Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - RZA

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

RZA is a rapper, producer, composer, actor, director, and the creative mastermind behind the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan. Since the group’s classic 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), he has produced the most albums for the group and its respective members, pioneering a style rooted in stark booming beats, vintage soul samples, and gritty narratives. Beyond Wu-Tang, RZA launched the horrorcore group Gravediggaz and released music as his alter ego, Bobby Digital. His artistic range extends to scoring films like Dallas Jackson’s Thriller, acting in projects like G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and collaborating with artists across genres, including Paul Banks of Interpol in the duo Banks & Steelz. In August 2024, RZA, alongside Colorado Symphony and Christopher Dragon, released his first classical album, A Ballet Through Mud, continuing to redefine boundaries in music and storytelling. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Athletic Nicotine https://www.athleticnicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Vivo Barefoot http://vivobarefoot.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA25' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

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When I finished Man with the Iron Fist, my next film was supposed to be One Spoon of Chocolate. And I remember going to the University and pitching some ideas, and the one that Adam Fogerson thought was cool was One Spoon of Chocolate. And so I was like, okay, I'll start writing it and got stuck. And it wasn't until I was on a tour with the New York City Mines with Nas that I started writing it again. Then I was like, I'm gonna do it.

Did something trigger it? What do you think allowed it to happen then where it didn't happen before? I think it was, you know, you go back to your old lyrics and your old things. I think it was like, know, you go back to your old lyrics and your old things. I think it was like, because I don't know if it's a time, because it's actually a pretty dark film. It sounds simple, but it has some strong racial connotations in it as well.

And I don't really feel that type of, I don't feel that personally. I'm kind of more naive to it than sensitive to it. But my writing and then my ideas of my characters is very prevalent. Why do you think? I think as an artist, I've always been able to put descriptions of life in art, whether I agreed or disagreed with it. I think that's been one of my abilities as an artist. Like, not knowing that at first, you never know what you are in the beginning.

But as time kept going, it's like, you know what? I'm a transmitter, I'm an instrument, I'm the conduit. You know what I mean? And the funny thing is some of the stuff that's in my film, there's articles about the subject matter just appearing. Yeah, it's just like, oh, okay. So maybe there was something to that. Sometimes we're just-

Like you were getting messages just from around you that related to the film. And how long had the film been dormant at that time? Film was sitting there for almost 13 years until last year on the tour bus. I always plan to write on the tour bus, though. Like, that's my plan. I'm gonna get a bus. I'm gonna write something. And it was this. And me and my wife, she started sitting right beside me

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she said, I'm gonna help you produce it because I had to go to her to make sure that I could use some of our own finances. And she agreed. Okay. So. So tell me what's the story.

The basis of the story is a man who's, there's some military service for the country, but we meet him coming out of jail. And he has no family, nowhere to go. Only family is his cousin who lives in Ohio. But in that town, there's so much corruption and such an undertone of insidious behavior. And he ends up stumbling into it. And this is a guy that, you know, the line they tell him is, here's your transfer to Ohio.

I poured some strings to get you there, Ramsey, so I believe you got potential, soldier. Stay out of trouble. He's like, trouble is the last thing on my mind. And all that, and all he finds is trouble. You know, after some good times, it just goes bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. And was he participating in the troubles or was he just seeing it?

He's the victim, he become him, his family and friends, the girl, the girl, they become victims of the trouble. Wow. You know, and when you become victim of trouble, you know, you either gotta accept being a victim or maybe you got to be the hero. And there's a line, you got three years for assault and battery. You say, yeah, for beating up my neighbor's drunk husband who was always beating up on

her. He's like, yeah, but you put that man in a coma. So you got another extra year here for breaking an inmate's jaw. Yeah, he was a bully. So what are you, some hero? No, I'm not a hero. I served my time. But so it's like, he's not a hero, but he is a hero.

He's put in these positions where he has to defend himself or the people around him and he's vilified for that. But it sounds like we'll be on his side when we're watching it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. How did you find the people to be in it? Oh, when I was writing it, I knew when I picked the pen back up, I knew who I wanted to be the lead.

And you got that person? Yes. Who was it? It was a young man named Shamique Moore. So Shamique, this is the second film with me, third project. He played Rayquan in my TV series. His first movie was a movie called Dope, where he was just a young, comedic type kid. He's the voice of Spider-Man in the Spider-Verse. But to me, he's a very strong, actually, conduit, chameleon type of actor. Right now he got comedies out, some type of romantic comedy where he's just a silly, crazy

guy. But this is a serious dramatic performance. This is total opposite. Total opposite. And I know he has that ability because when I did another film with him called Cutthroat City, we made it to number one on Netflix. So I knew that, okay, well, our energy works. Like, yeah, people responded to it.

But when we was doing that movie, he broke some stereotypes for me because in this movie, Cutthroat City, I was like, okay, you're gonna come home from after doing the robbery, him and his friends, you're gonna come in, show it off, you're gonna have the gun, you're gonna walk in to your bedroom, your wife gonna wake up and blah, blah, you're gonna put the gun down, you're gonna tell her what happened. He was like, well, how do I hold the gun? He never held a gun before. You see what I mean?

And I was like, well, you know, my day, okay. So I was like, well, look, you hold it like this and you load it like, I said, your gun is like a phallus in all reality. You gotta treat it as such. It's a symbol of power. It's like two nuts in the dick at the end of the day. It has that and you load it up.

But seeing his innocence and then seeing his performance, I said, this kid is great. And so, you know, when I did the Wu-Tang Saga, I called him. I said, yo, he's the only one who didn't audition. I said, I'm doing this TV show. I just wanted to know if you were valuable. It's going to take out some years of your life, but I got something I would love for you to join. He was like, yo, just let me know, OG.

He called me OG and shit. I don't know if I like OG. But- You've earned it. You've earned it. But anyway, so then, yeah, so now he's in this one. And the last thing I'll say about it is so we shot it and now we're in post-production. I showed my first cut to the CAA team this weekend and a few other people and getting great responses.

I still gotta sandpaper it down and shape it up. Why did you decide to produce it yourself instead of raise money and then make it that way? I just wanted to do it. Even the ballet, right? I just wanted to do it, man. It's like so much of my life has been paid to do shit or hired to do something. And I just, first of all, blessed that I can make

a decision to do it, to do stuff, you know? But yeah, it's like, yo. I love that you did. It's just rare that people do that. Yeah, it's just, I'm in that phase. I'm in that phase of life, it's just like, just that phase. Yeah, I'm in that phase of life is just like just do it. Yeah, it's gonna do Because at the end of the day You know, we've definitely had success in our lives. Mm-hmm

We've definitely been blessed. We know that we can never stop counting that but then we also know that we vessels of art So what I'm supposed to do to sit back and wait for someone and say, hey, come paint me something? Or do I go out there and paint it? Van Gogh, I already cut his ear off for some shit like that. Pay for something, whatever, to keep going. I remember Robert Rodriguez, one of the early mentors for me in film, far as reading this book and spending some time with him in the early 2000s, he sold his skin to build up money to make his first... He was there, was buying skin for some college thing. He'd go in and do this and get his money.

Wow. Yeah. And then he become one of these guys who create all these movies that inspires a whole genre. You don't get so many things if you don't get Robert Rodriguez. You don't even get Spy Kids, which brings back a lot of our actors and Latin actors that was out of the business. He resurged them. You don't get Antonio Banderas.

He makes all of his stuff completely outside of the system. Totally. Or the Zone studio in Austin. So beautiful. Yeah, and even though I'm starting a little late, that's my vision as well. That's the vision, cool. It's a good model.

Yeah, it's a good model. And it worked, we saw it work. Yeah. You know? So you keep it tight in terms of crew and stuff, I imagine. Well, you still gotta deal with the system. So the system is the system. I'm a union man.

And so I got to play by the union rules and I do. And so because of the system, it's always going to be tough to do it here in America. But being a union man and being- How different is it to do it in other places than America? Ain't no union. You can go to London and cut your price down by 20%, 25%. Is that why a lot of people also film in Vancouver? Yeah, well, Vancouver, you might still get caught with the union, where Vancouver has

a strong tax incentive, and then the dollar's a little stronger. So that's that. But you can't duck. You won't be able to duck the unions and then the whole North America, I think. I see. Because I just did a film, you know, the studio system is a studio system. Yep. Which is, like I'm a union man, so I don't have no problem with the union.

No, understood. Right? But it does, you know, just to answer your question, it does force us to... You can't have a small crew. You need a guy that's operating the camera, a guy that's pulling the focus, a guy that's controlling the light. You need the four people, when independently, that could be two people. You know what I mean? And for every camera that you got, you need that amount of people.

So three cameras mean 12 to 16 people. Now 12 to 16 people, now you gotta deal with union fringes, because they gotta get their Medicaid and all that other stuff, and that's your cost for your portion of time that you're buying it as. And so the fringes are the things that really kill us in America, and the studios, they've always been fighting against it. I don't think studios should fight against it

in the sense that because their profit margin and their business model and what they've gained over the course of the commodity that they created, this is the only way they can give back is by making sure somebody could get their teeth fixed and go to the doctor. On an independent level, it stops independent films. My other buddy did this film-

Your first film you made independently or no? No, my first film I did was made with a studio, but I did it in China. So only people who had union was the team of people I brought over. So I have 400 people working for us. Only 20 of us were union men. Yeah. Yeah.

So, which was another way of doing it. Was it difficult hiring the team in China? The China, I had a DP who had the, I hired him right after he had the number one movie in the country. Wow. And now he's mine, right? Wow. And he was dissatisfied with some shit, you know, because they, you know, everybody got

their things, right? And they were, they was putting some pressure on him. I was like, why you taking it? Like, you got the number one movie. So man, it's a thousand guys waiting to take my job. So that's the difference there. See, in our world, in the director's guild, you're not going to find even 5,000 people. Right?

Yeah. It's a maturity list. Yeah. And his thing, it might be 150,000 people and nobody's in the union. You know what I mean? So he was like, he took everything he had. He was eating, like I said, yo, come eat the lunch with us. I kind of had a whole kitchen built.

We had catered food. You sit down, I had the guy holding the napkin for lunch. Wow. You know what I mean? Because the money was, it went far out there. But most of my crew, their lunch comes in a truck and you don't know what it is. It's like a school lunch. Like open it.

Oh, okay. You eat and you go to work. But so for my actors, who were some legends, too, I had legendary actors in my book. Gordon Loo, Chin Kwan Tai, Alok Kong. These guys for me, these are the guys that I sampled or watched their movies. So now they're in my movie and I had them all come to eat lunch with the director. And they was like, it was the best lunch they ever had on the set. We had steak, fish, veggie burgers.

I had vegan food. I had to lay it out. That sounds great. That was fun. In a world of artificial highs and harsh stimulants, there is something different, something clean, something precise. Athletic nicotine, not the primitive products found behind convenience store counters.

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Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Who is Prince Rakim? Yeah, Prince Rakim. Well, now he's my son. Right? My son is the physical embodiment of that because he's born with it. But it was something that I discovered. My name became Prince Rakim at the age of 11. And you gave yourself the name?

Gave myself the name. You know, if I could try to explain it to myself, I know what the inspiration doing, you know, my cousin the Jizza had knowledge of self. He gave me knowledge of self and had me study mathematics and it opened my mind. It made everything else around me even more comprehensible. You know, I never forget the day he gave me the mathematics, right, I'm walking home from Park Hill,

Staten Island to Stapleton. You can give it to you in a day? The first 10 concepts, which is knowledge, wisdom, understanding. So he had that all in the Xerox paper back then I and you get that as like this is your first lesson and you study that you still you got to memorize these and I'm a Memorize a guy like my brain is like that. Yeah, well I'm walking home

And the first lesson says knowledge knowledge is to know look listen observe also respect Knowledge is to know, look, listen, observe, also respect. Knowledge is to know the ledge, so you don't fall off the edge. It's the basic foundation of everything in creation. Like the sun is the foundation of the solar system. That's knowledge. And wisdom is the manifestation of knowledge.

It's knowledge and activation. It's the experience. It's wise words spoken by a wise man to wise the dome. It's also symbolic to the woman. Right? So these things are my first lessons, right? And then I'm walking home and I live in Stapleton, but I live on the same street as this big church.

