RZA

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:23Speaker 00

  When I finished Man with the Iron Fest,

• 0:27Speaker 00

  my next film was supposed to be One Spoon of Chocolate. And I remember going to the Universal and pitching some ideas. And the one that Adam Ferguson 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 Mind with Nas that I started writing it again. Then I was like, I'm gonna do it.

• 0:55Rick Rubin?

  Did something trigger it? What do you think allowed it to happen then where it didn't happen before?

• 1:01Speaker 00

  I think it was, you know, you go back through your old lyrics and your old things. I think it was like, because I don't know if it's the 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 kind of sensitive to it. But my, and my writing and then my ideas and my characters is very, very prevalent.

• 1:31Rick Rubin?

  Why do you think?

• 1:32Speaker 00

  I think, I think as an artist, I've always been able to

• 1:39Speaker 00

  put descriptions of life in art, whether I agreed or disagreed with it. Then it's been one of my abilities as an artist, like not knowing that at first. You know, you never know what you are in the beginning. But as, 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. Like, yeah, it's just like, oh, OK. So maybe there was something to that. Like, sometimes we're just-

• 2:15Rick Rubin?

  Like you were getting messages just from around you that related to the film?

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:20Rick Rubin?

  And how long had the film been dormant at that time?

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Film was sitting there, sitting for almost 13 years, until last year on the tour bus. I always planned 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, so I started sitting right beside me, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she said, I'm gonna help you produce it. Because, you know, I had to go to her to make sure that I could use some of our own finances.

• 2:50Speaker 00

  And she agreed, OK, so.

• 2:52Rick Rubin?

  So tell me, what's the story?

• 2:54Speaker 00

  The basis of the story is

• 2:58Speaker 00

  a man who's, you know, there's some military service for the country, but he's in, you know, we meet him coming out of jail. And he has no family, nowhere to go. His 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.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  And he ends up stumbling into it. And this is a guy that, you know, the line they tell him is,

• 3:29Speaker 00

  here's your transfer to Ohio. I pulled 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 then all, and all he finds is trouble. You know, after some good times, it just goes bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

• 3:48Rick Rubin?

  And was he participating in the troubles? Or was he just seeing it?

• 3:52Speaker 00

  He's the, he become, him, his family and friends, you know, the girl, the girl, they become victims of the trouble.

• 3:57Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  You know? And when you become victim of trouble, you know, you either gotta accept being a victim.

• 4:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  Maybe you gotta be the hero. And there's a line, you know, you got three years for assault and battery. 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.

• 4:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Oh, so what are you, some hero? No, I'm not a hero. You know, I sold my time out, you know. But so it's like, he's not a hero, but he is a hero.

• 4:40Rick Rubin?

  He's put in these positions where he has to defend himself or the people around him. And he's vilified for that.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 4:48Rick Rubin?

  But it sounds like we'll be on his side when we're watching it.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 4:54Rick Rubin?

  How did you find the people to be in it?

• 4:57Speaker 00

  Oh, when I was writing it, I knew, when I picked the pen back up.

• 5:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  I knew who I wanted to be the lead.

• 5:03Rick Rubin?

  And you got that person?

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:04Rick Rubin?

  Who was it?

• 5:05Speaker 00

  It was a young man named Shamiq Moore. So Shamiq, this is his second film with me, third project.

• 5:11Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  He played Raekwon in my TV series. His first movie was a movie called Dope, where he was, you know, 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. Like, right now, he got a comedies out, some type of romantic comedy, where he's just a silly, crazy guy.

• 5:36Rick Rubin?

  But this is a serious, traumatic performance.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Total opposite. And I know he has that ability, because when I did, I did another film with him called Cutthroat City. We made it to number one on Netflix, so.

• 5:46Rick Rubin?

  Oh, great.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  I knew that, okay, well, our energy worked. Yeah, people responded to it. But when we was doing that movie, you know, 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, shirt off, you're gonna have the gun, you're gonna walk in, you know, 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 a gun? He never held a gun before.

• 6:20Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  You see what I mean?

• 6:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  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, a 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 a dick at the end of the day. It has, it has that and you load it up. But seeing his innocence.

• 6:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  And then seeing his performance. I was like, this kid is, 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.

• 6:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  I said, I got, I'm doing this TV show, I just wanted to know if you were available. It's gonna take us some years of your life, but I got something, I'd love for you to join. He was like, oh, just let me know, OG, they call me OG and shit. I don't know if I like OG. But.

• 7:09Rick Rubin?

  You've earned it, you've earned it.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  But anyway, so then, uh, 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 in post-production. I showed my first cut to the CAA team this weekend, and a few other people, and getting great responses, you know? I still gotta, you know, sandpaper it down and shape it up, but, uh.

• 7:33Rick Rubin?

  Why did you decide to produce it yourself instead of raise money and then make it that way?

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Uh, I just wanted to do it.

• 7:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  You know, even the ballet, right? 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.

• 7:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  To do stuff, you know? But yeah, it's like, yo.

• 7:57Rick Rubin?

  I love that you did, it's just rare that people do that.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's just, I'm in that phase.

• 8:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  I'm in that phase of life, it's just like, let's do it.

• 8:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  Let's go and do. Because at the end of the day.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  You know, we've definitely had success in our lives.

• 8:13Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  We've definitely been blessed. We know that. We can never stop counting that. But then we also know that we're vessels of art. So what am I supposed to do? Just sit back and wait for someone to say, hey, come paint me something? Or do I go out there and paint it, you know? Van Gogh, I already cut his ear off or some shit like that. Pay for some, whatever, to keep going, right? I remember Robert Rodriguez, one of the early mentors for me in film, far as, you know, 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 go in this and get his money and.

• 8:56Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  And then he become one of these guys who create all these movies that inspires a whole genre. You don't, you don't get, you don't get so many things if you don't get Robert Rodriguez. You know what I mean? You don't even get Spy Kids. Right? Which brings back a lot of our actors and Latin actors that was out of the business. He researched them, right? You don't get Antonio Banderas.

• 9:18Rick Rubin?

  He makes all of his stuff completely outside of the system.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Totally. Or there's own studio in Austin.

• 9:24Rick Rubin?

  So beautiful.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's, and even though I'm starting a little late.

• 9:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  That's my vision as well.

• 9:29Rick Rubin?

  That's the vision, cool. It's a good model.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a good model. And it worked. We saw it work.

• 9:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  You know?

• 9:37Rick Rubin?

  So you keep it tight in terms of crew and stuff, I imagine?

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Well, you still gotta deal with the system.

• 9:43Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  So the system is the system, right? I'm a union man, and so I gotta play by the union rules, and I do. And so because of the system, it's always gonna be tough, tough to do it here in, in, in America. But being a union man and being.

• 10:00Rick Rubin?

  How different is it to do it in other places than America?

• 10:02Speaker 00

  Ain't no union. You can go to London and, and, and cut your price down by 20%, 25%.

• 10:10Rick Rubin?

  Is that why a lot of people also film in like Vancouver?

• 10:13Speaker 00

  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 in the whole North America, I think. Cause I just did a film. You know, the studio system is a studio system.

• 10:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  And, and which is, like, like I'm a union man, so I don't have no problem with the union.

• 10:36Rick Rubin?

  No, understood.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  But. It does, you know, just to answer your question, it does forces 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. Like, 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, 12 to 16 people. Now 12 to 16 people, now you gotta deal with union fringes. Cause they gotta get their Medicaid and all that other stuff.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  And that's your cost for your portion of time that you're buying it is. 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 of 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. But on an independent level, it stops independent films. You know, my other buddy did this film.

• 11:54Rick Rubin?

  Your first film you made independently or no?

• 11:57Speaker 00

  No, my first one I did was made with a studio, but they did it as a, I did it in China. So only people 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.

• 12:14Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 12:15Speaker 00

  So, which was another way of doing it.

• 12:17Rick Rubin?

  Was it difficult hiring the team in China?

• 12:22Speaker 00

  The China, I had a DP who had the, I hired him right after he had the number one movie in the country.

• 12:29Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  And now he's mine, right?

• 12:31Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  And.

• 12:35Speaker 00

  He was dissatisfied with some shit. You know, because they, you know, everybody got their things, right? And they was putting some pressure on him. I was like, why are you taking it?

