Up from the 36 Chambers, the Wu-Tang Clan are set to become the latest top-tier act to set up shop in Las Vegas, with the Staten Island hip-hop legends announcing a short pair of residencies at The Theatre at Virgin Hotels to coincide with next spring’s Super Bowl and the March Madness NCAA tournament.
The group’s first shows on the Strip will go down on Feb. 9 and 10, and a second set of shows on March 22 and 23. Tickets for the residency go on sale at 10 a.m. PST on Friday, Dec. 15.
The group, featuring Ghostface Killah (left), RZA and Method Man, hope to kickstart future residencies for hip-hop artists.
The group will join the likes of U2, Kylie Minogue and Adele among the Las Vegas Strip’s current ongoing residencies. The booking is notable for being perhaps the first major hip-hop residency to take place in a Vegas casino. After decades in which the city was considered a sort of last refuge for aging legacy acts, the city’s casinos have since become massive targets for top-level talent following the residencies of Celine Dion and Britney Spears. But the Strip still lags notably behind the times when it comes to hip-hop, with rappers largely confined to traditional concerts and nightclub one-offs.
As Wu-Tang founder and shogun the RZA said in a statement to the New York Times: “I’m in that spirit of loving where there’s a hub of art and then loving that I — in my talent and the Wu-Tang brothers — can add to that hub and of course eventually invite more hip-hop artists to come and play in this sandbox with us.”
Noting that plans for the residency had been the works for years, RZA continued to the Times: “Hip-hop is rich in its content and what it offers creatively to an audience. [We want] to put it on flagpoles to show that hip-hop can go where any other art form has gone before. I think the art form has evolved.”
Group members attend the 2019 premiere of 'Wu-Tang: Of Mics and Men.'
Fresh off a co-headlining tour with Nas, the Wu haven’t released an album since 2015’s fanciful one-copy record project Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, infamously purchased by “pharma-bro” Martin Shkreli. But, in keeping with the group’s longtime knack for diversification (in the 1990s, they arguably pioneered the sort of multimedia licensing and merchandising blitzes that have since become de rigueur in pop music) they’ve nonetheless been everywhere over the past several years, especially on television. The four episode docuseries Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men aired on Showtime in 2019, while the biographical drama Wu-Tang: An American Saga was a staple on Hulu, lasting for three seasons between 2019 and 2023.
Aside from touring, the group performed at Yankee Stadium this past August as part of the Hip-Hop 50 anniversary concert. Meanwhile, rumors have been flying this week about a Wu-Tang video game reportedly in development, which would be the first time the group has been featured on consoles since 1999’s PlayStation game Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style. A sci-fi graphic novel take on the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard is also reportedly in the works.