I'm staying with my grandmother at this time. And I walk by the church and the lady is handing out pamphlets and she hands me a Jesus Christ pamphlet where it says, Jesus Christ, the bread of Christ. It says, eat the bread of Christ to nourish your soul. Now, just by having knowledge, no look and observe and respect, I respect what it was. So I memorized that as well. And so these different principles of knowledge and spirituality all start to start flooding me. And at the same time, I just see 36 Chambers of Shalinda. So it's like all this is was going through me.

So becoming Prince Rock King, you know, since my father wasn't present, I think the prince came from me saying that naturally I should be the son of a king and when I grow up I'll be a king and my son will be a prince. So this is like the natural mind that my mind had. So it may be a spoonful of it is imagination, right? But it's like, this is what I wanted. And Rakim, there was no Rakim. There was a Rakim, right?

There was a Rakim with a K-I-N-G, but there was no Rakim that had that name. And actually it was like, it's not a proper name because there's actually not a Raqeem in Arabic or in the Quran or nowhere, according to what was told to me at that time. I said, it's original. And therefore Raqeem means to be original. And I'm a prince. You know what I mean?

And that became me. This is from the age of 11. By the time I shared with the public, I become Prince Rakeem the MC. How old are you then when you're the MC? I think I let it be my MC name around the age of 16. Before then, even though I had knowledge of self, I had various MC names that was different than my righteous name.

Would you say when the names change, the rhymes change? Yes. I think that the art finds this, I call it attribute. So at the end of the day, between 11 to my physical age now, I've definitely had over 16 different attributes. I made a joke. I don't know if I can keep saying this. It wasn't a joke, but I can say it to you.

I'll say it. This is the last time I'll say it. I had equated this maybe two years ago that I am artistically schizophrenia. My friend Sophia Chang said, don't say that anymore. You are very curious and you seek out, you always yearning for more expressions. So I would use the word curiosity versus schizophrenia because schizophrenia has such a big meaning.

Negative connotation. Yeah. It doesn't sound like you mean it in a negative way. I don't mean it in a negative way. But I thought it was a great description of the artistic multiple personalities that I've been able to embody and still embody given on any given day. I don't want to be offensive, so I've taken heed to her and this is probably the last

time I'll say that. Mm-hmm. If the lyrics change depending on the personality, which comes first? Is it Raqeem exists and then the rhymes come, or do the rhymes come and then you realize that's not Raqeem talking, that's someone else? That's a good question. And it becomes blurred, but I think at one point it was the art made it separate. Like on Protect Your Neck, when we put out our first video, it says in the video, exit Prince Rakin into enter the RZA." And it scrolls across the screen.

And I meant that. I was like, I'm not Prince Rakin anymore. You are me in the RZA now. And this is a well advanced enlightened version of Prince Rakin. The Z wasn't in my name. My name was Divine Prince Rakin. Right? First it was Rakinon Prince Rakin. Yeah. Right, first it was Rakin, Prince Rakin, Devon Prince, you know, you keep adding, by

the time I was 19 of 20, I'll give it 20, my attribute was Devon Prince Master Rakin, Allah. That was my name. Allah is the name of the father, so all our last names have to be Allah. Whoever your father is, you take his last name. So then, from just two years later, and going through Rain House, Northern Earthquakes, and all personal, and also just improving, and deep into my art, deep into my music, my study, my... everything, I was deep into it.

You know what I mean? The science of... like we was on it. You know what I mean? It was like, nah, my name is... and also I went the wrong way at one point. The story's known, but I'm proud for it. Just scrambling in the street selling drugs and getting caught in violence and getting caught in shit and getting locked up for shit. It's like, that wasn't the way of a righteous man.

Wasn't even the way of an intelligent man. And I had righteousness and intelligence all in my system. Was it just youth that allowed that to happen, would you say, or something else? I think youth and circumstances. Like there was no other way to get money. You know what I mean? It's like I could grab it, I could throw a rock through a window and get it, but I mean,

especially at the mindset and measurement of how we wanted it, right? Just to be honest, I did work many jobs. I was a messenger, worked at a restaurant, I was a messenger, worked at a restaurant, worked as a guy who... I would say that I put screws in a box. That was my job. Take the screw, put it in the box, moving on. Take the screw, put it in the box, moving on.

And since I was- One screw per box? No, no, depending. Yeah. Sometime it was. One big nut, boom. Sometime it's 50 little pellets. Yeah. Because sometime it was one big nut boom, sometime it's 50 little pellets.

In fact, the pellets that we would use became the ones that was the exact same size as a New York City token. So now I can sell a box of those for $50. Because we figured out, yeah, we got them motherfucking bung. It works like a token. So, here we go, a little joke, man, just like we used to do. So we'll go to the train station, right? And just stick it in, and somebody come and go, I'm not catching this train, could you

just give me the token? Go ahead, go. Go. Make about 20 bucks, go get some weed, some liquor. That's a good day, right? But anyway, going negative though, selling drugs, that's a good day, right? But anyway, going negative though, selling drugs, getting involved with street crime, was totally not natural for me.

Being a smart man and a man that's not scared to do shit, yeah, of course I was able to excel in that until I couldn't excel, until it caught up and now I'm behind the bars, you know what I mean? How long were you away for? I was facing eight years. Fortunately, I was able to bail out. Took me 30 days to bail out.

I only did two 30 day stretches in my life. One 30 day stretch at about 17, 18 and one right before 21, right before Wu-Tang. Bailed out. W, won the trial. I know there's a lot of black guys that went to trial. I went to trial and won. And while I was going through all this, my mother was so disappointed.

Her face of disappointment was more crushing than this 11 of us. 11 brothers and sisters, where are you in the 11? I'm in the middle. But I was also the one that, you know, that kinda came when life was just getting strong for our family. And by the time I get three, four years old,

it goes bad for our family. You know what I mean? But anyway, the point I was trying to get to is that I zigzag, zig. Right? And in the mathematics, zigzag, zig means knowledge, wisdom, understanding. Right?

And it gives a symbolism of the zig, which could be the man or your thought, goes into the zag, like the sperm cell goes into the womb and comes back out as a higher, greater form of the zig. Like a word can go into somebody's mind or into your own mind, into the womb of your mind and come out as a better idea, as a better interpretation, as a higher understanding. So I became Hiraqeem, zigzag, zig-a-law.

That's what RZA stands for. Yeah. Did you ever say that on a record or no? Yeah. I said it in different ways. Ruler, zigzag, zig-a-law. Jam is fatal. Quick to stick my Wu-Tang sword right through your navel. Suspenseful thoughts. That's on Seventh Chamber. Let me talk about my lyrics for a quick moment, because it's fun to say, right? One thing about my lyrics, right?

They are compressed, concentrated ideas. And most people's lyrics are, I would say. But I think out of a lot of the MCs, I don't think no one has really compressed their lyrics as much as me and my Wu brothers. I think because if you go back to the very first lyric of, chill with the feedback, black, we don't need that. It's 10 o'clock, hold where the fucks, you'll see that. Chill with the feedback. So the feedback also from the feedback of the mic,

feedback with the beef, feedback somebody gives you, we don't need that, right? It's 10 o'clock, hold where the fucks, you'll see that. Remember that commercial in New York, come on, right? 10 o'clock, oh where the fucks you see that? Remember that commercial in New York, come on TV. Yeah, so now I'm saying, feeling mad hostile. We're an old apostle, flowing like Christ when I speak the gospel.

So now, flowing like Christ when I speak the gospel, that goes back to me getting that first pamphlet, the bread of Christ, right? But having my mathematics in it. Then in the very next line is a Buddhist line. It says, flowing like Christ when I speak the gospel, I stroll with the holy robe. So the abbot of Shaolin or the abbot of Wuchang must wear that holy robe. And the holy robe represents their position.

So I stroll with the holy robe, then attack the globe with the buccas style, the ruckus. Now we got ruckus. 10 times 10 men committing mad sin. Wait, I thought we was righteous. Well, we're committing mad sin because you turn the other cheek and I'll break your fucking chin. And that was an idea of the idea that when Malcolm and Martin was teaching, Martin was saying turn the other cheek. But no, they was still getting beaten down with sticks. So no, we're going to have to break a chin. We can't offer your cheek

up. Turn that jaw, break your fucking chin. Then I went to the just regular hip hop slang boom bangs like African drums. He'll be coming around the mountain when I come. That's just the fun of it. Then we go into the political line, crazy flamboyant for the rap enjoyment. My clan increased like black unemployment. That's stupid but it's like, wait a minute, you increased them like black unemployment? Yeah, another one. There. There goes another one pops up right in the middle of the lyric. Then I pass to Mike DeGeneres, genius, take us the fuck out of here. Then of course, he goes into a very descriptive, very detailed way of our industry, clear, without... and still multiple meanings, but one thing about the juzza is that he also provides you the surface view and the beneath the surface view.

Whereas for me, I hide a lot of the surface view and the beneath the surface view. Whereas for me, I hide a lot of the surface view. You gotta go beneath the surface to figure out the habit. Your lyrics are more oblique, I'd say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I take that one, yeah. But the beauty of that is it feels like your lyrics are for the initiated. Right. Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, you gotta know. You gotta know. You gotta know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we- Do you guys ever talk about lyrics like each other's lyrics or you just did your verse and then next rapper does their verse?

Yeah. Well, as a producer, I was definitely able to shape, even censor, and direct lyrics. And especially in the first five albums, I would interject. But as time went on, there was no need for interjection. Everybody had mastered their craft and mastered who they were. So in the process of it being competition- Do you feel like there was competition within the group? Yeah.

So everybody wanted to out rap everybody else? Yeah, this is MCs. Is that part of what makes Wu Tang so strong? Yeah. It's very interesting. I never thought of it that way. Yeah, the jizza said, the jizza had a lyric, he said, I forgot the line in front of it,

but the punch line was, the clan makes me rhyme like D. Banner under pressure. So we know who D. Banner is, right? Right, so he's about to turn to the Hulk, because the Klan is making him rhyme like when Dr. Banner gets pressure, you gotta go into the Hulk to fuck with these dudes. You know what I mean?

And you'll hear it throughout our lyrics. You'll hear us say something like, this one made me do that. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's almost like a battle in a way. Yeah. It is, though.

It's very interesting. I never thought of it that way. Yeah. And at different times, different one of us wins. Yeah. And the thing that was crazy for us is that, so when they say that Jesus is the head, it's because he is the foundation of our lyrical skills and approach. And for many years, it was his determination, like I'm the abbot, so even if somebody come

for me for the determination measure, I didn't go to him. You know what I mean? Because of my respect and reverence of him, he's the one that had me pick up my pen. He's the one that had me study my knowledge, right? So he's my enlightener. And so I always go back to my enlightener. And during the period of years, you know, and sometimes it just be me and him.

I'm like, who's the best in the clan right now? And it'd be different ones. You know what I mean? Left was the best. And either way, the listener wins because they get the best of you both. Yes. And at one point, Killer Priest was the best. At one point, from the Wu family, it was a year when everybody was like, Killer Priest

is the LSMC. I was pissed off. You know what I mean? And I came to beat Killer Priest in 97. If you go back and check my lyrics in 97, so even though Ghost got the best lyric of the year on that song, Impossible, because he was like, call the ambulance, Jamie been shot. He put you right there. And it was such a dramatic-

Ghost's lyrics are incredible. Yeah, such a dramatic- It's incredible. But, Jules came to me and said, now you got the best lyric. Because of the content, fusion of the five elements, right? That's dealing with the Taoism alchemy, the search for the higher intelligence. Women walking around celibate, living life irrelevant. The most benevolent king can communicate through a dream. A mental picture is formed. A law is heard and seen

everywhere. We are surrounded by atmosphere, thermosphere, stratosphere, traposphere. Can you imagine from one single idea, everything appeared here. So understanding makes the truth crystal clear. But still we got innocent black immigrants, 85 dependents, welfare recipients, locked in housing tenements. And my neighborhood has been stamped as a concentration camp. But nighttime I walk through with my third eye as bright as a street lamp. And there's electric probes, right?

I mean, electric strobes, robotic probes. They taking telescopic pictures of the globe while babies being born with microchips stuffed inside their earlobes. They're vaccinated. Lies fabricated and exaggerated. You know what I mean? their ear lobes and then vaccinated. Lies fabricated and exaggerated. You know what I mean? Food and drug administration testing poison in prison populations.