• 12:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  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 Directors Guild, you're not gonna find even 5,000 people, right?

• 13:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's a much shorter list.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, and his thing, it might be 150,000 people and nobody's in the union.

• 13:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  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. We, you know, I kind of had a whole kitchen built. We had catered food, you sit down, I had the guy holding the napkin for lunch.

• 13:22Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Because, you know, the money was, it went far out there.

• 13:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  But most of my crew,

• 13:30Speaker 00

  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 Lou, Chen Quan Tai, Al Akhun. These guys, for me, these are the guys that I sampled or watched their movies.

• 13:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  And so now they're in my movie, and I had them all come to eat lunch with the director.

• 13:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  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.

• 14:04Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  I had to lay it out, so.

• 14:07Rick Rubin?

  That sounds great.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  That was, that was fun.

• 14:13Rick Rubin?

  Who is Prince Rakim?

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, Prince Rakim. Well, now he's my son. Right, he's the, 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.

• 14:32Rick Rubin?

  And you gave yourself the name?

• 14:34Speaker 00

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

• 15:00Rick Rubin?

  He can give it to you in a day?

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Uh, the first ten, ten concepts, which is knowledge, wisdom, understanding. So he had that all in the Xerox paper back then, right? And you get that as like, this is your first lesson. And you study that, you gotta memorize these. And I'm a memorizer guy, like my brain is like that. But I'm walking home. And the first lesson says, knowledge, 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.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  And wisdom is the manifestation of knowledge.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  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. Right, 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, know, look and observe and respect, I respect what it was. So I memorized that as well.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  And.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  So these different principles of knowledge and spirituality all start to start flooding me. And at the same time, I just see thirty six chambers of Shal in there, yeah. So it's like, all this was going through me. So becoming Prince Rakim, 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 maybe a spoonful of it is imagination, right? But it's like, this is what I wanted. And Rakim, there was no Rakim. Like, there was a Rakim, right? There was a Rakim with a K I N G.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  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 Rakim in Arabic or in the Quran or nowhere, according to what was told to me at that time. I says, it's original. And therefore Rakim means to be original. And I'm a prince. You know what I mean? And that became me. This is from the age of eleven. By the time, you know, I shared with the public, I become Prince Rakim, the MC.

• 17:56Rick Rubin?

  How old are you then, when you're the MC?

• 17:58Speaker 00

  I mean, I think I let it be my MC name around the age of sixteen. Before then, even though I had knowledge of self, I had various MC names that was different than my racist name.

• 18:11Rick Rubin?

  Would you say when the names change, the rhymes change?

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Yes. I think that the art finds this, I call it attribute. So at the end of the day, between eleven to my physical age now, I definitely had over sixteen different attributes. I made a joke, I don't know if I could keep saying this, it wasn't a joke, but I could say it to you, I'll say it, this is the last time I'll say it. I was saying that I had equated this maybe two years ago, that I am artistically schizophrenia.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  My friend Sophia Chang said, "Don't say that anymore." "You are very curious and you seek out. You always journeying for more expressions." So I would use the word curiosity versus schizophrenia because schizophrenia has such a big meaning.

• 19:03Rick Rubin?

  Negative connotation.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:05Rick Rubin?

  It doesn't sound like you mean it in a negative way.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  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, right? I don't want to be offensive, so I take a heed to her. And this is probably the last time I'll say that.

• 19:28Rick Rubin?

  If the lyrics change depending on the personality, which comes first? Is it Rakim exists and then the rhymes come? Or do the rhymes come? And then you realize that's not Rakim talking, that's someone else?

• 19:44Speaker 00

  That's a good question. And it becomes blurred, but I think at one point,

• 19:50Speaker 00

  it was the art made it separate. Like on "Protect Your Neck",

• 20:01Speaker 00

  when we put out our first video, it says in the video, "Exit Prince Rakim,

• 20:08Speaker 00

  enter the RZA." And it scrolls across the screen. And I meant that. I was like, "I'm not Prince Rakim anymore. You are me and the RZA now." And this is a well-advanced, enlightened version of Prince Rakim. The Z wasn't in my name.

• 20:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  My name was Divine Prince Rakim.

• 20:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Right? First it was Rakim, Prince Rakim, Divine Prince. And we keep adding titles. By the time I was 19, of 20, I'll give it 20, my attribute was Divine Prince Master Rakim Allah.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  That was my name. Allah is the name of the Father, so all our last names have to be Allah. Like whoever your father is, you take his last name. So then...

• 20:58Speaker 00

  From just two years later, from and going through rain, hell, snow and earthquakes and all personal and also just improving and deep into like, deep into my art, deep into my music, my study, my everything, I was deep into it, you know what I mean? Science of breath, like we was on it, you know what I mean?

• 21:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  It was like nah, my name is, and also I went to, I went the wrong way at one point.

• 21:22Rick Rubin?

  Tell me.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  You know, the story's known, but I, you know, 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.

• 21:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Wasn't even the way of an intelligent man, and I had righteousness and intelligence.

• 21:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  All in my system.

• 21:42Rick Rubin?

  Was it just youth that allowed that to happen, would you say, or something else?

• 21:47Speaker 00

  I think youth and circumstances.

• 21:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Like, there was no other way to get money.

• 21:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? It's like, I could, 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?

• 22:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 00

  You know, just to be honest, I did work many jobs, you know, I, I was a messenger, worked at a restaurant, you know, worked as a guy who, I always say that, put screws in a box, that was my job.

• 22:16Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Take the screw, put it in the box, moving on, take the screw, put it in the box, moving on, and, and since I was-

• 22:21Rick Rubin?

  One screw per box?

• 22:23Speaker 00

  No, no, depending.

• 22:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, sometime it was one big nut boom, sometime it's fifty little pellets.

• 22:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  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 sold those, I could sell a box, those were fifty dollars.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  Because we figured out, yeah, we got them motherfucking bung.

• 22:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  It works like a token.

• 22:50Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  So, I think I heard go a little joke, Nandjella used to do, so we'll go to the train station, right?

• 22:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  And just stick it in, and somebody comes and go, I'm not catching this train, could you just give me the token and go ahead? Go, go, make about twenty bucks, go get some weed, some liquor, that's, that's, that's a good day, right?

• 23:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  But anyway. Going negative, though, selling drugs, getting involved with street crime. It 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 in it behind the bars, you know what I mean?

• 23:29Rick Rubin?

  How long were you away for?

• 23:30Speaker 00

  I was facing eight years.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Fortunately, I was able to bail out. Took me thirty days to bail out. I only did two thirty day stretches in my life. One thirty day stretch at about seventeen, eighteen. And one right before twenty-one, right before Wu-Tang.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Bailed out.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  Won the trial.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  You know, a lot of black guys don't win trial. I went to trial and won. And while I was going through it, my mother was so disappointed. Her face of disappointment was more crushing than this eleven of us.

• 24:08Rick Rubin?

  Eleven brothers and sisters, where are you in the eleven?

• 24:11Speaker 00

  I'm in the middle. But I was also the one that, you know, that kind of 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.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  What I was trying to get to is that I zigzag zig.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  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 Rakim Zigzag Zig-a-Law. You know what I mean?

• 25:12Rick Rubin?

  That's what RZA stands for.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:15Rick Rubin?

  Did you ever say that on a record or no?

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I say it in different ways. RZA, Zigzag Zig-a-Law, Jam is fatal, quick to stick my Wu-Tang sword right through your navel, suspenseful. That's on Seventh Chamber. Suspense. One thing, 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.

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Concentrated ideas. And most people lyrics are, I would say. Yeah. 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. And I think because if you go back to the very first lyric of,

• 25:55Speaker 00

  Chill with the feedback, black, we don't need that. It's 10 o'clock, oh, where the fucks you 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? 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, wearing L 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? Yeah. 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.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  So the Abbot of Shaolin or the Abbot of Wu-Tang 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 buckus, style the ruckus. Now we got ruckus. 10 time 10 men committing mad sin. Wait, I thought he was righteous. Well, we committing mad sin because you turn the other cheek and I'll break your fucking chin. And that was the idea of the idea that when Malcolm and Martin was teaching, Martin was saying, turn the other cheek. But no, he was still getting beaten down with sticks. Right, so no, we gonna have to break a chin. We can't offer your cheek up, right? Turn it or I'll break your fucking chin.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Then I went to this just regular hip hop slang boom bangers like African drums. He'll be coming around the mountain when I come. That's the fun of it. Yeah. 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 on like black unemployment? Yeah, another one, there. There goes another one pops up right in the middle of the lyric. Then I pass the mic to the genius, take us the fuck out of here. Then of course, he goes into a very descriptive, very detailed way about industry.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  Clear without it's still more and still multiple meanings. But one thing about the Juzza is that he also provides you the surface view.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  And the beneath the surface view. Whereas for me, I hide a lot of the surface view. You gotta go beneath the surface.

