When the New York collective ascended the global rap scene in the early ’90s, Wu kept the crew in check. Call him the Clan’s spiritual adviser.
“I was always like a father figure,” said Wu, who brings his lessons to the Western Front Thursday. “(Wu Tang Clan members) Raekwon, Meth and Ghost didn’t have pops like that, so I would tell them what they could and couldn’t do.”
Wu’s tenure with the Clan dates back to when the crew was called All In Together Now. The original posse, which featured GZA rapping, RZA spinning and Ol’ Dirty Bastard beat-boxing, looked to Wu, then known as Freedom Allah, for more than knowledge.
“It started off with us four hanging in my grandmother’s house, and I was the eldest,” said the 51-year-old Wu. “I’m musically inclined myself, and a lot of them picked things up watching me play keyboards, sax and clarinet.”
Though he considers himself a jazzman, Wu never let generational differences dissuade him from guiding Wu-Tang’s magic carpet ride. He’s rolled with the group on tours to nearly every continent, and not just to take in the sights.
“I like to teach in the streets,” Wu said. “When we used to go on tour, everybody else would go back to the hotel. I would sit outside with all the kids speaking.”
He also had to rapper-sit the Clan.
“I had a rough time,” Wu said, “but mostly they were a riot. Everyone had respect for me. I grew up in gangs myself, so to them I was the craziest guy they knew.”
Wu’s move from a criminal to spiritual path came in the 1960s when he joined the Five-Percent Nation. The Harlem-based Islamic sect taught him to value education and civic involvement, ideals that he teaches to and through Wu-Tang, as well as on his own records.
While Wu doesn’t rap, he spits knowledge at his shows, as he has on well-known Clan tracks, including Ghostface Killah’s “All That I Got Is You.” On his own “Visions of the 10th Chamber” releases, the second of which dropped last week, he introduces fans to some of the young Wu-Tang Clan affiliates from across the country who will be joining him onstage in Cambridge.
“Popa Wu is giving the youth a chance at experience,” he said. “Your tongue is like a double-edged sword: You can either take a life or save a life. I’m making sure that kids everywhere know that.”
So far Wu has mentored the nine-man Clan and many of their countless affiliates. Imagine how much love he’ll get on Father’s Day.
“A lot of groups came out and didn’t have an older mentor,” Wu said. “That was the difference with Wu-Tang. I was there to make sure everything went right.”
Popa Wu, with Timbo King, Raydaar Van, D Lah, Killa Bam, DJ Nino Carta, Hands Down & Cash, at The Western Front, Cambridge, Thursday. Tickets: $10; 617-492-7772.