It's like, there's a lot of shit going on in there. But call the ambulance, Jamie been shot. Where the Kimmy don't go, nigga, you my motherfucking heart. That was something else. Yeah, it's incredible. Incredible. So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best in class templates.

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Well, I think my first form of art was MCing. Before producing. Yeah. I wrote my first rhyme at the age of nine. I've recited my first rhyme at the age of eight, but that was what Juzza wrote. So I first started by reciting a copy in his lyrics. And another MC who never really made it out of the hood named Scotty Waddy.

So him and Juzza, they had their tapes early and I would copy them. And then at nine, I wrote my own lyric, you know what I mean? Similar to this, of course, right? And then I think by the time I was 13, 14, I think I was good. You know, some of the lyrics that ODB says are the ones that I wrote when I was 14, because I used

to make him write and then he wouldn't and I'd give him mine. So that's why sometimes on some of his cadence or some of his lyrics may have seemed not as deeply potent as some of the Wu Brothers, because he would just take what was already there. Because he realized that end of the day Brothers because he would just take what was already there because he realized that end of the day it's a song. It's a performance. He said, y'all want to get on the mic and rhyme and rhyme and rhyme and rhyme? Fuck that shit.

Should I make his head? And he says that right on his song, like, you know what I mean? Like, want to see him up in the air? Come on, do it. Everybody come along, come along, come along, come along, come along. I don't do your business. Like he says, he's performing.

And we didn't catch that. We learned that from him. Yeah. You know what I mean? We learned that, wait a minute. You have to put the performance and the animation into it. And the personality, like his personality would come through where it wasn't necessarily about the words, but it might be your favorite verse.

Exactly. Regardless. That's the point I'm making. Because he realized the performance was even stronger than trying to boggle somebody's head. Right? Whereas, you know, some of us are trying to boggle your head, especially myself. With the words. The words.

Yeah. Some of us is trying to boggle your head, especially myself. With the words. With the words. Yeah. Some of us is trying to show you how dangerous they are. For the Rayquan, first, listen to the first woo album and listen to his early features, he always got 16 shots. He busting shots in his rap and he talking about his cars and sneakers and his guns, you know what I mean?

Because he's a street dude, you know what I mean? And Ghost, you know Ghost is a street dude, you can feel the danger in this motherfucker. You know what I mean? He be like, you hear the shanks creaking on the wall? But then Dec, and I go through all the respect that Dec go, he's looking at it through a magnifying glass. So if Ghostface saw the license plate, and he wrote that in the lyric, Dec saw the tag was expired.

You know what I mean? And that's why his lyrics are, Obama-tomically, Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses can't define how I be dropping these mockeries. Lyrically performed on robbery, fleed with the lottery, possibly they spotted me. It's like, damn, that's a lot in four lines. What was the experience of making those records and those guys bringing in those verses? It was just like exuberating, fun, young energy. And to be quite honest with you, when you were young like that, I think each and every

last one of us thought that we were the best one. Nobody didn't think that he beat me. It's like, yeah. And if you did think he beat you on that one, you beat him on that one. So you couldn't tell U-Guard that he don't got the best lyrics. He's not gonna, what, brother, you stupid motherfucker, I'll eat your shit up. He's not going for that. You know what I mean?

He thinks that how he think is to think. Had there ever been a group before with the internal competition like that? I don't know. I'm not aware of it. Yeah, I don't know. Like, that's something that we should maybe open up the floor for and have a think, because it seemed like most groups are complimenting each other. And we do compliment each other.

Yeah, but it's different. What you're describing is different than that. Because we approach hip hop- There's also never been a group with that many rappers before, so that's another big piece of it. That's another big thing, yeah. But we're approaching the Swordsmen, that's why it's called the Wu-Tang Clan. These are all warriors and their tongue is their sword, and they're pointing at whatever

they got to point at, even at each other. How would you describe your production? It's hard for me to describe it, right? I can add on to the description. I actually believe two things about me. One, I believe that there was no other way to define my production other than hip hop. That's what I believe. I believe that all the producers you could define in a jazz, funk, soul, especially 36

Chamber. I don't think you could... What is this shit? It's hip hop. I guess that's what it is. It's not- It's nothing else. Yeah. So I think-

It's not even a variation on anything else. It's pure hip hop. Yeah. That's what... I think that's something that you could look at me and see. Then the second thing I think that's so awkward, but weird and, but potentially very true. And I felt true about this for a long time, especially for the first 10 years of my career,

I felt like I make beats for people to MC to, not to dance to. I make beats that's made to challenge the MC. Okay? And if the MC could catch it and could catch my vibe, listen to Method Man. You don't even hear people take my beats and freestyle over them. Maybe Cream, because there's a couple, but you don't hear other rappers take my beat because it ain't easy. But you gotta be an MC to do it.

You can't even be a rapper. And you think that's because you were an MC first? Yeah. I made beats. I rhymed to have you beat first anyway. If I could rhyme to it, you could rhyme to it. If you can't rhyme to it, you're not a good MC. And at one point, we thought rapping and MCing was two different things.

We really felt that way. You know what I mean? We felt that. How would you describe the difference? Well, a rap is like anybody could rap almost. Not anybody, almost. You know what I mean? A MC is, I guess I could try to describe it in a lyric.

The MC, you say, I ain't going to slang that I be using. The MC means the master confusion, right? A MC is always like time, moving constantly, okay? It ain't just move the crowd, which he has to move the crowd. You know what I mean? But I had a whole lyric when I wrote down all the different things that an MC must do. You mean? He must match the competition.

And I think that an MC is almost like the difference between a Jedi Knight and a Samurai. Because a Jedi Knight has a lightsaber, right? And not only is his lightsaber powerful, his force is powerful. You know what I mean? So I know this is all using, you know, trying to explain something that the best way I can. It's hard to explain, of course. Yeah, exactly.

It's hard to explain. But it's a difference and you can hear it. You can feel it. You know what I mean? You can feel it. Does it have anything to do with the music? Because it feels like when you first said it, what I heard was that a rapper writes words that you could probably say on anything. Whereas an MC, you could only say it over the particular beat,

because it's connected to the beat. That's a piece of it. That's a good digestion of it. Look, Nas is an MC. Mm-hmm. It's a fact. Even when you took away all the music, it's still potent.

Absolutely. That's another way of looking at it too. What happens if you take away all the music? Is it potent? What happens if you write it down? Is it stronger? Yeah. So an MC is more like a poet, we may say.

He definitely has to be part poet, right? Whereas a rapper is more like somebody doing songs. That's a good argument. Because a poet, you have to be a poet and deeper than a poet, right? Because, you know, I grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side. That's a lot right there. side, the New York Times side. That's a lot right there. That's the New York Times, that's a lot in that one phrase.

Staying alive was no job. Okay, that's simple. I had second hand. My mom's bounced on old man. So then we moved to Shilohland. In four lines, right, and Mully Mel, a child is born with no state of mind, blind to the ways of mankind. God smiling on you, but he's frowning too,

because only God knows what you've been through. Even in those four lines. A lot of information. A lot of information. And MCs tend to do that. And they do it in a way that even if you hear it 20 years later, it has the same thing. Now I know this is- Because it's deep.

You're saying the MCs lyrics have a depth that make it timeless. Yeah. Yeah. That's a fact. Tell me from a technical standpoint how you would go about production from the beginning. Okay, on a technical standpoint, how I went about production, first thing is use whatever you got, right? So, of course, I started with the turntable and the four track.

You say the four track is set at that time? Yeah, the four track, Yamaha four track. And this is like maybe 16, 17. So the first thing is just a square tape recorder. You know tape recorders? Yep, you play and record and put the tape in. Cassette recorder. Cassette recorders. My cousin Ramsey had one. Ramsey is Old Dirty Basterds' big brother. So he's a few years older than us. He's going to be ahead of us on everything. Record collection,

rock and roll. He's a guitar player, keyboard player. He got the turntables first, everything, right? Old Dodie's mother and father worked for Transit and for 911. They're like the Jefferson's to my family. My family is the welfare, 11 kids welfare family. But the first thing was this tape recorder and comic books and a shoe box. And that's where the drums were and we're just wrapping to the tape recorder and play that back. Then of course the Cunnion comes out and now you got the two tape recorders and then you're doing pause tapes.

Would it be pause tapes from stuff you'd record off the radio or... Yeah, forever, yep. Or turntable? Yep, yep, yep. Whatever you could get a track from or beats from. But before that though, I heard the song, Flashes, on the beat box. And so I said, what is a beat box? So I already had a pair of turntables, straight arms, sadly. But went down to-

Did you have a mixer as well? Had a mixer. We sold newspapers to get this. That's to give you a little bit of a background. GLI? What was the mixer you had? Had a mixer. We sold newspapers to get this, just to give you a little bit of background. GLI? What was the mixer you had? No. No brand. Wasn't even a Gemini.

Eventually I got a Gemini. It's more like I got the $60 shit. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? I didn't have- Yeah, like Radio Shack. Do you remember where you got it? I got it from Four Taves Street in Manhattan.

Do you remember they had all that? They had like five or ten stores. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all the boom boxes and everything. And they had the rhythm box, where you just get Waltz, slow rock, bossa nova. But if you push two buttons together, what happened? It had changed it to something different. And if you hit the fill button, so that was my first technology demo. And it wasn't even a roll, I know Roland kind of maybe invented it, but by the time we got

it, it was some generic brand that come in business, get out of business. All right. So then all of a sudden, 14 years old, high school, I see a 606. That was like a small white drum machine. Silver. Yep, just more silver, 606. We borrowed it from a guy and he had to basically pull the gun to get it back from us. Because I was like, this is the grail.

From a 606, 707 comes out. DJ Dr. Rock from the 4semsies had a 707. We went to his house and made demos with DJ Dr. Rock from the 4semsies. You know what I mean? 14 years old, I was 14, 15 years old. So we got Dr. Rock from the 707, RZA Just at ODB doing songs. And this is before the rest of the world start making their demos. Do you still have those recordings?

I don't have them. Somebody does. Somebody does? Somebody does. Oh cool. I'm glad they exist. Yeah, somebody does. So from the 707, the 909 comes.

And then my DJ gets one of those, DJ Scotty Rock. Not like Scott Lavaque. He had his name was Scottie Rock. Then when Scott Lavaque came out, everybody thought it was him, but it wasn't. But anyway, 909. So now I got a 909, four track, two turntables. And then the Casio RZ1 comes out with the four pads for pulse sampling. That's my original setup.

And that's demos from the age of 16 to maybe two years. Because then the SP1200 come out. And so did the Ensoniq EPS. I had a SB 1200. So the SB 1200, you had to take the time, it was a very limited time, so you used to speed the records up to 78 and then slow it down in the machine, which gave all of our sound that other ring that we didn't even know was part of that sound. I didn't know that.

That's how you get this. I didn't know that that was why the ring was there, but that's why I always had this ring. You listen to a lot of dope tracks. There was Easy Mode B who had the 1200 and asked to go to his house because my manager was looking for tracks for me. I saw that shit and I was like, I'll get one of those. And then when I got it, my other colleague slash rival, you know what I mean, he was another DJ in my projects.

And you know, he used to make songs with Ghost, I make songs with Ghost, but I learned that he was kind of colleague rivals. But he had the EPS. But the SB 1200 was considered the cool. And he's like, yo, I'm going to Virginia for the summer and I can't take the EPS. I'm off there in my family car. When I let you hold the EPS and you let me hold the SP-1200, I was like, all right, cool. That was like, because the SP-1200 is a drum percussion sound.

The EPS is a keyboard. And I didn't know that I'm more of a keyboard player. And now I know. So only because you were being cool. Yeah. And now I'm like, I'm a keyboard player. That's what I like. And I remember that my cousin had the Casio,

and I used to play with the keyboard. So now I realize, I'm a keyboardist. I can play my sample. I can sample one note and fucking go up and down the key with it. Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. With the drums playing? Yeah. What the fuck?

