The Rhythm of Leaderhip: Letting Go To Let People Be Great.

“The hardest thing about that was making the choices to do less.”

In the house parties of the Bronx, NY, in the early 70’s hip hop and rap sprung up as a social movement and a vehicle for self-expression.

The inner city had a lot of gang and drug violence and some of the earliest DJs and MCs were involved in that life. Breakdancing, MCing, and DJing were used as an alternative to gang violence.

The breakthrough record that introduced the mainstream to rap was Rappers Delight by the Sugarhill Gang in 1979. From there many different forms of art were created.

In the 80s there was social/political rap from the likes of Public Enemy, pop/humorous rap from DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and conscious rap from KRS-One.

The sound and culture were dominated by the East Coast, but in the late 80’s West Coast rap with a much more aggressive tone known as Gangsta rap became popular with the seminal Straight Outta Compton from N.W.A.

There was a heated rivalry between the East and West Coast, primarily between New York and LA. Atlanta was creating great music with OutKast releasing ATLiens in 1996.

All the while, a group of young men from Staten Island who were raised on Kung-Fu films came out and blindsided everyone with a new, dirty, rugged sound.

The Wu-Tang Clan

The three founding members, the RZA, had limited success as a solo artist and collaborated with Ghostface Killah to form a group. In 1992 they added more members and mixed Eastern philosophy they had learnt from martial arts movies and Five-Percent Nation teachings they heard on the streets of New York.

The album they released was Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). This album received critical acclaim and has been regarded as one fo the greatest hip-hop albums of all time.

The Secret Album

After years of success, in 2014, stories emerged of an album that was being worked on – The Wu – Once Upon A Time In Shaolin. These stories were true and this album was created as a one-of-one.

Only one copy was made and it was sold through an online auction for US$2 million dollars.

For the project, the Wu-Tang Clan brought in Ken Lewis to do the mix. During the process, he mentioned, “The toughest thing about mixing once upon a time in Shaolin was not being such an engineer.”

The hardest thing about that was making the choices to do less, and to let them be them, and just to make sure that everything is audible.

Make that Sweet Music

Lewis clearly articulates the challenge that many leaders face, the desire for control. The feeling that you have to do something to show you are doing a good job.

You do have to do something, the question is what to do to be effective?

Lewis makes the smart choice to pull back from controlling everything and instead makes his job about making everyone sound good.

Everyone there has a skill set and his job was to find a way to make it sound its best, not to impose his will on the whole project so that it would sound like how he wanted it.

Everyone in your team has skills, your job is to put in them a position to succeed. This is completely different from micromanaging every decision they make because you don’t trust anything they do.

Also, it meant that he didn’t try to make them do something they were not. He used their strengths to make them better.

The point of the leader is guidance and support in a direction and that sometimes requires you to make the hard choice of doing less.