• 28:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  To figure out the habit. Yeah.

• 28:16Rick Rubin?

  Your lyrics are more oblique.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:18Rick Rubin?

  I'd say.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I take that one. Yeah.

• 28:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but the beauty of that is.

• 28:26Rick Rubin?

  It feels like your lyrics are for the initiated.

• 28:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 28:30Rick Rubin?

  Do you know what I'm saying?

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, you gotta know. You gotta be.

• 28:32Rick Rubin?

  You gotta know.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  You gotta know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we.

• 28:35Rick Rubin?

  Would you guys ever talk about lyrics like each other's lyrics? Or you just did your verse and then next rapper does their verse?

• 28:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, not well, as a producer.

• 28:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  I was definitely able to shape, even censor. And direct lyrics and especially in the first five albums, I would interject, you know? But as time went on, there was no need for interjection. Everybody had mastered their craft and mastered who they were.

• 29:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 00

  So now, and so in the process of it being competition.

• 29:09Rick Rubin?

  Do you feel like there was competition within the group?

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:12Rick Rubin?

  So everybody wanted to out rap everybody else?

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is MCs.

• 29:15Rick Rubin?

  Is that part of what makes Wu Tang so strong?

• 29:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:19Rick Rubin?

  It's very interesting. I never thought of it that way.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, the Juzza said, the Juzza had a lyric, he said, I forgot the line in front of it. But the punchline was the Klan makes me rhyme like D Banner under pressure. So we know who D Banner is, right? Right? So he, so he's about to turn to the Hulk because the Klan is making him like.

• 29:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Rhyme like when, when Dr. Banner gets pressured, 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.

• 29:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  You know what I mean?

• 29:55Rick Rubin?

  It's almost like a battle in a way.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. It is though.

• 30:00Rick Rubin?

  It's very interesting. I never thought of it that way.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and, and at different times, different one of us wins.

• 30:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  And the thing that was crazy for us is that, so when they, when they say the Juzza is the head is because he is the foundation of our lyrical skills. And approach. Right? And.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  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 sometime it would just be me and him. I'm like, who's the best in the clan right now? And it'd be different ones.

• 30:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Meth was the best.

• 30:54Rick Rubin?

  And either way, the listener wins. Because they get

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:59Rick Rubin?

  They get the best of you both.

• 31:01Speaker 00

  Yes. And at one point Killer Priest was the best.

• 31:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  At one point, from the Wu family.

• 31:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  It was a year when everybody was like Killer Priest is the LSMC.

• 31:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  I was pissed off. You know what I mean? And I came to beat Killer Priest in 97. You know what I mean? 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.

• 31:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  And it was such a dramatic.

• 31:35Rick Rubin?

  Ghost's lyrics are incredible.

• 31:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, such a dramatic.

• 31:37Rick Rubin?

  It's incredible.

• 31:37Speaker 00

  But Jesus came to me and said, nah, you has the, you got the best lyric. Because of the content, fusion of the five elements.

• 31:45Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  Right? That's dealing with the Taoism alchemy. The source 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 atmosphere, thermosphere, stratosphere, trapposphere. 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, right? As a concentration camp.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  But nighttime, I walk through with my third eye as bright as a street lamp. And there's electric probes, right? I mean, electric strolls, robotic probes. They taking telescopic pictures of the globe. While babies being born with microchips stuffed inside their earlobes. And then vaccinated. Lies fabricated and exaggerated. You know what I mean?

• 32:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Food and Drug Administration testing poison in prison populations. It's like, it's a lot of shit going on in there. But, "Call the ambulance, Jamie been shot. Where the Jimmy don't go, nigga, you my motherfucking heart." That was something else.

• 33:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's incredible. Incredible.

• 33:14Rick Rubin?

  Could you think of yourself primarily as an emcee or something else?

• 33:21Speaker 00

  Well, I think my first form of art was emceeing.

• 33:25Rick Rubin?

  Before producing?

• 33:26Speaker 00

  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 Jizza wrote. So I first started by reciting and copying his lyrics. And another emcee who never really made it out of the hood, named Scotty Waddy. So him and Jizza, 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?

• 33:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  And then I think by the time I was thirteen, fourteen, I think I was good. You know, some of the lyrics that ODB says

• 34:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  are the ones that I wrote when I was fourteen. Because I was to make him write, and then he wouldn't, and then I'd give him mine.

• 34:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  And, you know, so that's why sometimes 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 at the end of the day, it's a song.

• 34:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  It's a performance. He said, "Y'all wanna 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, "Wanna see him up in the air? Come on, do it. Everybody come along, come along, come along, come along, come along." Be original. Like, he says, he's performing. And we didn't, and we didn't catch that. We learned that from him.

• 34:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? We learned that, wait a minute. You have to put the performance and the animation into it.

• 34:58Rick Rubin?

  And the personality, like his personality would come through where it wasn't necessarily about the words.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:05Rick Rubin?

  But it might be your favorite verse.

• 35:06Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 35:07Rick Rubin?

  Regardless.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  That's the point I'm making.

• 35:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Because he realized the performance was even stronger than trying to boggle somebody's head.

• 35:15Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  Right? Whereas, you know, some of us are trying to boggle your head, especially myself.

• 35:20Rick Rubin?

  With the words, yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  Some of us is trying to show you how dangerous they are. For the Raekwon first, you know, listen to the first Wu album and listen to his early features, he always got 16 shots. You know what I mean? He busting shots in his rap and he's talking about his cars, his sneakers and his guns. You know what I mean? Because he's a street dude.

• 35:45Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And Ghost, you know Ghost is a street dude. You could feel the danger in this motherfucker. You know what I mean? He'd be like, "You hear this shank scraping on the wall?" Like he'd be, but then Deck, I'm not gonna go through it, but Inspector Deck though.

• 35:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  He's looking at it through a magnifying glass. So if Ghostface saw the license plate and he wrote that in the lyric, Deck saw the tag was inspired. You know what I mean? And that's why his lyrics are abomatometically. Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses can't define why I be dropping these mockeries. Lyrically performed on robbery. Fleed with the lottery. Possibly they spotted me.

• 36:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Speaker 00

  It's like, damn, that's a lot in four lines.

• 36:28Rick Rubin?

  What was the experience of making those records and those guys bringing in those verses?

• 36:33Speaker 00

  It was just like exuberating fun, young energy. And to be quite honest with you, when you're young like that.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  I think each and every last one of us thought that we were the best one.

• 36:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Nobody didn't think that he did, he beat me.

• 36:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 00

  It's like, yeah. If you did think he beat you on that one, you beat him on that one.

• 36:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  So you couldn't tell, you guard, that he don't got the best lyrics. He's not gonna, what, brother, you stupid motherfucker, I'll eat your shit up. Like, he's not going for that. You know what I mean? He thinks that how he think

• 37:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  is to think.

• 37:14Rick Rubin?

  Had there ever been a group before with the internal competition like that?

• 37:20Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 37:21Rick Rubin?

  I'm not aware of it.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know. Like, that's something that we should maybe open up the floor for and have us think, because it seem like most groups are complimenting each other. And we do compliment each other.

• 37:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but it's different. What you're describing is different than that.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. Because we approached hip-hop.

• 37:38Rick Rubin?

  There's also never been a group with that many rappers before, so that's another big piece of it.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  But we approached it as swords, man. That's why it's called the Wu-Tang Clan.

• 37:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:46Speaker 00

  These are all warriors, and their tongue is their sword. And they're pointing at whatever they gotta point at, even at each other.

• 37:53Rick Rubin?

  How would you describe your production?

• 37:57Speaker 00

  It's hard for me to describe it, right? You know, I could add on to the description. I honestly believe

• 38:06Speaker 00

  two things about me. One, I believe that

• 38:12Speaker 00

  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 it as jazz, funk, soul.