And then I mastered that keyboard. You listen to the early Woo, because of course the EPS then went to be the EPS 16 plus, then eventually to the ASR 10. That's the thing. And when Woo comes out, those same discs, you can take your old disc and put it in the ASR 10. The first hundred tracks that I released,

besides Bringin' the Pain, and maybe there's 10 SB 1200 tracks in my catalog, but most of those songs are ASR and Sonic tracks. And that became my technology all the way through. Then I would take the MPC and midi it with the ASR 10 and that's how you get Triumph. Because now, I mean, the MPC is the most powerful, as you gotta admit. But it wasn't what I started with. Once again, the MPC takes me back to the drum. I mixed that with the fucking ASR 10, and that's the Wu-Tang Forever album, along with

now, people getting the sound modules, the 1080s or the 2020s from Roland. You get the Nord lead come out and the digital synthesizers are there now in the late 90s. And all that becomes my arsenal. And that became how I did it. And then now I was giving them one level. And then I became a keyboard lord. Meaning if they made it, I bought it.

50, 60, 70, maybe 80 keyboards in my life. They make one, I buy it just to fucking master it. Make some 10, 20 tracks with it that you may never hear. And then I go, I cheat. I guess those became my girls. So I was collecting keyboards for years and I ran through many of them. When I became Bobby Digital, I had all my keyboards in my studio, you know, like how you have it.

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Being the Rizzo for those years from 1993 up into 1999, 1998, 1999, I didn't realize my success. Meaning economically, I was pretty monotonous with my relationship. I think I did almost three years just with one woman, which is weird for an artist. But I wasn't into it. After Wu-Tang forever, being rich and being loose and seeing the world and also having some internal problems in my household, I just cut loose. You know what I mean? And then when I cut loose, I just became hedonistic, to be quite frank.

And then also I became more consumption of substances. You know what I mean? And then also I just had this, I had like a vision, a foresight vision. I've been blessed every few years with a vision, a foresight vision. I've been blessed every few years with a vision. And this time it was the everything is going digital. You gotta lead the way. Boodle-do-do-do-do-do-do. That's the sound of,

no, I made a joke on myself. I'm gonna share this joke with you. So my mother named me Robert Fitzgerald Diggs after Robert Kennedy and John. She put those two names together and named me Robert Fitzgerald Diggs. And when you name Robert sometimes they'll call you Bobby or they'll call you Robbie. I started thinking, well, am I a robot? Like I asked myself, like, is there something in me that's like, is there something I don't know?

Like, am I physical, am I digital, am I a robot, am I a man, am I a god? Like all these questions was just zoning through me, and especially at this period. And I think it was a few things happening in my life. I think the trauma of what happened in my personal life, the trauma of Wu-Tang, it's almost like, you know, this is called Shangri-La, where we at here. And that's considered almost a heaven on earth. You know, I was fortunate to be free in 1997. I was fortunate to be given the gift of mental freedom.

And it all happened from watching a flower grow and die in one day. So I was blessed with that. But then a few days later, something very traumatic in my personal life happened, but I was free. So it didn't affect me like that. And then the Wu brothers around the same time decided that we're not gonna finish

the Rage Against the Machine tour. And everybody just started scattering it to their own way. Tell me about that moment in time. Tell me about the tour and then tell me about how that happened. Yeah, well, we were on the biggest tour of our career. Wu-Tang and Rage, 30,000 kids a night. Good show.

What a show. What a show. Especially at that time. It's new as, I mean, you know, you, of course, you know, you lived through death jams, so you know, Beasties and Rime Fest. What was it called? Fresh Fest. Fresh Fest and all.

You know, you know the things that you guys had did. But it was hip hop wasn't getting these moments like this. Right? P.E. and Anthrax maybe, but this was huge. And then my guys didn't want to do it. Didn't understand the cultural relevancy of it. And I did.

I understood at that time, and it happened at one of our concerts when I saw all five families there. Black, white, red, brown, yellow. It was on a rage tour that I invented this. Like these wings. The woo symbol. Yeah, the woo symbol. I saw it.

I saw the people. My mom was like, we got a record, give them something. And here you got the five families on it, this side is, let's put it all together. I saw the people. My mom was like, we gotta give them something. And here you got the five families on this side, let's put it all together, that's the rule. But the crew didn't get it. They'd rather do the college shows, and they thought that we was kinda selling out,

to be quite frank. Because the audiences were big? Or why do you think? Tell me what you think it was. More whites than ever. I see. Okay, not shorty with the big ass right there. It's like it was different.

And we from the hood. All of them felt that way. No. Except you? No, no, no, no, no, no. Enough of us that you're looking on stage as four guys. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was like it wasn't tookin' serious. And not to go back like that or to point any fingers, You know what I mean? This is like it wasn't tookin' serious. And not to go back like that or to point any fingers, but I remember telling them that we gonna do this first. Yeah, and then do that. And then do that. Yeah, it's all good. Yeah, and the way it was planned was like we gonna hit the colleges in September and

go through the homecomings. It's gonna becomings. Yeah. It's going to be crazy. Yes. And then when we come, first of all, they put me and Zach on the cover of Rolling Stone. It's on. And one thing about Woo is all alpha. You don't got no non-alphas. And they gave me five years in 1992.

So in 1997, what that mean? Five years is up. Yeah. And was it, from the beginning, was it discussed as a five year plan? Yes. Five years without interruption. Yeah.

Five straight years. Yeah. And that's a lot of work. Yeah. But now we had a year where it's not your work. We get to say what we wanna say. Yeah, yeah. So now it's not your work. We get to say what we wanna say. So now it's different. So for five years, they agreed that you would lead. But after the five years, to be discussed.

To be discussed. Right. And even though the contract, I think one of my lawyer contract amended it, like so, no. I was like, the contract on me, shit does. It doesn't mean anything. Yeah, the five years...

If everybody's not into it, it's not gonna be any good anyway. I even said that to myself, my time is up, my time is up. I'm cool with it, but it hurts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It did hurt. Just because he'd worked for five years to get to that point for that opportunity to see people. Yeah.

It hurt. That was And so it hurt. So that was part of the hurt. And then the personal thing was part of the hurt. And then the exploration enters me. Exploration women. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm fun. I'm rich.

Yeah. Would that not have happened had the woo stayed on course? I don't think it would have happened. Because you probably would have been too busy. Yeah. I wasn't out, yeah, I wasn't outside yet like that. Yeah, because in... Yeah, to be quite frank, I wasn't outside.

You didn't see me outside. Yeah. I wasn't, I wasn't, the rest of it was mysterious. Yeah. What the fuck, who the fuck? No. The Abbott was a motherfucker. So you were working.

Oh, definitely. I stayed in that basement. It seemed like it was all work. You could smell me from the front door. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's how I was. Yeah.

And I'm not, I love it. I love that. I'm grateful for it. But the question was how do I become Bobby Digital? Yeah. Well now, it's on me. Everybody's doing them now what I'm gonna do. So I thought all right I'll do a RZA album. But I just had a vision that things was different, the world is gonna change and you gotta go digital. And then you know it was in my studio and

I had had some other MCs with me, the young MCs like Killer Army and Sons of Man and those type of dudes. And I just said, yo, you gotta go digital. They said, what the fuck you talking about? I said, nah, I'm telling you, you gotta go digital. Everything is going to go digital. What the fuck you talking about? What the fuck you talking about?

The fuck you talking about? Do do do do do do. You tripping, you smoking that sick, you tripping. I said nah, digital. And my studio looked different to me. It didn't look like that. It looked like almost like a future. Wow.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Even though nothing had changed, you saw it in a new way. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you hallucinated it too a little bit, I don't know. But it definitely wasn't the same. And then it wasn't the same. And then did the name come before the material or did the material come before the name?

The idea came and then I named it. I see. Yeah. I was like, Bobby Digital. But now all of a sudden, because do you know what it is to? I got to honestly say, and I don't know, know, know. Right? You don't know. You know. We don't know. We don't know anything.

Exactly. But I can say that I wouldn't be able to do what I did as DeRiZza, because that entity doesn't allow that. Understood. Yeah, you know what I mean? The Abbott can't do that, and Bobby can. And I think it became almost-

Is it that DeRiZza functioned within the Woo? I don't know, I think De rizzo even function within like, if you think about, let's just say my lyrics, let's use that as an example if we can. Yeah. And you hear me, you know, I recorded a song called Sunshower,

where if you listen to it, it should guide you on a path to knowledge of self and some enlightenment. Trouble follows behind a wicked mind. You got 20-20 vision of the prism of light but you're still blind if you lack the inner. So every sinner will end up in the everlasting winter of hellfire, where thorns and splinters prick your third eye out, your words fly out, but your sound die out, and you remain unheard.

And you will suffer eternally, internal and externally, along with wicked fraternals who let off thermonuclear heat, weapons that could burn you firmly and permanently as you travel through the journal of the Book of Life. But those who took a life without justice will become just ice. It's been taught, Buddha taught, that your worst enemy couldn't harm you as much as your own wicked thoughts. But people ought be wrought, and they listen not. But they will be persecuted inside a universal court.

As I inhale a strong blend of jasmine and rose petals and sandalwood, as men be chanting witchcraft and using incense to reach higher dimensions, I'm convinced. Anyway, it's just like, you know. Great lyrics. Yeah, Zwezak could say that. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. Bobby, what y'all bitches talking about? Get the fuck out my house before I grab your hair and slap my dick in your mouth. What the fuck is that? That's not... Bob Digy, yeah, tell me who is he? Bitch, I'll slave trade you like Kizzy, Kente. Wait, fuck you motherfucker. Bitch, you wish you could fuck.

All you could do is dick suck. So Bobby Digital was the more raw character. Yeah, hedonistic, loose, the anger, the things that RZA already worked out. And so what happened was I realized I had to go back because I was stuck in that cave, let's call it the studio for those years. And I said, hold on, I have to go back before I go to RZA. And I needed to go back. I didn't intentionally go back though.

It was just like, that's what was coming out of me. That was coming out, I was like, damn, this is all just kept coming out of me. And then I liked it too. Take that for a, right? And I did a $5 million deal with John Baker for the album, so now I'm like, fuck it. Who's John Baker? John Baker was running G Street Records, so John Baker known for PM Dawn, I think he had Ziggy Marley, Gravediggers, and then he came and did the RZA album.

So Chris Blackwell funded John, gave him G Street Records, and what you call him, Roka Da Dill, Rage's manager, the female, Bridget. Oh, Bridget. Yeah. Yeah. So Bridget had did, Bridget. Yeah. Yeah. So Bridget had did the deal. So you don't know what you don't know, right? And so hip hop, you know, my biggest record deal was the Wu-Tang second album, which is

a $4 million deal. Most artists were getting $300,000, maybe 600,000. A million was LL. Yeah. You know what I mean? So we was able to broker a $4 million deal for Wu-Tang. I thought I was the man. And then I met Bridget and she said,

people were talking about you should do your own album. This is after the tour, like people like you. Fans like you and the industry likes you. I'm reliable. You know what I mean? And I was like, well, I'm doing good by myself. I want to do an album. I got so many allies. I'm with Lil, I got Steve, I got Wendy. She said, well, how much you think a Roza album can you get? I said, I don't know. Go get two million at least. I know I can do that.

He said, what if I could get you five? I said, what you, five million? That's more than Wu-Tang. She said, no. He said, you getting hip hop numbers, I can get you rock and roll numbers. So I didn't know that, that rock and roll. I didn't know that either. But why did some artist in the rock world, I mean this a- I don't know. either. But why did some artist in Iraq, I mean this a-

I don't know. I really have no idea. Well, that's what she exposed to me, whether it was a myth or a magic, but it happened. Yeah, but it happened. Yeah, it's great. Yeah. And I actually gave a lot of the money back because when I signed the deal, I did sign as RZA.

You know what that means? No. It meant that I didn't own the RZA name anymore. Right, you know, you sign a record deal, you become, the RZA becomes part of that company. It's like, anytime I wanna do the RZA, they got the right to that. Oh, I see.

And I was like, nobody gonna own the RZA, philosophically. Yeah. And they was like, no, what do you mean? You signed the deal. It's like a wool chain, like that. If you want to record, you got to hit, you put your five, you go through your five album sequence. I said, no, no, it doesn't feel right for somebody to own the RZA.

I don't even own the RZA. And they said, what you mean? And I told my lawyer, I was like, we got to get the RZA out of this. Bobby could stay. Yeah. And Bobby's the one who's delivering the record. Yeah. And then it was like, well, you wonder what?

