Goin’ across the country now! SICK line-up, including Method Man/Redman, Raekwon/Ghostface.

Also, TRIBE CALLED QUEST!!!!, PHARCYDE!!!, DE LA SOUL!!!, Nas, Mos Def, Rakim(!), Afrika Bambaataa, Jedi Mind Tricks, others…

Check it out!!!!

from the LA Times

In December, YouTube field technician Joe Shockman, who is responsible for desktop support (he’s also a former Googler who moved over to YouTube after Google bought it), suggested that the video-sharing site retire its old practice of naming its office printers after video formats such as QuickTime. He asked for nominations and was so quickly overloaded (95 in one day) that he had to enlist a friend at the Googleplex to set up a special “name the printer” page that would allow YouTubers to vote for their favorite. In 15 minutes the page was up and YouTubers could either submit a new idea or vote for one already submitted.

Front-runners in the early voting: San Francisco music venues and Transformers (the latter was scrapped because Google already had claimed the animated robot franchise for printers).

But an underground campaign soon emerged for Wu-Tang Clan, the hard-core hip-hop group whose popularity has spanned decades thanks to …

... its rugged street rhymes, kung fu mythology and innovative entrepreneurial streak. With members sporting stage names such as Ghostface Killah, Ol’ Dirty Bastard (ODB) and RZA, Wu-Tang has become even more infamous with Internet fandom and the advent of YouTube.

“Wu-Tang Clan has a lot of fans around here,” said Glenn Brown, YouTube’s strategic partner manager, who forges music partnerships. Brown admits he was an instigator. He sent out an e-mail to YouTubers: “How about members of the wu-tang clan? rza, ghostface, odb, etc.” One response read: “1. They have enough ‘cousins’ to keep us going to 80 printers.”

Concluded Brown in perfect geek speak: “I think the beauty of the wu tang namespace is its near infinite extensibility.”

He urged: “Vote wu-tang.”

YouTubers did.

His name aside, Shockman says he wasn’t shocked by the unusual pop-culture pick for the printers, even though he personally wasn’t that familiar with Wu-Tang. This is YouTube, after all. And he was pleased that, with all the members, albums and side projects Wu-Tang had produced over the years, YouTube was unlikely to ever run out of printer names.

Now mobiles with the clan members’ names and pictures hang above printers. Eleven are in use so far: ODB, Bronzenazareth, Ghostface, RZA, 36chambers, Methodman, Ironflag, GZA, Raekwon, Inspectahdeck and Wutang.

In six months, YouTubers have grown very accustomed to printing their documents on Method Man, filling Raekwon with paper or notifying Shockman when GZA is on the fritz.

The special request Shockman fielded most: “Three people wanted the printer closest to them to be named after ODB,” he said.

ODB (real name Russell Jones), one of the clan’s most colorful rappers, died of a heart attack in 2004.

Wu-Tang Forever. At least at YouTube.

—Jessica Guynn