• 38:23Speaker 00

  Especially 36 Chamber. I don't think you could, what is this shit? It's hip-hop. It's like, that's what it is. It's not.

• 38:29Rick Rubin?

  It's nothing else.

• 38:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, so I think.

• 38:32Rick Rubin?

  It's not even a variation on anything else. It's pure hip-hop.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what, that's what, that's, I think I was, that's something that you could, you could look at me and see.

• 38:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  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. You know, especially for the first 10 years of my career. I felt like. I make beats for people to emcee to, not to dance to. I make beats that's made to challenge the emcee. Okay, and if the emcee could catch it, and could catch my vibe, that, listen to Method Man. You don't even hear people take my beats and freestyle over them. Maybe Cream, cause it's very, there's a couple. But you don't hear other rappers take my beat, because it ain't easy.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  But, you gotta be a emcee to do it. You can't even be a rapper.

• 39:25Rick Rubin?

  And you think that's because you were an emcee first?

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. I made beats, I rhymed to have a beat first, anyway.

• 39:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  If I could rhyme to it.

• 39:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  You could rhyme to it. If you can't rhyme to it, you're not a good emcee.

• 39:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  And at one point, we thought rapping and emceeing was two different things. We really felt that way. You know what I mean? We felt that.

• 39:44Rick Rubin?

  How would you describe the difference?

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Well, a rap is like...

• 39:52Speaker 00

  It's like anybody could rap, almost. Not anybody, almost, you know what I mean? A emcee is, I guess I could try to describe it in a lyric. The emcee, you say, "Hang on a slang that I be using." The emcee means to master confusion. Right? An emcee is always like Tom, 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 where I wrote down all the different things that an emcee must do. You mean? He must master competition.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  And I think that, an emcee is almost like, the difference between a Jedi knight

• 40:40Speaker 00

  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.

• 40:58Rick Rubin?

  Hard to explain, of course.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Exactly, it's hard to explain, so, but it's a difference, and you can hear it, you can feel it.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? You can feel it.

• 41:06Rick Rubin?

  Does it have anything to do with the music? Cause it feels like, when you first said it, what I heard, was that a rapper...

• 41:15Rick Rubin?

  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.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  That's a piece of it. That's a good, that's a good digestion of it. Look, Nas is an MC. It's a fact. Even if you took away all the music.

• 41:39Speaker 00

  It's still potent.

• 41:41Rick Rubin?

  Absolutely.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  That's another way of looking at it, too. What happens if you take away all the music? Right? Is it potent? What happens if you write it down? You know, is it stronger?

• 41:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  Right?

• 41:55Rick Rubin?

  So an MC is more like a poet, we may say.

• 41:58Speaker 00

  He definitely has to be part poet, right?

• 42:00Rick Rubin?

  Whereas a rapper is more like somebody doing songs.

• 42:04Speaker 00

  That's a good argument. Because a poet, you have to be a poet and deeper than a poet. Right? Because.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  You know. I grew up on the crime side. The New York Times side.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  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 secondhand. My mom's bounced on the old man. So then we moved to Shaolin. In four lines. Right? "And Mully Mel, a child is born with no state of mind. Blind to the ways of mankind. God's smiling on you, but he's frowning too because only God knows what you've been through." Even in those four lines.

• 42:54Rick Rubin?

  A lot of information.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  A lot of information.

• 42:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 00

  And MCs tend to do that.

• 42:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  And they do it in a way that even if you hear it 20 years later. It has the same thing now.

• 43:04Rick Rubin?

  Because it's deep. You're saying the MC's lyrics have a depth that make it timeless.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. That's a fact.

• 43:14Rick Rubin?

  Tell me from a technical standpoint, how you would go about production from the beginning.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  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.

• 43:30Rick Rubin?

  We see the four track cassette at that time?

• 43:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, the four track Yamaha four track. And this is like maybe sixteen, seventeen. So, the first thing is just a square tape recorder. Remember those tape recorders? Yep, hit play and record and put the tape in.

• 43:45Rick Rubin?

  Cassette recorder.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  Cassette recorders. My cousin Ramsey had one. Ramsey is Old Dirty Bass's big brother. So he's a few years older than us. We actually, he's gonna 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 Dirty's mother and father worked for transit and for nine one one. They're like the Jeffersons to my family. My family is the welfare, eleven kids welfare family. But, the first thing was this tape recorder. And comic books and a shoebox. And that's where the drums were. And we're just rapping to the tape recorder and play that back. Then, of course, the cuny comes out. And now you got the two tape recorders and now you're doing pause tapes.

• 44:31Rick Rubin?

  Would it be pause tapes from stuff you'd record off the radio or?

• 44:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, forever, yep.

• 44:36Rick Rubin?

  Or turntable?

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Yep, yep, yep, whatever you could get a track from or beats from. But before that, though, I heard the song "Flashes" on the beatbox. And so I said, what is a beatbox? So I already had a pair of turntables, straight arms, sadly. But went down the.

• 44:55Rick Rubin?

  Did you have a mixer as well?

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Had a mixer. We sold newspapers to get this, just to give you a little bit of background.

• 45:00Rick Rubin?

  GLI, what was the mixer you had?

• 45:02Speaker 00

  No, I had no brand, wasn't even a Gemini. Eventually I got a Gemini. Eventually I got, it's more like I got the sixty dollar shit.

• 45:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  You know what I mean, I didn't have, you know.

• 45:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, like Radio Shack, do you remember where you got it?

• 45:14Speaker 00

  I got it from Fort Tave Street in Manhattan.

• 45:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 45:17Speaker 00

  Remember they had all that, they had like.

• 45:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and all the boom boxes and everything.

• 45:21Speaker 00

  And they had the rhythm box. Where you just get waltz, slow rock, bossin' over.

• 45:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 45:27Speaker 00

  But if you push two buttons together, what happened? It'd change it to something different. And if you hit the fill button.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  So that was my first technology demo. And it wasn't even a Roland, I know Roland kinda maybe invented it, but by the time we got it, it was some generic brand that come in business, get out of business. Alright, so then all of a sudden, fourteen years old, high school, I see a six oh six.

• 45:55Rick Rubin?

  That was like a small white drum machine.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Silver, yup, this small silver 606. We borrowed it from a guy and he had to basically pull the gun to get it back from us. Cause I was like, this is, this is the grail. From a 606, 707 comes out. DJ Doctor Rock from the Foursome Cs had a 707. We went to his house and made demos with DJ Doctor Rock from the Foursome Ds. You know what I mean? 14, I was 14, 15 years old. So we got Doctor Rock on the 707, RZA just at ODB doing songs. And this is before the rest of the Wu are starting making their demos.

• 46:29Rick Rubin?

  Do you still have those recordings?

• 46:31Speaker 00

  I don't have them. Somebody does.

• 46:32Rick Rubin?

  Somebody does?

• 46:33Speaker 00

  Somebody does.

• 46:34Rick Rubin?

  Oh, cool. I'm glad they exist.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, somebody does. So from the 707, the 909 comes. And then my DJ gets one of those, DJ Scotty Rock, not like Scott La Rock. He had, his name was Scotty Rock. Then when Scott La Rock came out, everybody thought it was him, but it wasn't. But anyway, 909, so now I got a 909.

• 46:52Rick Rubin?

  Yup.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  Four-track, two turntables. And then the Casio RZ1 comes out with the four pads for post-sampling. That's my original setup. And that's demos from the age of 16 to maybe two years. Cause then the SP1200 come out, right? And so did the Sonic EPS. I had a SP1200. So the SP1200, you had to take the time, you know, it was 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.

• 47:36Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know that.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  That's how you get this. I didn't know that that was why the ring was there.

• 47:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  But that's why I was always had this ring. And you listen to a lot of dope tracks, you know? And it was Easy Mo B who had the 1200, I used to go to his house. Cause my manager was looking for tracks for me. And I saw that shit, I was like, I'll get one of those. And then when I got it, my other colleague slash rival.

• 48:04Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? He was another DJ in my projects. And, you know, he used to make songs with Ghost. I'll 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.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  And he's like, yo, I'm going to Virginia for the summer. And I can't take the EPS. I'm more fit in my family car. When I let you hold the EPS and you let me hold the SB 1200? I was like, all right, cool. That was like...