I said, I'll buy it back. I want to buy RZA back. And they said, okay, a couple million dollars, you could buy it back. I said, I'll buy it back. They didn't believe it. I did it right before Christmas, too., boo, give me my name back. Well, not give me my name back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let the RZA be the RZA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know we're having a pretty interesting conversation here and I'm so comfortable with you. Your travel. The thing about life, right, you've traveled, bro. You know what I mean? Yeah. life, right? You've traveled, bro. You know what I mean? And your travel is the road you pass and the destination that you've achieved, right? Mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, economically, socially, all these ways of achieving puts you at a certain seat, right? And so, and I've traveled so far as

well. So then when two people meet at that certain seat, Right? And so, and I've traveled so far as well. So then when two people meet at that certain seat, you know what I mean? It's just like, it's a different type of conversation. It's like I don't even be around people that are not good, that none of this even begins to fluctuate out of me. So know that, and it's a pleasure to build with you on it. I appreciate that. But yeah, the RZA, going back to the beginning

of our conversation, you know, the whole different artistic curiosity or the way that I said different personalities is definitely an entity of energy. Which is interesting, Rihanna names her son RZA, right? Her son is named RZA. And it's just And I was like, it's very interesting, because I don't use the name as much. You know what I mean? I'd use it, but not as much as I used it when I was using it. And maybe, imagine 20 years from now,

and let's say, because I don't think that RZA is just a name, I think it's a title. I think it's an entity. I think it's an entity. I think it's something. Not being superstitious here, nothing like that. No, I understand. But imagine if he does embody that. Because the RZA's job is to resurrect, to bring something back, you know what I mean?

To help us see what we missed, you know what I mean? And in a hip hop way, hip hop was everything but hip hop for a moment. Now in disrespect to all our greats who are adding on to it, and it can be considered part of hip hop culture, but it wasn't hip hop. It was what it was, but it had to go into the category of hip hop. The same thing happened with rock. At the moment it's, that's not rock, but that's all that rock is given, and that's rock.

But it wasn't, right? And it's just like somebody always comes, entity will come, whether it's in any form, a jazz guy, somebody will come that'll be like, yo, oh, that's the piriform. That's what we forgot. And then we rebuild again. How do you describe your relationship to hip hop now?

I think my relationship to hip hop now is one foot in, one foot out. Right, one foot in because I'm founded in it. And I'm always striving to somehow find a new path for it. And that's because there's so many people in hip hop, especially from young people and I'll even point even more, hip hop has seemed to be, it's been kind of classified because of the majority of hip hop archip practitioners are black, right?

So it seems like, let's say 80%, at least 75% is black. And you have so many of these youths striving to be in it, but all striving like crabs in a barrel for that one path of it. And so my foot that's in it is always trying to show another path. My foot that's out it, you know, making movies and shit, you know what I mean? Yeah, and classical music. Classical music, you know, just expressing. And even about me doing the classical, I would hope that somebody from hip-hop understand that

when you're making a beat, you're making a beat. But when you're composing beat, you're making a beat. But when you're composing something, you're composing something. And start composing your beats. Dre said it on one of his little interviews. He said, he pointed out how a beat maker is different from a producer because a beat maker makes the beat, but then he has to produce the record. You know what I mean? And you know that, one of the greatest producers from the culture in multiple genres yourself.

And so that's how I see myself, one foot in, one foot out. Do you feel like everything you make, films, classical music, books, somehow still are tangentially related to hip hop? I do think that. I hope it's not my ego saying that. No, I think that's true too. Okay, I hope it's not my ego saying that. When you're established in hip hop, it's a way of looking at the world that you don't let go of.

It doesn't disappear when you're working on another genre. Yeah, I think, while they say hip hop is a culture, it's a way of life and, you know, even as we chill, as we chilling, we still got a swag that's going to be way different than our peers when they see it. So even when I show up to the symphony hall, I'm a little swag, a little different, you know what I mean? And the cool thing about it, like even if you look at... I think Eminem is another

good example for... just using him as a... because he's a great artist. It's the same. It's like he'll show, if Eminem shows up, he's hip hop. Even though he could be with, it could be a thousand white guys there, a thousand artists there, a thousand musicians. He's hip hop. Eminem is hip hop motherfucker. Okay.

Yep. And that's, that's what hip hop is. It's something else. And so, but yeah, so I like the one foot in, one foot out because I'm never going to take both feet out. I can't. I don't think I could get away with it. I mean, I get away with it, meaning it's already in my blood.

It's in you, yeah. Tell me about you made an album that there's only one copy in existence of it. Yeah, that's a whole other chamber. Tell me the story. Man, that's a lot nother chamber. Tell me the story. Man, that's a lot. How did the idea happen? It was really like, so my student, my student Silver Rings, I let him in to the temple, the whole world, and let him in, and let him sit by the door, get them a lot of trust, maybe

too much. And it was almost like my student challenged me, right? Right? And was doing things that was not pure in the sense of our relationship, in the sense of the conduct that I would expect from him. But yet, doing something in the cause of what he believed was the right cause of Wu-Tang. And in that process, right, we was two ideas we was tangling with. One idea was I wanted to make a better tomorrow in theory, practice, music, everything. I just thought that's what the world needed. And in the process of doing that, I also wanted to centralize the idea of a Wu-Tang item. The centralization of it became a physical form where I first thought this, that I'll

make an album that will be a piece of jewelry that'll be either Bluetooth or USB to you. But you have to have this. And it's the only you had to have this. It's the only way you can have it. At that point, were you thinking there would be one of them or no? You were thinking that the delivery system for the album would be the bracelet, let's say.

But you would buy it like you would buy an album in the old days. But very, very high priced. I see. Very high priced and very, very well made. Limited luxury item. Yeah. That you could physically wear, but that you could also play it.

And if you didn't have that, you could not play it. Yeah, it wasn't part of this. I understand. You know what I mean? And you wore it with honor and a badge of honor. And then talking with Silver Rings, somehow he had got, it was almost like he got wind of what I was doing with all these peers, right? And then he sent me an image that was close to my image. And I was like, okay, we got to meet.

And then when we met, he was like, I didn't get that from your image. It's some inspiration I had as well. I said, well, what should we do with that? It's like, well, we should just make it singular. I was like, make it singular? Can't even meditate on that. And I meditated on it. But I didn't decide to do it. It wasn't until, and this is not, I haven't said this story here. It wasn't until the woo did a quick European run, and while we was working on it better

tomorrow, we had maybe four or five songs. And while we was doing it, we all got into an argument about my direction. You know what I mean? You da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da First of all, how do you hear it? It's supposed to be secret. I just listened to them, then I called me.

Yo, you fucking... I said, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah,

nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, to make the most of something, right? And what's the best way? And I went with his idea more than my idea, which was make it singular. And then I said, well, if we make it singular, we gotta wait there. I said, so we're gonna just hold it.

And I put out a better tomorrow first and see what the world wants to do. And if the world don't respond, then we hit them with that. I think one of the fascinating things is where I probably want to delimit it to select, maybe a select amount. Yeah. And have the people that really build a wool have this emblem first at a high level and then maybe, let's just say hypothetically, maybe first that this thing costs you $10,000 and is yours and it's made of fine metals and it's not cheap, it's wearable,

right? As if you were the boy from Tiffany's and you could pass it to your child, valuable increase. Then have a version of course that you could pay $100 for it and all that and eventually have the catalog on your wrist. And then the idea of abandoning that to just centralizing it to one in that box, in that case. And I rolled with that, but I put a time on it. And then once the time came and it seemed like, yo, you know what? And the rule did it as well.

Better Tomorrow, which you worked on yourself, right? Thank you. Yeah, we did a song here, Shangri-La. A Better Tomorrow, why it wasn't the 90s sound of the woo boom bap, it definitely was the woo in a mature form as men. It definitely was the Woo in a mature form as men. And I think it has its merit as something if you're a Woo fan and a music fan, it's

something that you should give it a shot. But at the time, the Woo also wasn't into it. You know what I mean? I'm a diverge from the story and give you another sub story to this thing, which is so funny about my life. So the Wu is not into this album. Rob Markman When you were making it, they weren't into it? Lil Yachty Yeah, I mean, through the whole process. Making

it is weird, because we made it. It's like we fucking made it. But just, you know, and I understand the rule. The rule wants to be as threatening as the rule always is. The rule of music is pretty threatening and pretty fucking brain the motherfucking workers. You know what I mean? But I was like, that's how we felt as kids. How do you feel as a man? It's impossible to feel the same way.

Or is it possible? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe- No, but it would likely feel disingenuous if that's not the way you're living. Yeah. Or maybe I'm the one that's out here, went from the first album, Goat Meat, to by the time we got the Liquid Sports, I'm only eating turkey burgers. By the time we get the Wu-Tang forever, I'm only eating fish. By the time we finish that album, I'm vegan.

So maybe it's me, and I accept that. But I thought we all was growing at a certain rate, and maybe we were, but musically we didn't need to, and they disagreed on me. And I respect that. The scientists always agree and disagree. But what happened was Rolling Stone offered us the cover of Rolling Stone. This time us, all of us. But the last time we was on the cover of Rolling Stone it was just RZA and Zack. And then the time after that was maybe me and five other rock and roll bands for

that big summer tour cover they do. Maybe I think, I don't know if Mel was with me on that day, but it never been the entire Wu-Tang clan on the cover of Rolling Stone. And they was like, we're going to do it. And I get to New York and the only one at the shoot is me. And I'm like, oh shit, and Rolling Stone is there. So it's me, the writer, the photographers, and no woo. And no warning, because I flew in from LA.

So I'm like, okay, that's crazy. So I immediately, two days later, turn around and fly back. And while I'm flying back, I get a... I had this script that my agent had gave me. And I started reading it on the plane. It's a story about a female MC who wants to increase her lyrical ability by studying poetry and putting more meaning into the songs, but the other MCs in her crew, all guys, they don't want her. They want to stay heard and they want to live in gangster fantasies.

And she wants to expand and they don't want her to. And she ends up getting kicked out of the group, leaving the group, and finding a whole new thing for herself. And I was like, that sounds like me. And so I land in LA and call my agent like, yo, did they find a director for that movie yet? He's like, they still looking, you know, a couple of names. I said, give me a meeting.

And they got me a meeting and I got the job. And I did it. It was my second film called Love Beats Rhymes. You know what I mean? Which is- A good experience? Great experience. Yeah.

The producer for that movie is actually a producer on my new movie. Great. It was a great experience for me. Beyond my lead actress, but great experience. I'm sad to say that it's crazy how things go. Yeah. And it's crazy how the rebound to it. Yeah. I rebounded well. Yeah. So now I'm gonna to say that it's crazy how things go. And it's crazy how they rebound to it.

I rebounded well. So now I'm gonna do this movie. I also want to just ask you, was the woo not showing up and not telling you they weren't showing up unusual or is that something that might have happened in the past? That was heaviest, I think. I think like, I think nobody's showing up as deep. Yeah, maybe half wouldn't show. Yeah, half is always an equation.

It's always somebody missing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too many people. Yeah. You know, and you look at our early photos, you'll see everybody's not in that photo. I can respect that. But nobody's showing up.

I just got to accept this of this, and I do accept it. I'm totally wrong. Because if nobody shows up and I show up, then I'm wrong. That means I'm making the mistake here. The thing about that is that it's been agreed that what I'm doing is not right. The product is not right, the vibe is not right. And how do I know? It's been agreed unanimously. So I'm wrong.

And do you believe they discussed it? I don't know. No, I don't know. I don't know how they... I didn't even inquire. You know what I mean? I just accepted. Okay. All right.

I fucked that one up. Have The Woo done anything since then, together? As an album or music? Anything. Yeah, we do concerts and tours. And how does that work? Well the funny thing is, I said I'll jump ahead then. I was going to hit you with the, what happens now is that the next move though is Once Upon

the Time of Shaolin. Right, so because what Better Tomorrow comes out, it does maybe 30, 40,000 units the first week, which is not that great for a Wu-Tang. And Sizzle is way on out of the world. And so I'm looking at the Wu and I'm looking at the fans, I'm looking at the system, and I'm like, okay, launch the missile. Once upon a time in Shaolin, nobody get it, not even the Wu got it. Nobody gets it now. So I got some Rizzoism in there, some all this other shit, and then Silver

Rings gets a platform because he becomes, his name is in the woo world in a way that he never would have been in the woo world. And good for him. He probably got the most out of it than all of us. So that's that. But going to the modern day, the woo are our brothers. So what happened was there was a five year plan in the beginning, Rick. And then in 2018, 2017, 2018, I think I made another five year

plan. And I pitched it to everybody. When I said to them, if you're not paying attention, hip hop is forgetting us. You know what I mean? Said, bro, I seen two documentaries on hip hop, they jumped right over us. I seen them go from LL to Biggie. How do you get to Biggie without going through a wall? You can't, you know what I mean? It's like we set that wick, that opened that up. If we don't go platinum in 1993, he doesn't go platinum in 1994. Nas don't go platinum in 1994. Nas don't go platinum in 1995.

