Mass Appeal has a great article this month about a Dutch Wu-Tang cover group. Academically I come from an anthropology background, and this story really struck me. It's about global flows and cultural spread, which is all heavily-tread ground, but the thing that made me pause was when Matthiijs Diederiks (the fake Raekwon) explained how he got into Wu-Tang because of the strong North African population in his hometown in southeastern Amsterdam.

What's funny, though, is that the kung-foo imagery which is so integral to the Wu-Tang aesthetic, is abandoned. In Scandinavia they had Vikings, and though ninjas aren't really an American historical product, they make sense here in the States more than in Northern Europe.