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Because the SB 1200 is a drum percussion center. The EPS is a keyboard.

• 48:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  And I didn't know that I'm more of a keyboard player. And now I know.

• 48:46Rick Rubin?

  So only because you were being cool?

• 48:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. And now I'm like, I'm a keyboard player. That's... That's what I like. And I remembered my cousin had the Casio and I used to play with the keyboard.

• 48:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  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.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  With the drums playing?

• 49:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  What the fuck? And then I mastered that keyboard. He listened to the early Wu. Because of course the EPS then went to be the EPS 16 plus. Then eventually to the ASR 10. That's his thing. And when Wu comes out, those same discs, you know, you could take your old disc and go to the ASR 10. The first hundred tracks that I released, besides Bringing the Pain, and maybe there's 10 SB 1200 tracks in my catalog. But most of those songs are ASR, the sonic, tracks. And that became my technology all the way through. And then I would take the MPC and MIDI it.

• 49:56Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  With the ASR 10. And that's how you get Triumph. Right? Because now, I mean, the MPC is the most powerful, you gotta admit. Like, but it wasn't what I started with. Once again, MPC takes me back to the drum.

• 50:11Speaker 00

  I mixed that with the fucking ASR 10. And that's, that's the Wu-Tang Forever album along with now, now, you know, people get into sound modules, the 1080s or the 2020s from Roland. You get the Nord lead come out and the, the digital synthesizers are there now in, in, in the late 90s. And all that becomes my arsenal. And that became how I did it. And then now, you know, I was getting on more level. And then I became a keyboard lord, right? Meaning if they made it, I bought it, you know? 50, 60, 70, maybe 80 keyboards in my life. You know what I mean? 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.

• 50:55Speaker 00

  I guess those became my girls. You know what I mean? And 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 you have it. And I called it the, uh, my digital orchestra.

• 51:15Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about becoming Bobby Digital.

• 51:18Speaker 00

  This becoming Bobby Digital was a step backwards. Being the rhythm for so, for those years from 1993 up into 1999, 98, 99. I didn't realize my success, right? Meaning economically, I was pretty monotonous with my relationship. You know, I think I did almost like three years just with one woman, which was, which is weird for an artist. Okay.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  But you know, I wasn't into it. Like after Wu-Tang Forever, you know, being rich and being loose and seeing the world. And also having some internal problems in my household. Yeah, 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, 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, you know, every few years with a vision. And this time it was the, everything is going digital and you gotta lead the way.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  That's the sound of, you know, I made a joke of myself. I'm gonna share this joke with you. So my mother named me Robert Fix Joe Diggs after the Robert Kennedy and John. She put those two names together and named me Robert Fix Joe Diggs. And when you name Robert, sometime they'll call you Bobby, or they'll call you Robbie. I started thinking, well, am I a robot?

• 53:00Speaker 00

  Like, I asked me question 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? You know, 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.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  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. And so it didn't affect me like that. And then the Wu brothers, around the same time, decide that we're not gonna finish the Rage Against the Machine tour. And everybody just starts scattering into their own way.

• 54:14Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that moment in time. Tell me about the tour, and then tell me about how that happened.

• 54:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, we on the biggest tour of our career. Wu-Tang and Rage, 30,000 kids a night.

• 54:25Rick Rubin?

  Good show.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  What a show.

• 54:28Rick Rubin?

  What a show.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  Especially at that time. It's new as, I mean, you know, you, of course, you know, you lived through Def Jam, so you know Beasties and Rhyme Fest. What was it called?

• 54:38Rick Rubin?

  Fresh Fest.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  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, PE and Anthrax maybe, but not, this was.

• 54:50Rick Rubin?

  Huge.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  And then my guys don't wanna do it. You know, didn't understand the cultural relevancy of it. And I did.

• 54:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 00

  I understood at that time. And it happened at one of our concerts when I saw Five Families there. Black, white, red, brown, yellow. It was on a Rage tour that I invented this. Like these wings.

• 55:17Rick Rubin?

  The woo symbol.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, the woo symbol. I saw it. I saw the people. My mind was like, we got a record, give them something. And here you got the Five Families on this side. It's just put it all together. That's the woo. But the crew didn't get it. They'd rather do the college shows and, and they thought that we was kind of selling out, to be quite frank.

• 55:37Rick Rubin?

  Because the audiences were big? Or why do you think? Tell me what you think it was.

• 55:41Speaker 00

  More whites than ever.

• 55:43Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 55:43Speaker 00

  Okay, not, not shorty with the big ass right there. That, you know what I mean? It's like, it was different. You know what I mean? And we from the hood.

• 55:52Rick Rubin?

  All of them felt that way?

• 55:54Speaker 00

  No.

• 55:54Rick Rubin?

  Except you?

• 55:55Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no. Enough of us that was looking on stage as four guys.

• 55:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  You know what I mean?

• 56:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  This is like, it wasn't taken serious. And not to go back like that or to, you know, point any fingers. But I remember telling them that we gonna do this first.

• 56:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and then do that.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  And then do that.

• 56:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's all good.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, and the way that, way, way it was planned was like, we gonna hit the colleges in September.

• 56:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 00

  And go through the homecomings.

• 56:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  It's gonna be crazy.

• 56:24Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 56:24Speaker 00

  And then when we come, first of all, they put me and Zack 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.

• 56:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and was it, from the beginning, was it discussed as a five-year plan?

• 56:49Speaker 00

  Yes, five years without interruption.

• 56:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, five straight years.

• 56:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:54Rick Rubin?

  And that's, that's a lot of work.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, but now we had a year where it's not your work. We get to say what we want to say.

• 57:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:05Speaker 00

  So now it's different.

• 57:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, so for five years, they agreed that you would lead?

• 57:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:11Rick Rubin?

  But after the five years, to be discussed.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  To be discussed.

• 57:14Rick Rubin?

  Right.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  And even though the contract, I think one of my lawyer contract amended it like so. No, I was like, the contract don't mean shit.

• 57:23Rick Rubin?

  It doesn't mean anything.

• 57:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:25Rick Rubin?

  If everybody's not into it, it's not gonna be any good anyway.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  And I even said it to myself, my time is up, my time is up, I'm cool with it. But it hurts.

• 57:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just because you'd worked for five years to get to that point. For that opportunity.

• 57:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:41Rick Rubin?

  To see people.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so it hurt. So that was part of the hurt. And then the personal thing was part of the hurt.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  And then the exploration enters me. Exploration, women.

• 57:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  I'm rich.

• 57:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Would that not have happened had the Wu stayed on course?

• 58:02Speaker 00

  I don't think it would have happened.

• 58:04Rick Rubin?

  Because you probably would have been too busy.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. I wasn't out, yeah, I wasn't outside yet like that.

• 58:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, because in.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. To be quite frank, Rick, I wasn't outside. You didn't see me outside.

• 58:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  I wasn't myster, I wasn't, RZA was mysterious.

• 58:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Motherfucker, who the, Abbott was a mis.

• 58:22Rick Rubin?

  But so you were working.

• 58:24Speaker 00

  Oh, definitely. I stayed in that basement.

• 58:27Rick Rubin?

  It was all work.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  You could smell me from the front door.

• 58:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? That's how I was.

• 58:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  And I'm not, I love it. I love that. I'm grateful for it. But the question was how did I become Bobby Digital?

• 58:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  Well, now, it's on me.

• 58:44Speaker 00

  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's gonna change. And I 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, yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 00

  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 gonna go digital." "What the fuck you talking about? The fuck you talking about?" "You tripping, God? You smoking that shit? 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.

• 59:36Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  You know what I mean?

• 59:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Even though nothing had changed, you saw it in a new way.

• 59:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:42Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. Maybe he hallucinated it too a little bit, I don't know. But it definitely wasn't the same. And then, and I, and it wasn't the same.

• 59:50Rick Rubin?

  And then did the name come before the material? Or did the material come before the name?

• 59:55Speaker 00

  The idea changed,

• 59:58Speaker 00

  and then I named it.

• 1:00:00Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. I was like, "Bobby, digital." But now, all of a sudden, because, you know what it is too? I gotta honestly say, and I don't know, no, no. Right? You don't know, you know?

• 1:00:12Rick Rubin?