The money dictates the energy of where the system is taking bets. If we don't show improve, then the money ain't coming to New York. It's gonna stay right out here in the West, which was doing very well for everybody. But they skipped us. And then it was like, nobody saw it. And then they

invited me to the show that I was doing, I think it's called Hip Hop Evolution or something like that. Season three. Now you're inviting the woo, and I declined. But they still got Ray and Ghost to do it. And I told everybody, decline, but they still did it. And so I said, we gotta tell our own story. They skipping us, right? And so I said, what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a documentary and we're gonna do a TV series and we're gonna do a tour.

It's gonna be a five year plan, two five year plans, I said, that's going to actually, I'm going to do a relay race with these years. It's going to go five years here, and in the middle of this plan, the second five year plan to start. And so within seven years, right, everybody will become, should be millionaires again, should be able to ride off in the sunset. And I myself, who was actually doing pretty well, can also lay my head in my mansion at night knowing that I did all I can to make sure my brother's legacy was protected and that their economics and their families were protected

unless they fuck it up. And then I was like, but this is the shot that I'm going to take. And everybody was like, everybody agreed. And even though I had bumps along the road, once you agree with me, I'm cool with all the stuff you do. Just try to stop me because it's like, you already agreed, my heart is in purity and content of this is what we're doing. And we ended up doing Mikes and Men. Emmy nominated. Big for hip hop and big for the culture. Then we do the Hulu series, 30 hours, no hip hop, not even music people have gotten that

much time of introspective creative art on their work. And we do the tour. And so the tour was the part, was the parallel thing, because the tour was supposed to lead to a Vegas residency. And the tour, New York State of Mind, one of the biggest tours in hip hop, right, for the last five years. The Vegas residency works. First hip hop group to have a residency in Vegas, which close to 90% sellout rate.

And we will announce, I guess I won't announce it right here, but we got a big announcement coming for 2025. And so go back, you say, what are we doing? And now, the great art that all of my brothers possess, actually I'm seeing it even more now. Yeah. Everybody's individual works are growing based on this. Right.

And no, everybody individually are settling into this manhood thing. Oh, I see. That's what's happening. That's beautiful. So it's like somebody coming in, like for instance, nobody's coming in like, move that, move that, move that, move that. They come in like, okay, you can put a little yellow on that. You see what I mean? The creativity that's now presented to them through my lens, first of all, I've refined it.

I think making movies and TV shows has hit my brain at this level. So if you would've came to our Vegas show, you would've seen, you'd have been proud for hip hop. Because not with all the great sets and all that which hip hop has gotten to. No, it's almost like you're watching a hip hop play. You know what I mean? Even on the New York State of Mind, I don't know if you made it to any of those, but when you see that, it wasn't usually when you got that many artists, it's a battle. No.

I was able to, along with my partner Nas, of course, being in the green house with me, we were able to meld it together. I'll never forget when Busta came to the first day, because he signed on late. When he got there, I was like, yeah, this is this. I had play. And I did his whole logo, had the whole, he's like, he never came to no concert with somebody and the other act. It's okay. Karen about him.

Yeah. When Dayla came, they didn't hook up early. So their joint, we was like, well, it's Dayla, so I love him. So I was just like, let me just spend two or three days. I said, look, look at this now. And it was like, yeah. I said, we're gonna start with three, that's the magic number. That's gonna have the crowd like, oh shit, De La.

And then you end with it. And on a three time, it takes three, it's the magic number. So for the whole show, I'm giving them this, but on the last song I give them that screen and I put the true go away up there. And they go out like that. Beautiful. Let's put a classroom behind them. You know what I mean?

So my creativity is where it's at as a filmmaker and all that. And now the team have that extra respect, you know, and when they come to say something, it's not the challenge, it's actually creatively to add on. And that's how we did our first album. It was competitive, but it was always adding on a layer. Mev came in, was like, I said, I need a hook. He's not on the song, guess what? Jazz rules everything.

He wrote that and he glued it and he had no ego in doing that. You know what I mean? I was like, yo, the lyric he said on Cream was from his own song where he had three verses. I said, nah, just give me that first verse of that song and take out, you know, took out like six or eight lines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No argument.

Yeah. You know what I mean? So hopefully, I feel like we're back to that, because we're men. You know what I mean? It's hard to be a man, even if you're 40, 50 years old sometimes. You still have this youth boy in you that wanna- Especially with your friends from when you were young. Exactly.

It's different when it's someone that you meet as an adult. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you revert back. Yeah. It's like your parent. Exactly. You go home and your parent, Mom, you got any...

Mom, I know you got apple pie. Exactly. Like, it's like... Exactly. And you feel... Yeah. It's that. Yeah. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? Do you want to maximize your endurance and feel your best?

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so you can perform at your very best. Element electrolytes are sugar-free, keto-friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt.com slash tetra and stay salty with Element Electrolyte. LMNT. What's your favorite Wu-Tang song? Wu-Tang Clan, all right. I don't know. I tell you the one I feel really proud of as a producer.

I feel really proud of Bring the Ruckus. I just feel like nobody did that before me. We're going to listen to Bring the Ruckus. I just feel like nobody did that before me. We're gonna listen to Bring the Ruckus. Okay. Shaolin shadow boxing and the Wu-Tang sword style. If what you say is true, the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang could be dangerous. Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me? I'm guard. I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style. Bring the motherfucking ruckus! Bring the motherfucking ruckus!

Bring the motherfucking ruckus! Bring the motherfucking ruckus! Ghost face, catch the blast of a hype verse My clock bursts, leaving her hurts, I did worse I come rough, tough like an elephant tusks, your head rust, fly like Egyptian musk. Ah shit, you can't clear Sparta Wixen. However, I'm master the trick just like Nixon. Causing terror, quick damage a whole era.

Hard rock is like the fuck up, I found stock. P.L.O. style hazardous, cause I wreck this dangerous. I blow spots like Quaco, Texas. I watch my back like I'm locked down, hardcore, hitting sound, watch me act broke and tear down. A little bit tight, asshole, songs going gold, no doubt,

and you're watching Kourtney make a foe. Yeah, they faking all that, carrying gats, but your mouth plan, growing like 40 max. Now you act convinced, I guess it makes sense. Wu-Chang, yo, soon represent. I wait for one to act up. Now I got him backed up.

Gun to his neck now, react what? And that's one in the chamber. Wu-Chang banger, 36 styles of danger. Bring the motherfuckin' ruckus. Bring the motherfuckin' ruckus. Bring the motherfuckin' ruckus! I rip it, hardcore like porno flick bitches I roll with groups of ghetto bastards with biscuits. Check it, my method on the microphone's bangin'.

Wu-Tang slang, I leave your head piece hangin'. Plus this, I'm kickin' like Segold out with justice. The roughness, just the rudeness. Fuck this, rap rump, I'm overly assaultin' tough. Murder one, my style shocks you not. Like a stun gun, I'm hectic. I'm record with the quickness Say it on the microphone, the competition get blown

While this nasty ass nigga with my nigga The RZA, charged like a bullet, got pulled like a trigger So bad, stabbing up the pad with the bone cap Crabs, I scream on your ass like your dad, bring it all Bring the motherfucking ruckus! I'm more ruckus than slave man boots, newbie crooks, I'm fucking up MC troops, I break blukes and trample shit, while I stomp, I'm motholing that ass cause I'm straight out the store, creeping up on sight, now it's fight night, my Wu-Tang slang is mad fucking dangerous And more deadly than the stroke of an axe Chopping through your back, pshh

Giving bystanders heart attacks, niggas tryna fling Tell me who wins them, I blow up this fucking prism Making a vicious act of terrorism You wanna bring it, so fuck it Come on and bring the rockets, then I'll provoke niggas to kick buckets I'm wetting cream, I ain't wetting fame, who's selling game? I'm giving out a deadly game, it's not the Russian, it's the routine Crushing roulette, slip up, you get fucked like Tzuzette Bring the fucking Rockets

Bring the motherfucking Rockets Bring the motherfucking Rockets I'm gonna let you try my Wu Tang style. So bring it on, nigga What do you remember about recording it? Yeah, so many so many memories on that one, Rick. I mean during the course of making the album. When did it happen? I feel like uh Maybe in the middle. Mm far as the rendition of what it ended up being. But I also think that the way we were recording that album, that pieces of it was happening during the process.

Carlos Best was the engineer then, Ethan was the engineer, and Carlos was like, you know, put the drums in the elevator shaft. You know what I mean? Record that shit. You know what I mean? And so, you know, that process of making an album and also experimenting with what's happening through the thing. But one thing about it that I really love for me in memory is that the willingness of

unorthodoxness that as a creator, I was cool with. Like you hear that sound, that's the CD skipping. I sampled it and it plays in that track about 10 times. That's my horns. It sounded like a horn. It sounded like it's my horn. It became my fucking horns. Yeah, and it was just a CD skipping that you just happened to notice when it was skipping

that sounds like horns, I'm going to use it. So that type of freedom of grabbing and playing, yeah. I love it so much because if you take, like, there's a lot of frequencies in it, but if you play that shit loud, it's every changing. You got the four MCs, but none of them rhyme to the same thing. You know what I mean? It's always- Yeah, even the music under the hook changes. Yeah. And so it I mean? It's always... Yeah.

Even the music under the hook changes. Yeah. So it was composing without knowing. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's what it was. How would you decide who would go on what tracks? At that time, I considered the MCs as instruments as well.

I see. You know what I mean? So I kind of... You know what I mean? I knew certain voices. And then also, I knew my brothers pretty well. More than they knew each other, because they all was my buddies.

You know, they wasn't buddies with each other yet. I see. Yeah. What was the first scoring job you did in Hollywood? My first score was Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog. Went well, critically acclaimed. And what was the experience like?'s Ghost Dog. It went well, critically acclaimed. And what was the experience like? It was great. Jim was a cool guy.

I didn't know shit, bro. Absolutely. He's a great guy. I didn't know shit. I was breaking music at one o'clock in the morning and shit, drinking 40s, and ODB in the car with me. Jim was always like, you know, it was like a spy movie. Like, I'd be needing the music and he'd be like,

yo, when you gonna be Wednesday at one? Like, cause editing the movies is over at six o'clock. Okay, it's on schedule here. But he was cool. It was cool, yeah, it was cool. And was cool. It was cool. And we stayed brothers. I was just on the phone with him last week. Then I guess I did a good enough job that I got some critical respect.

And then I met Quentin. My next one is Kill Bill. Great. Yeah. And how was that experience? Changed my life. Because I saw in another artist the epitome of art and found my direction in art. Would you say you were inspired by the way he worked?

Yeah, I was inspired by the brain capacity that he had to use to make his world come to life. You know, I was doing that with 12 people in the studio. He's doing it with 200 people on a movie set. And at times, the good thing about it for me, when I met Quentin and I kind of saw that his brain was a certain way. I was humble enough to ask him, can I observe him? And he said, yeah.

He said, you know, I'll be in China. Whatever you want to come on over and help yourself. You know, we was already friends. And I flew to China. You know what I mean? Stayed a couple of days before I made myself known, because I like to be no burden to nobody. And then I was like, yeah, I'm told Lawrence Bender. Yeah, I'm here. He said, yeah, yeah, I've been couple of days before I made myself known, because I like to be no burden on nobody. Then I was like, I'm told Lawrence Bender, yeah, I'm here. He said, yeah, yeah, I'll be here in three days.

I'll be here for like two weeks. You gonna be here for two weeks? Yeah, I'm just chilling. You know what I mean? Oh, you don't need nothing. Just let me know who you guys are gonna be at. I'll be there, I'll show the set. I'll come every day after lunch and then stay for the rest of the day. Yeah, cool. And I was up there with the same book, composition notebook that

I would write lyrics in. Now I'm writing ideas and edit camera shit and all this shit. You know, that's what helped me find my new path. And I wasn't there as a composer. I was there as an observer because I saw a like-minded man who had elevated his art to the highest level of art. A film considerably is the highest, most expensive form of art. It takes sound, music, it takes color, paintings, wardrobes, tempo, lyrics, I mean- Acting. Acting.

A lot. Everything. Almost every, a good movie has every piece of art in it. Right? Even, I'll name a weird art. Painting, let's say. It's in it. Your art director painted the whole fucking set.

Give me one more. Dancing. Yeah, that's why you love the whole pulp fiction when John Chipotle danced with Uma Thurman, you're like, yo. Exactly. Yeah, it's in it. And he opened my brain to that. And it wasn't until then it went to Japan. I didn't go to Japan. Then it's in it. And he opened my brain to that. And it wasn't until, then it went to Japan.

I didn't go to Japan. Then it went to Mexico. And I showed up in Mexico. Two weeks in Mexico. It was in Mexico. You know, we spent a lot of nights in time together, especially on the days off and all that. I remember some of the producers was like, what is this guy doing here?

And that will give you a quick story. So you're really a student. You went as a student. I went as a student. And I would get your tea. If you would say, yo, get the tea, I would get the tea. And one thing that was funny, I'll just share this with you. So normally, let's say that there's three tables.

And this table is Quentin, the producers. This is the lead actress. Maybe Ethan Hawke came to town. That's that table. This table could be people from the crew and all that and all that and all that and all that. I was at that table. The third table.

Yeah. And then after some nights, you know, I think Larry McCoverland, one of the greatest study camp, did all the study cams for Scorsese and Goodfellas. In fact, his family invented the study cam. Wow. Okay? They called him Larry Vision.

But I became cool with him. I didn't have the same skills as everybody, so I could end up drinking with anybody. Right? But anyway, now I'm at that table. But I did overhear some bickering like, what is this guy doing here? You know what I mean? Somebody asked Quinn, what is, you know, Quinn said, I don't know. I haven't figured out what, I haven't figured out exactly what Bobby's going to be doing

as part of the film. Right here, he's here observing, but I haven't figured out what role he's going to play. And then maybe it's two more days before the end of it, Quentin invites me to this table and he makes the announcement of Bobby's going to be my first composer. He's never used a composer before. He said he's going to be my first composer for my's never used a composer before. So he's going to be my first composer for my film and he's going to help produce my soundtrack. Amazing.

I was like, dang. The funny thing though, there was a guy there, I think, who flew in because he wanted to be it. He had his guitar and everything. I know. But anyways, and that continued to lead me down the path of Hollywood. How many have you done since? Wow. A lot. Yeah. I know the TV series. I've got two Emmy nominations for music.

How's it different working on a score versus working on tracks? I mean a score, you have to service the film and remove your personal, what you want personally. It has to service the film. It's not about you. Right? At first I thought it was about service and the director. I thought that, but it wasn't that. On Kill Bill I thought it was about service and the director. I thought that, but it wasn't that. On Kill Bill, I thought it was serving the director.

And I never worked for nobody before, since I was- And neither did he. So that also is interesting that- Yeah, he never worked with nobody. He never worked with somebody to do score. So in some ways, you found your way together. Yeah. I'm the RZA right now.

Yeah. I'm the producer. Yeah. I call the riser right now. I'm the producer. I call the shots. I'm in a situation to where I play something, and they're like, no, that don't work, Bobby. I went through a situation where it didn't work all week. And I was like, yo, fuck this shit. My mind is still, you know what I mean?

And then I just let myself be freed. And one day, the scene that didn't work, he burst in the room one day. That's it. Whatever you was doing right there, that's what we need for the scene where she fights the crazy 88. And then it was like a moment where that scene was out of the movie. One day they tell me, and I'm working on it. And then I'm like, you know, it was Friday, you know, Friday is my day to show shit.

And mind you, I'm in the editing for, you know, editing is 20 weeks. So I don't get there as, you know, my time is still hip hop time, I will. So I'm not getting there like everybody else is. You're not there in the morning. Yeah, 9 a.m. It's after lunch, but I'm hanging until dinner. I even hang till midnight, but I'm not getting there before lunch. The scene was out of the film, but I didn't know.

And Friday I said, check this out. And listen. And I took an old sample that we had used, a Xanfier sample, and chopped it up to the scene. And it was like, you just saved the scene. I was like, what? So it was gonna be out, but because you liked the music, it made it in the movie.

Not only that, the music was such a good crate dig. It was the music in the trailer. Wow. It was a great dig. Yeah was the music and the trailer. It was a great dig. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. So cool. Have you ever studied martial arts philosophy? Of course. Yes. Of course. Yeah. I studied martial arts philosophy like even today. I was actually studying... There's a filmmaker named Law Ka Lung

who made the movie 36 Chain, but he's a director of it. He directed about 18 films. And I just been studying him for like the last two weeks. He passed away in 2013. I think he's one of the greatest directors to ever live. And he's a real kung fu master from the fourth generation of the hungar form. I actually learned the hungar form myself. I was trained by his classmate.

And when I was a man with an iron fist, they gave me this classmate. I read it from a book when I was a kid. So as a kid, one of the first books that I bought was the hungar form. I'm like 14 years old and I was just used to book and try to figure it out. Then in real life I get a hungar master to come teach me who was the brother of my favorite director and Gordon Lewis's brother as well and Gordon Lewis in my movie. The universe is crazy right? Yeah. Yes I study martial art philosophy and I will prescribe it that it should actually

be added to a curriculum in school because discipline, spirituality, physical training of yourself, mental training of yourself, understanding yourself. Martial art is actually the art of understanding yourself. It's so important. And the philosophy, whether you're Shaolin or Wu-Tang or Ermei, you know, or even if you want to just take it to Japan and do karate, it's all to build the individual and the community. You know, if you build yourself first, you become valuable to your community. And you could either be the one that opposed the community or inspire the community or even defend the community.

So when you study it, you learn the physical forms, but the philosophy is always taught along with the physical forms, yes? Should be. Yeah. So I can't speak for every teacher. And for me, the philosophy, in fact Wu-Tang itself, if you go through the history of what Wu-Tang was or is, the story is that this monk leaves Shaolin

and he goes to the Wudang Mountain and here he becomes enlightened. And he's not sitting there throwing punches all day. He's sitting still. And he's running it through his mind. You know what I mean? And so he's taking the Taoist approach versus the Buddhist approach. And he actually ends up melding the two.

And you meditate a lot and you sit. It's actually, if you have some physical training and then you can sit there and in small spaces move your muscles and have your mind move everything it's supposed to move in small spaces you'll be just as strong as a motherfucker lifting weights. You know what I mean? That's the Wu-Tang way. The Shaolin way, of course, they throw a thousand punches. Tell me about writing.

It was capacity for some type of content to come out of you. What happens? I think three levels come out of me as an artist. One is my personal experiences. One is my observation. And one of the strongest ones is my imagination. And then if you're blessed, it's inspiration. That's nothing to do with you. You don't aim for the inspiration that comes. Yeah. I don't aim for the inspiration that comes- Yeah. I don't aim for neither, none of them.

But if I'm forced to write, like you say right now, you go, oh, let's write a song. I will rely upon myself and my experiences. A lot of my Bobby Digital lyrics are more experienced than some of my Rizzo lyrics. The Rizzo lyrics are more philosophical. Yeah. Yeah. So Bobby Dishon, like I had a verse, I'll give you a few lines that says, you know, it's gangster shit a little bit.

Four Shelleys whipped through his belly. They shot him right outside of Mike's deli. Dipped to the telly, caught my bitch up on a celly. Bobby, what? I'm probably nuts. I walk strange. I talk strange. A long range sniper aim will swish cheese your brain. I don't sleep. That's just me. I clock a bird from the block straight away from a flock.

She just crossed near the bus stop. I had a snapper where I twist the top off. She kept her hair processed, no panties underneath her dress, a small link ankle bracelet. She had polo frames. My shades had no name. The purple came. I slowed my game. My thick gold chain made the odds flame, so I stood up against the bodega gate and stayed

straight. She had a perfect figure, eight shape, I couldn't wait to bust a grape with my apple head." Anyway, so that's easy to write, because I could just go through myself like, oh, I saw that girl, I could write. But then if you're writing the pre-existence of the mathematical biochemical equation is the manifestation of rock, plant, air, fire, and water, which are in the basic formation, solid liquid and gases that form the land masses and the space catalysts. And all matter that exists must first be observed through a physical comprehension, but it takes

your nerves to be struck." That's a whistle. You know what I mean? Big difference. Yeah. Really different. It's cool that you gave them different characters, essentially. Yeah.

And then when writing the movie, well, I learned from the Tarantino School. And in a way, I think I definitely will use my imagination, but also hip hop. Quentin is a hip hop director. Right? He's a musical. Tell me how. Because he have a catalog of thousands of movies in his head. So he's like sampling ideas from things he's seen.

Yeah. And I find myself doing the same. Yeah. Yeah. And we say inspiration, you know, we don't have nothing to do with that, right? That's even deeper than RZA in a way, a philosophical, because, you know, McCartney said,

a lot of great artists say it shows up in your dream. You wake up with it. You know? And for me, the wake up has been actually, that's why we have this album of Ballet through Mud. I woke up without words. Woke up with music in me. Yeah.

So. Tell me about your relationship to piano. When did you learn to play piano? I Mean, I always liked the piano always had one never took formal training It's always just fiddled with right by fiddling with it. I just got better and better Love this since I got the ass once I got the EPS that the keyboard. And I realized that I'm more of that type of musical creator when it comes to producing or songwriting. And so yeah, I loved the piano for years. Once you got into it, how much time would you sit at the piano typically? I spent the most time at the piano during the pandemic, I think, maybe a year before

that. But I'm the guy that you will, you know, when the Wu do tours or whatever, you know, even in a mediocre way, if they had a piano in the lobby, I'm there. And the chicks were with me, are there. And if I only know two chords, I'm playing those two chords for an hour. That's just, I just got addicted to it. I remember Wu-Tang had our first album out or coming out, whatever, and we was all in the Bay Area.

They put us in the Oakwoods, and we stayed there. And there was this great piano store, this is in San Francisco, there's a great piano store that was somewhere downtown San Fran. And I just remember going in it. and couldn't afford a piano yet. Didn't even know a piano would be $20,000, $30,000. I thought maybe at that time the biggest, most expensive keyboard would be two grand. So the guy told me the price and then it was some gentleman buying one. He looked a little bit like he could have been a business Wall Street guy, but we in

the Bay Area so I don't know his profession, but he was testing the pianos and I didn't know nothing and shit. And I actually said, but I wasn't shy. I was like, yo, can you show me something? How long you been playing? Right? He said, I've been playing for 10 years. I said, how long until you get good? He said, I been playing for 10 years. I said, how long until you get good?

He said, I'm still ain't good. I said, well, what could you show somebody like me? He said, actually nothing. Okay, and I was cool with that. You know what I mean? But I was like, I'm getting one one day. And yeah, but I just started reading music theory that year. That year. That year, yeah, 1996. I started reading music theory that year. That year?

That year, yeah, 1996. I started reading at least music theory so I could play on my keyboards. And that's why on Wu-Tang Forever, you do hear chord progressions and turnarounds. What's the first piano you bought? The first one was a Yamaha upright, had a Disclavior on it as well.

Bought three of those in my life. And would you sit at it and play a lot? Yeah. Yep. Until my ex-wife, she fucked that piano up. There's a great story in my old neighborhood. You go to the piano store, they got a great story about the piano. She fucked it up.

In what way? Oh, she beat the shit out of that piano. She fucked it up. In what way? Oh, she beat the shit out of that piano. She knew I loved it. Oh, I see. Yeah, she destroyed that motherfucker. And then took it back to them, because she had to get me a new one. And then told them what the fuck happened. And she just told them, you know the Wu-Tang, they had a crazy party. And that story lived in the piano place for a long time until I actually never corrected the story. I didn't want to go under the bus, but yeah.

But since then, wow. I mean, I got a piano in every home and just put my first Steinway actually, not even six months ago, I bought my first Steinway actually, not even six months ago. I bought my first Steinway. Beautiful. Yeah. Well, we're lucky that we have a piano here.

Yes, you do. We got a beautiful piano here. You feel like, um... See if I can play something out of me? Yeah, why not? Let's see what I can do. Well, you got a couple of pianos here. Yeah, what you want me to like.