  We never know. We don't know anything.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:00:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  But I can say that I wouldn't be able to do what I did as The RZA, because that entity doesn't allow that.

• 1:00:28Rick Rubin?

  Understood.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know what I mean? The Abbot can't do that. And Bobby can. And I think it became almost-

• 1:00:36Rick Rubin?

  Is it that The RZA functioned within the Wu?

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  I don't know. I think, I think The RZA even functioned within like, if you think about,

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  let's just say my lyrics. Let's use that as an example, if we can.

• 1:00:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  And you hear me, you know, I got, I recorded a song called "Sun Shower",

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  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 2020 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 pricks 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 fraternal who let off thermonuclear heat, weapons that could burn you firmly and permanently as you travel through the journal of the book of life.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  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. Well, people ought be wrought and they listen nought, 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.

• 1:02:20Rick Rubin?

  Great lyrics.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, RZA could say that.

• 1:02:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  Right? Bobby, what y'all bitches talking about? Get the fuck out my house before I grab you by your hand and slap my dick in your mouth. What the fuck is that? That's not, Rob Dizzy, yeah, tell me who is he? Bitch, our slave trade you like Kizzy, Kente. Well, wait, fuck you, motherfucker. Bitch, you wish you could fuck. All you could do is dick suck.

• 1:02:45Rick Rubin?

  So Bobby Digital was more, the more raw character.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:03:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  And I said, hold on, I have to go back before I go to RZA.

• 1:03:09Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  And I needed to go back. I didn't, I didn't intentionally go back, though.

• 1:03:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  It was just like, that's what was coming out of me.

• 1:03:18Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:19Speaker 00

  That was coming out. I was like, damn, that's, this is all just kept coming out of me. You know what I mean? And then it, then I liked it too. Take that for her, right? And I did a five million dollar deal with John Baker for the album. So now I'm like, fuck it.

• 1:03:37Rick Rubin?

  Who John Baker?

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  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, brokered the deal. Rage's manager, the female, Bridgette.

• 1:04:01Rick Rubin?

  Oh, Bridgette.

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:02Rick Rubin?

  Damn.

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. So Bridgette 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 four million dollar deal.

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  Most artists were getting three hundred thousand, maybe six hundred thousand. A million was LL.

• 1:04:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? So we was able to broker a four million dollar deal for Wu-Tang. I thought I was the man. And then I met Bridgette and she said, you know, people were talking about you should do your own album. This is after the tour, like people like you. The fans like you and the industry likes you. Like, I'm reliable. You know what I mean? And I was like, well, you know, I'm doing good by myself. I want to do an album. I got so many allies. I'm with Leo, I got Steve, I got Wendy. She said, well, how much you think, you know, a RZA album, can you get it? I said, I don't know, I can go get two million at least. I know I could do that. She said, what if I could get you five?

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  I'm like, what you, five million? That's more than Wu-Tang.

• 1:05:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  She's like, no. She said, you getting hip hop numbers. I could get you rock and roll numbers. So I didn't know that.

• 1:05:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Speaker 00

  That rock and roll.

• 1:05:19Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know that either.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  But once there's some artists in the rock world, I mean, this is...

• 1:05:25Rick Rubin?

  I don't know. I really have no idea.

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  Well, that's what she exposed to me. Whether it was a myth or a magic.

• 1:05:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but it happened.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, 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?

• 1:05:45Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  It meant that I didn't own the RZA name anymore. You know, you sign a record deal, you become... The RZA becomes part of that company. It's like, anytime I want to do the RZA, they got the right to that.

• 1:05:59Rick Rubin?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  And I was like, nobody gonna own the RZA philosophically.

• 1:06:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  And they was like, no, what do you mean? You signed the deal. Like Wu-Tang, like that, you know? If you want to record, you gotta, yeah, you put your five, you run, 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 gotta get the RZA out of this. Bobby could stay.

• 1:06:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and Bobby's the one who's delivering the record.

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they was like, well, you want to 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. Like, woo, give my name back. Well, not give my name back.

• 1:06:48Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:49Speaker 00

  Let the RZA be the RZA.

• 1:06:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  I know this, 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?

• 1:07:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  And your travel is the roads 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, 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 none of this even begins to fluctuate out of me. So know that, and it's a pleasure to build with you on it.

• 1:07:40Rick Rubin?

  I appreciate that.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  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 Wizza. Her son is named Wizza. And it's just, 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 the Wizza is just a name.

• 1:08:21Speaker 00

  I think it's a title. I think it's an entity. I think it's something. I'm not being superstitious here or nothing like that.

• 1:08:27Rick Rubin?

  No, I understand.

• 1:08:27Speaker 00

  But imagine if he does embody that. Because the Wizza's job is to resurrect, to bring something back.

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  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. Not 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 like, 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 or somebody will come that'll be like, yo, oh, that's the piriform. That's what we forgot. And then we rebuild again.

• 1:09:24Rick Rubin?

  How do you describe your relationship to hip-hop now?

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  I think my relationship to hip-hop now

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  is one foot in, one foot out. Right? One foot in because I'm founded in it.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  And I'm always striving to somehow...

• 1:09:48Speaker 00

  Find a new path for it. And that's because there's so many people in hip-hop, especially from young people. And I even point even more, hip-hop is seen to be, it's been kind of classified because of the majority of hip-hop practitioners are black, right? So it seems like, let's say eighty percent, at least seventy-five percent 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?

• 1:10:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and classical music.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  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 composing something, you're composing something. And start composing, you know, your beats. You know, Dre said it on one of his little interviews. He said, um, he pointed out how a beat maker is different from a producer because the beat maker makes the beat, but then he has to produce the record. You know what I mean?

• 1:11:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:11:19Rick Rubin?

  Do you feel like everything you make, films, classical music, books, somehow still are tangentially related to hip-hop?

• 1:11:36Speaker 00

  I do think that. I hope it's not my ego saying that.

• 1:11:39Rick Rubin?

  No, I think that's true too.

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  Okay, I hope it's not my ego saying that.

• 1:11:41Rick Rubin?

  Because I think 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.

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, well, 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. Even so, even when I show up to the, to the Symphony Hall. I'm, you know, I'm a little swag, a little different, you know what I mean? And, and the cool thing about it, like even if you look at, um, I think Eminem is another good example for, just use him as a, cause he's a great artist.

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  It's the same, it's like he'll show, if Eminem shows up, he's hip hop. Even though he could be, it could be a thousand white guys there, a thousand artists there, a thousand musicians.

• 1:12:34Rick Rubin?

  He's hip hop.

• 1:12:34Speaker 00

  Eminem is hip hop, motherfucker, okay? And that's, that's what hip hop is, it's something else. And so, but yeah, so I, I like the one foot in, one foot out, because I'm never gonna take both feet out, I can't. I don't think I could get away with it. You know, get away with it, meaning it's already in my blood.

• 1:12:52Rick Rubin?

  It's in you, yeah.

• 1:12:56Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about, you made an album that there's only one copy in existence of it?

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a whole nother chamber.

• 1:13:02Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the story.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  Man, that's a lot.

• 1:13:04Rick Rubin?

  How did the idea happen?

• 1:13:06Speaker 00

  It was, it was really like, so my student, right, my student Silver Rings.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  I let him in to the temple, the world, and, and let him in, you know, and let him sit by the door.

• 1:13:25Speaker 00

  Give him a lot of trust, maybe too much.

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  And it was almost like,

• 1:13:35Speaker 00

  it was almost like my student challenged me.

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  Right? And was doing things that was not pure.

• 1:13:52Speaker 00

  In a sense of our relationship, in a 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 are accumulating songs, vibes, moments.

• 1:14:21Speaker 00

  And after the accumulation of so much,

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  it was two ideas we was tangling with.

• 1:14:33Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  One idea was, I wanted to make a better tomorrow. In theory, practice, music, everything. I just felt that was, that's what the world needed.

• 1:14:46Speaker 00

  And in the process of doing that, I also wanted to centralize the idea of a Wu-Tang item.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  The centralization of it became a physical form where I first thought this,

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  that I'll make a album

• 1:15:10Speaker 00

  that would be a piece of jewelry

• 1:15:15Speaker 00

  that'd be either Bluetooth or USB to you. But you had to have this. And it's the only way you could have it.

• 1:15:28Rick Rubin?

  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?

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:15:37Rick Rubin?

  But you would buy it like you would buy an album in the old days?

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  But very, very high priced.

• 1:15:42Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:15:43Speaker 00

  Very high priced, and very, very well made.

• 1:15:46Rick Rubin?

  Limited luxury item.

• 1:15:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:50Rick Rubin?

  That you could physically wear.

• 1:15:53Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:15:53Rick Rubin?

  But that you could also play it.

• 1:15:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:15:55Rick Rubin?

  And if you didn't have that, you could not play it.

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, you wasn't part of this.

• 1:15:59Rick Rubin?

  Understood.

• 1:16:00Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And you wore it with honor and a badge of honor. And then, talking with Silver Rings,

• 1:16:12Speaker 00

  somehow he had got, like, it was almost like he got wind of what I was doing with all these peers, right? And then...

• 1:16:25Speaker 00

  He sent me an image that was close to my image.

• 1:16:30Speaker 00

  And I was like, okay, we gotta meet.

• 1:16:34Speaker 00

  And then when we met, he was like, I didn't get that from your image. This is some inspiration I had as well.

• 1:16:41Speaker 00

  I said, well, what should we do with that, right? It's like, like, he said, well, we should just make it singular.

• 1:16:49Speaker 00

  I was like, make it singular? Can't we 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 yet. It wasn't until the Wu did a quick European run.

• 1:17:08Speaker 00

  And while we was working on A 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, it's chewing me up. I said, we rather, might as well, we should put that one out there. The Silver Rings one, that should sound like a real Wu album.

• 1:17:32Speaker 00

  All the old beats and old sounds and all of that shit? That sound like a real Wu album? First of all, how did you hear it? It's supposed to be a secret.

• 1:17:45Speaker 00

  But I just listened to them, then I called him. He said, you fucking? He said, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. He only heard that piece, na na na. I said, okay, we gotta figure this shit out. You know what I mean? So it became almost like a challenge

• 1:18:01Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  And then I said, well, if we make it singular.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  You gotta wait there. I said, so we're gonna just hold it. And I'll put out a better Tomorrow first.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  And see what the world wants to do. And if the world don't respond. Then we hit them with that.

• 1:18:36Speaker 00

  I think one of the fascinating things is where I probably wanted to limit it to select, maybe, you know, a select amount.

• 1:18:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  And have, have like the people that really build the woo, have this emblem first at a high level and then maybe, let's just say hypothetically.

• 1:18:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Speaker 00

  Maybe first that this thing costs you $10,000 and is yours and is, it's made of, of fine metals and it's not cheap, it's, it's, it's wearable. Right? As if you would have bought it from Tiffany's. And you could pass it to your child. Valuable increase. Then have a version, of course, that you could pay a hundred dollars for and all that. And eventually have the catalog on your wrist. Right? That's so, and then the idea of abandoning that to 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, once the time came and it seemed like, yo, you know what?

• 1:19:41Speaker 00

  And the woo, the woo did it as well.

• 1:19:45Speaker 00

  You know, a better Tomorrow.

• 1:19:49Speaker 00

  What you worked on yourself, right? And thank you. We did a song here, Shangri-La. A better Tomorrow, while it wasn't the 90's sound of the woo boom bap. 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 Wu also wasn't into it. You know what I mean? I'mma diverge from the story and give you another sub-story to this thing. Which is so funny about my life. So the Wu was not into this album.

• 1:20:31Rick Rubin?

  When you were making it, they weren't into it?

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, through the whole process, making it. It's weird, because we made it. It's like, we fucking made it. But just, you know, and I understand the Wu. The Wu wants, wanna be as threatening as the Wu always is. The Wu music is pretty threatening and pretty fucking brain the motherfucking ruckus. 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.

• 1:21:01Rick Rubin?

  No, but it would likely feel disingenuous if that's not the way you're living.

• 1:21:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Or maybe I'm the one that's out here, went from the first album, goat meat,

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  to by the time we got the Liquid Swords, I'm only eating turkey burgers.

• 1:21:24Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:21:32Speaker 00

  And I accept that. But I thought we all was growing at a certain rate. And maybe we weren't, 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. The last time we was on the cover of Rolling Stone, it was just RZA and Zack. And then it's this time after that was maybe me and five other rock and rolls bands for that big summer tour cover they do.

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  Maybe I think, I don't know if Nef was with me on that day. But it'd never been the entire Wu-Tang Clan on the cover of Rolling Stone. And they was like, we gonna do it.

• 1:22:14Speaker 00

  And I get to New York, and the only one at the shoot is me.

• 1:22:21Speaker 00

  And I'm like, oh shit. And Rolling Stone is there. So it's me, the writer, the photographers, and no Wu. And no warning, because I flew in from L.A.

• 1:22:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Speaker 00

  So I'm like, okay, that's crazy. And so I immediately, two days later, turn around, 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 emcee who wants to increase her lyrical ability by studying poetry and put more meaning into the songs. But the other emcees in her crew or guys, they don't want her. They want to stay hood and they want to live in gangster fantasies.

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  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 L.A. and soon I called my agent, like, yo, did they find a director for that movie yet? He's like, they're 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 Beast Rhymes. You know what I mean?

• 1:23:47Rick Rubin?

  A good experience?

• 1:23:48Speaker 00

  Great experience.

• 1:23:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:50Speaker 00

  And the producer for that movie is actually a producer of my new movie.

• 1:23:53Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  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.

• 1:24:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  And it's crazy how the rebound to it.

• 1:24:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:05Speaker 00

  I rebounded well.

• 1:24:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Speaker 00

  So now I'm going to do this movie.

• 1:24:07Rick Rubin?

  I also want to just ask you, was the Wu not showing up and not telling you they weren't showing up unusual? Or is that something that might have happened in the past?

• 1:24:18Speaker 00

  That was heaviest, I think. I think, like...

• 1:24:23Speaker 00

  I think nobody showing up is deep.

• 1:24:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, maybe half wouldn't show.

• 1:24:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, half is always an equation.

• 1:24:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:29Speaker 00

  There's always somebody missing.

• 1:24:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too many people.

• 1:24:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:33Speaker 00

  You know, and you could, you, you know, you look at our early photos, you'll see everybody's not in that photo.

• 1:24:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:39Speaker 00

  And I can respect that.

• 1:24:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:40Speaker 00

  But nobody showing up.

• 1:24:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:43Speaker 00

  I just gotta accept this of it, and I do accept it. I'm totally wrong. Right? Because if nobody shows up and I show up, then I'm wrong. That means I'm making the mistake here.

• 1:24:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:55Speaker 00

  Anybody that is that it's been agreed that what I'm doing is not right.

• 1:25:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Speaker 00

  The product is not right, the vibe is not right.

• 1:25:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Speaker 00

  And how do I know? It's been agreed unanimously.

• 1:25:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  So I'm wrong.

• 1:25:07Rick Rubin?

  And do you believe they discussed it?

• 1:25:10Speaker 00

  I don't know. No, I don't know. I don't know how they, that I never, I never, I didn't even inquire.

• 1:25:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? I just accepted, okay. All right, I fucked that one up.

• 1:25:19Rick Rubin?

  Have the Wu done anything since then, together?

• 1:25:22Speaker 00

  As an album or music?

• 1:25:24Rick Rubin?

  Anything.

• 1:25:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, we do concerts and tours.

• 1:25:26Rick Rubin?

  And how does that work?

• 1:25:28Speaker 00

  Well, the funny thing is, I said I'd jump ahead then.

• 1:25:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:32Speaker 00

  I was gonna hit you with the, what happens then now is that the next move, though, is Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Right, so, because it, What Better Tomorrow comes out.

• 1:25:40Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 1:25:42Speaker 00

  It does maybe thirty, forty thousand units the first week, which is not that great for Wu-Tang.

• 1:25:46Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25:47Speaker 00

  And since Wu was way on out of the world. And also, 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.

• 1:26:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Speaker 00

  So it has, so it has, you know what I mean? So I got some riserism in there, some, all this other shit. And then Silver Rings gives a platform, because he becomes, his name is in the Wu world. In a way that he never would have been in the Wu world.

• 1:26:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:27Speaker 00

  And good for him, he probably got the most out of it than all of us.