Let's see what's going on here. I'm sorry. This is basically the story of the ballet. What's happening in the ballet is that we start off in the key of C, which is Ionia, and then the relative minor of C is A minor, right? And it becomes Aeolian, right? So C is ["Aeolian"] Major, right? And then the next mode would be Dorian, which would normally be minor, right, and it's

Kiosk. But in my ballet, it's actually major, so it's more heroic. And we follow throughout through these modes. And then once the Ionian went minor, that's to make it back to that major. And then I go through the whole thing and the thing that Fucked with the Ionian working the most back is from Ionian The low Crian Right now that diminish And then for that diminish you want to make it back and You could do it anyway, right? You can do it other ways.

You can go... And we take that same concept and don't think about the modes. I mean, think of the modes, but don't think about the key. So now I'm going to still do the same thing starting Ionian, right? But this here, it's not in the key of C. Some of it's jazz take there. Once again. Now I'll go do the key. I'm sorry. How did the idea for the ballet come? From finding my old lyrics inside my Tommy Hilfanger duffle bag and then wanting to put music to the lyrics.

But in a way, I didn't want to rap, or when I rapped, I didn't want to rap over hip hop. I just wanted to have a different expression. And it just kept evolving into different iterations until I thought I was going to write a hip hop opera. And then there was a guy named Evan Lamberg, one of the presidents of Universal. I know Evan, I love Evan. Yeah, so Evan, I played maybe a couple of tracks of him when I was getting, you know,

I was like, yeah, welcome to my new opera. He's like, opera? He said, well, operas are usually in Italian, but that sounds like a ballet. Like a ballet is, you know, like the Nutcracker Suite or Peter and the Wolf. And he said that, I was like, that's crazy because Peter and the Wolf was the first thing I studied when I was striving to be a composer. When Jim Jarmusch said, I want you to compose my film, and I never composed a film, the first thing I did was went and studied Peter and the Wolf.

And by studying Peter and the Wolf, it said that every instrument represented a character. The flute represented the bird, which makes sense because if you blow a flute, you can flutter. The trombone was representing the wolf. The tuba of the elephant. That opened my brain to the false composing. Come back now 20 years later and I'm doing my ballet. I identify with what Evan said and then I pursue it as such.

I said, okay. And I told my wife, no, I'm it as such. I said, okay. And I told my wife, no, I'm writing a ballet. And then I took the story that I had, which was about these six, one of my lyrics is about these six kids who, I'll give you the lyrics, you can chop it up, but this is written between the age of 14 and 19, all these lyrics. And one was called Joe Is A Nerd. And it goes, Sue was this girl who was really quite fly. of 14 and 19, all these lyrics. And one was called Joe Is A Nerd.

And it goes, Sue was this girl who was really quite fly. Brad was real cool and he was her guy. Lisa was freaky, they loved to have sex. Her brother name was Dexter, but they called him Dex. His sister name was Monica, and she was a verge. Joe was just their friend, but he was a nerd. Brad bought the beer, Sue bought the smoke.

Lisa had sheets, Dexter had coke, Joe was the type who didn't get high nor did Monica but she was willing to try. Brad lit a blunt and passed it to Joe saying, come on man, smoke it. And Joe said, no. What's wrong? Are you scared? Was asked by Sue. Oh, you were just a nerd.

Joe said, that's not true. Monica said, Joe, just have a taste. And she puffed on the blunt and blew the smoke in his face. Now on Monica, Joe had a crush. He didn't want to smoke but felt that he must. Like many we know, love made him a fool so he took a pull to prove he was cool. At least it was like, yo, forget about Joe. Then say, hey, Dec, where the heck is the blow?

He pulled out two grams, said it's all that I bought. They said it's more than enough. They proceeded to snort. Now at this time, Joe had finished three beers, and Brad was like, here have another, you queer. And Joe was like, no, as he held his stomach, and while facing Monica, he suddenly rumbled. She screamed, oh my gosh, shit, how absurd. And everyone laughed and said, Joe was a nerd, Joe was a nerd, Joe was a nerd. Joe felt embarrassed, so he did the bird. They chased him and ran and giggled and laughed through this abandoned house. Then there was the sound of crashing glass. It was dark in the room, so Brad had to get

a light and he checked to see if Joe was all right. But when they found him, there was quarts of red blood spitting from his head and sprouting from his head. And Monica said, oh, Joe is dead. And they all started to run and never mentioned this incident again to anyone. So that was a story that I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to write this into this thing along with another one I won't say to you. Okay. And it's like a children's story, but an edgy children's story, I'll say.

Yeah. Yeah. Basically, you know the slick Rick Tom with those stories just happening. Yeah. So then I said, okay, I can't get away with that. It don't sound like teenagers. And so I wrote a story into a higher level of college students. And when I did that, I said, okay, now I got these six college students. How can I tell this story?

And I decided that I'll tell it through the musical mode. That's why I just went through that to show you and it starts off with Ionian who goes all the way through all the keys before she gets back to herself. And that's a ballet through mud because sometimes we got to go through all these different things. You know what I mean? You got to go through the mud and what comes out of the mud in Buddhism? The lotus. It grows out through the mud. And what comes out of the mud in Buddhism? The lotus. It grows out of the mud.

And that's why the last song on that album is the Lotus and Rye. Yeah. Have you performed it live? Yeah, we performed it live first before we recorded it actually. I performed it at the, in Colorado, the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. We sold, two sold out nights, which was great. Standin' Ovation, which was amazing for my spirit. Did you play piano or did you just compose and watch it?

Just watch it, yeah. I don't play piano in front of people. My wife, kids maybe, friends, but I love sharing. Yeah, yeah. Me and my son, at my phone I got so many recordings of like, okay, do you go three minutes? I go three minutes. Whatever happens, don't worry about it.

And we go and sometimes we say something interesting, sometimes we don't. And so taking the musical modes and telling the story, that's the other side. Beautiful. And then tell me about how you recorded it. Recorded it in Colorado in the Symphony Hall, mixed mics, you know, newmans and... How was it different hearing it with an audience in the Symphony Hall versus how you imagined it when you played it on the piano in the first place? Incredible, in all reality.

Well first it was piano, then it goes to DAW, and then it gets written for the orchestra. But incredible, because on a piano, you know that your tubas and your brass is all here, right? That might be the lowest brass. You know your cello will start here though. Then end, right? You know your violins will be. No your flutes is. But your flute could also get down here, but you can also have your oboes and your other

woods down here, but you can also have your oboes and your other woods down here, right? So you'll know that if you did a chord like this, right? C7, you can look at that and look at the range of that and what instruments fit here. If I did the, if I, if I did the, actually I'll do a D here, right? But I'll do an inversion, right? So now I got, I got that flute. And then, so anyway, so thinking like that, right? But then when you hear it played by the musicians, it's 16 violins playing it, right? It's four flute players playing it.

No, it's amazing. We had 60 pieces. Wow. And so it felt amazing. We had 60 pieces. Wow. And so it felt amazing. And they knew me. That's the other thing. Chris Dragon, our conductor, we had built a friendship already from some previous things. By the time we recorded it, we had performed it.

We have rehearsed it. We have performed it to success multiple nights, and now it was maybe a few months later, I feel like it could have been about four months later, so okay, now we're going to record it. Now, the only difference that happened is that the original ballet was written with choir, but there's no choir on the album. And so I said- And the live performance, too, do you have choir? said- And the live performance, did you have choir?

Yes, and the live performance, it was choir as well. Is there a recording of the live? Yeah. Great. And there's might be one song that's on the bonus that has one song of the live, so you could hear the crowd and all that shit. Yeah.

So you have to figure out what instruments, but basically the human voice is here to hear. I mean, naturally, we could get over up here if we want, but I wrote the notes down here. And so we just emulated it with brass, some oboes. Yeah. So there's a part in that song, a ballet through mud, this track, the title track. Well, which I actually love that the instruments emulated what the voices was doing. And since the voices was only doing single vowels, it actually sounds better on an instrument.

Which leads me to something else in the future. Like, okay, if I'm going to use a single vowel, I might as well use an instrument. Did you make any changes once you heard the orchestra playing it in rehearsal, where you had only heard it before on the piano? Did you make any changes based on where the instruments overlapped? Rob Markman Yeah, there was many changes that had to be made whether I wanted to or not. Because the digital, if you're using Dorico, Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton, which all play, they all popped up on this shit. I also have a keyboard called the Korg Oasis, old keyboard, but really have nice orchestra

sounds in it. And actually have orchestras, like maybe an ostinato might be there. So almost like I could take an ostinato. Right? So, almost like I have to take an ostinato, right? And you know, you can synthesize, I got one button to get that. Right? So I can hit that with one button, right? While my other hand is figuring out something else, and then record that, you know what

I mean? And then take that MIDI file and put it into Logic maybe, right? And say, okay, how would that sound with this? And then maybe pull in Spitfire Audio, right? And use one of their patches, and they got some motherfucking patches. And now it's like, it sound close to something real. But now I give it to the orchestra, it's like, no, it doesn't make sense because the flat Tundo won't be there or the guitar won't be here or the human is not going to do it that way.

Right? You're sitting there holding a note on a flute. Flute player only has so much air. Exactly. He's out of that. Okay? So what do you want us to do? You want us to... so much air. Exactly. He's out of that. Right. Okay. So what do you want us to do?

You want us to... Divisi. Yeah. So Divisi meaning I'm dividing the note between two people. I see. Yeah. So now Divisi is a... So one starts it and then the other one takes over.

Exactly. And the first one comes back. Exactly. Divisi. So that has to be written on that chart. That means now the copyists gotta know that. And so, and then I had a great team, you know what I mean? Scott O'Neal, of course, Mitch, and Tan, who was actually on my staff for the TV show.

So that was another good thing. I had all these musicians available for me when I was doing the TV show that I was able to... I just had them on salary. Yeah, that's great. And I got some advice recently from Alexi French. He's a pretty established composer, pianist, great virtuoso. And I was like, how do I become virtuoso? And he said you should study the Goldberg Variations of Bach. I said, I haven't did it yet, but I'm going to do that.

He just told me that shit in August. There's a lot of great versions of it too to listen to. It's inspiring to listen to. I don't read music fast. I can't put the music in front of me and bada bada bada bada. Right? I read like maybe a sixth grader by now, but it's still, so maybe at 60 BPMs I could read it, you know?

At 90? No, no, that's not happening. You know, I could go do, re, mi, re, mi, re, fa, re fa fa so la ti ti. I could do that. Now once I hear it, oh that's what he's doing. So now I can see that, oh it's mostly a Caesar's doing that. And then I could go ahead and try. But that's been my biggest weakness is imitation.

That's my biggest weakness. And it's the weirdest thing about me. Besides recently, like I said, once he told me this Goldberg thing, and I did listen to a couple of them as well, and I've been listening to a few other greats, I actually realized I wouldn't mind imitating him. I'm a non- imitating them. I'm a non imitating dude. That's been one of my potential flaws as well as blessing. But I'd rather do what I'm doing than do what you're doing.

You know what I mean? I got the guitar, I started late, I was like, what you gonna, you know, you're starting the guitar at this age, it's like, but you know what? I'll just do it. I just pick up the instrument and make sounds. Yeah. Let me see, let me see what I got here. It might not be until it's the bass.

It don't matter what it is though. There's a guitar there, the third one, the furthest one. Yeah. That one, yeah. Right. It's just like, I'm still gonna, you know. And you don't need to be able to read music to do that. Nope. It's more like playing with the instrument, having fun. Beautiful. Yeah. Fuck it, you know what I mean?

So much fun to make music, isn't it? Yeah, it's like let it out. It's great. So anyway. You mentioned the morning you pray. Tell me about your prayer life. I hold some of that personal, but I'll just say pray, man. You know, we grew up, people said, don't pray.

I tell you one thing, an old gentleman said told me, I think he was a Jewish brother. He actually had no hands. Anyway, he works in the store, but he always helped me carry out the boxes. And I don't know, one day, you know, as we became friends, we started talking and talking about prayer. He said, what did you pray for? I told him I don't pray for nothing. I just give thanks. He was like, oh, that's good.

I prayed for guidance. I said, okay, I'll take that. Tetragrammaton is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge. What may fall within the sphere of Tetragrammaton? Counterculture? Tetragrammaton. Sacred geometry? Tetragrammaton. The avant-garde?

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