• 1:26:29Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:30Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? So that's that. But going to the modern day, you know, the Wu are brothers. So what happened was, there was a five-year plan in the beginning, Rick.

• 1:26:40Rick Rubin?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:26:41Speaker 00

  And then in twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, 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,

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  hip-hop is forgetting us. That's what you mean? Said, "Bro, I seen two documentaries on hip-hop, they jumped right over us. I seen them go from LL to Biggie. How you get to Biggie without going through WU? You can't, you know what I mean?

• 1:27:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:12Speaker 00

  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 1995.

• 1:27:25Speaker 00

  The money dictates the energy of where the system is taking bets. If we don't show and prove,

• 1:27:34Speaker 00

  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 it was like, nobody saw it. And then, they invited me, they invited me to the show that I was doing, I think it's called Hip-Hop Evolution or some shit like that.

• 1:27:52Speaker 00

  Season three.

• 1:27:55Speaker 00

  Now you're inviting the Wu? 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, "Um, we gotta tell our own story.

• 1:28:09Speaker 00

  They skipping us." Right? And so I said, "What we gonna do? Is we gonna do a documentary? And we gonna do a TV series? And we gonna do a tour? It's gonna be a five-year plan. Two five-year plans, I said. That's gonna actually, I'm gonna do a relay race with these years. It's gonna 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.

• 1:28:47Speaker 00

  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."

• 1:29:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:11Speaker 00

  "That I'm gonna take."

• 1:29:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Speaker 00

  And everybody was like, everybody agreed. And even though I had bumps along the road.

• 1:29:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Speaker 00

  Once you agree with me.

• 1:29:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:22Speaker 00

  I'm cool with all the stuff you do just trying to stop me because it's like you already agreed. My heart is in purity and content of this is what we're doing.

• 1:29:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:31Speaker 00

  And we ended up doing Mikes and Men.

• 1:29:35Speaker 00

  Emmy nominated.

• 1:29:36Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 1:29:37Speaker 00

  Big.

• 1:29:38Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 1:29:38Speaker 00

  Big for hip hop.

• 1:29:39Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 1:29:39Speaker 00

  And big for the culture.

• 1:29:40Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 1:29:41Speaker 00

  Then we do the Hulu series thirty hours, no hip hop. Not even music people have gotten that much time.

• 1:29:50Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 1:29:50Speaker 00

  Of introspective creative art on their work. And we do the tour. And so the tour was the was the part was the parallel thing. Cause the tour was supposed to lead to the to a Vegas residency.

• 1:30:05Speaker 00

  And the tour, New York State of Mind, one of the biggest tours in hip hop, right? For the last five years.

• 1:30:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:15Speaker 00

  The Vegas residency works. First hip hop group to have a residency in Vegas. Which close to ninety percent sellout rate.

• 1:30:25Speaker 00

  And we will announce. I guess I will announce it right here, but we got a big announcement coming for.

• 1:30:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:32Speaker 00

  For twenty twenty five.

• 1:30:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:34Speaker 00

  And so go back, you said, what are we doing like? And now, you know, the great art that all of my brothers possess. Actually, I'm seeing it even more now.

• 1:30:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Everybody's individual works are growing based on this.

• 1:30:53Speaker 00

  Right. And no, everybody individually are settling into this manhood thing.

• 1:30:59Rick Rubin?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:31:00Speaker 00

  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, mm, okay.

• 1:31:14Speaker 00

  You could put a little yellow on that.

• 1:31:15Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 1:31:17Speaker 00

  You see what I mean?

• 1:31:17Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 1:31:18Speaker 00

  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 put my brain at this level. So if you ever, if you would've came to our Vegas show, like you would've seen, uh, you'd have been proud for hip hop. Because not with all the great sets and all that which hip hop has gotten to.

• 1:31:42Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 1:31:43Speaker 00

  No, you, 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've made it to any of those, but.

• 1:31:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:51Speaker 00

  Well, you see that it wasn't usually when you got that many artists, it's a battle.

• 1:31:56Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 1:31:57Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:31:59Speaker 00

  I was able to, along with my partner Nas, of course, being in the agreeance with me, we were able to meld it together. You know, I'll never forget when Buster came to the first day. You know, he, cause he signed on late, but when he got there, I was like, yeah, this, this is this. I had play. And I done did his whole logo, had the whole, he's like. He never came to no concert with somebody and other, the other act.

• 1:32:26Rick Rubin?

  Caring about him.

• 1:32:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, when De La came.

• 1:32:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:32Speaker 00

  They came kinda, they didn't hook up early.

• 1:32:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:34Speaker 00

  And they, they saw their joint, it was like, well. Uh, you know, it's De La, so I loved him, so I was just like, let me just spend two or three days. So look, look at this now. And they was like, yeah. I said, we 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.

• 1:32:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:58Speaker 00

  And on the 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.

• 1:33:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:04Speaker 00

  I get them on that screen. And I put True Go up there.

• 1:33:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:08Speaker 00

  And he go out like that, bro.

• 1:33:10Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 1:33:11Speaker 00

  Let's put a classroom behind him.

• 1:33:12Rick Rubin?

  Uh huh.

• 1:33:13Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? So my, 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.

• 1:33:29Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:33:29Speaker 00

  And that's how we did our first album. It was competitive, but it was always adding on a layer.

• 1:33:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Speaker 00

  Meth came in, was like, I said, I need a hook. He's not on the song, guess what? Cash rules everything. He wrote that and he glued it. And he had no ego in doing that. You know what I mean? Deck, I was like, yo, the lyric he said on Cream was from his own song where he had three verses. I say nah, just give me that first verse of that song and take out, you know, took out like six or eight lines.

• 1:34:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, no argument.

• 1:34:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:07Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? So hopefully, I feel like we're back to that because we're men.

• 1:34:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:13Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? It's hard to be a man, even if you 40, 50 years old sometime. You still have this, this youth boy in you that wanna.

• 1:34:21Rick Rubin?

  Especially with your friends from when you were young.

• 1:34:24Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:34:25Rick Rubin?

  It's different when it's someone that you meet as an adult.

• 1:34:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like you.

• 1:34:29Rick Rubin?

  You revert back.

• 1:34:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like your parent.

• 1:34:31Rick Rubin?

  Exactly.

• 1:34:32Speaker 00

  You go home, your parent, mom. You got, mom, hello, you got apple pie? Like, it's like, it's like.

• 1:34:37Rick Rubin?

  Exactly.

• 1:34:38Speaker 00

  And you feel, yeah, it's that.

• 1:34:44Rick Rubin?

  What's your favorite Wu-Tang song?

• 1:34:50Speaker 00

  Wu-Tang Clan, alright?

• 1:34:53Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:34:55Speaker 00

  I'll tell you the one I feel

• 1:34:59Speaker 00

  really proud of as a producer. I feel really proud of Bring the Ruckus. I just feel like it's, nobody did that before, for me.

• 1:35:08Rick Rubin?

  We're gonna listen to Bring the Ruckus.

• 1:35:09Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  Shaolin shadow boxing and a 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?

• 1:35:28Speaker 03

  I'm gone. I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style.

• 1:36:09Speaker 04

  Watch my back like I'm locked down Hardcore hitting sound Watch me act rough and tear it down A little rich type asshole Songs going gold no doubt And you're watching corny make the fold Yeah, they faking all that Carrying gats But your mind planned rolling like forty mags Now you're acting bent I guess it makes sense Wu-Tang Yo Su 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-Tang banger Thirty-six styles of danger Bring the motherfucking ruckus Bring the motherfucking ruckus Bring the mother Bring the motherfucking ruckus Bring the motherfucking ruckus

• 1:36:52Speaker 04

  Bring the mother Bring the Bring the motherfucking ruckus Bring the motherfucking ruckus Bring the mother Bring the motherfucking ruckus Bring the motherfucking ruckus I whip it Hardcore like porno flick bitches I roll with groups of ghetto bastards with biscuits Check it My method on the microphone's banging Wu-Tang slang I leave your headpiece hanging Plus this I'm kicking like Segal out for justice The rawness, yes, the rawness ruckus Red rum, I verbally assault the tongue Murder one My style shocks your night like a stun gun I'm hectic I reckon with the quickness Set it on the microphone And competition get blown While this nasty ass nigga whip my nigga The RZA Charge like a bull and got pull like a trigger

• 1:37:36Speaker 04

  So bad Scaring up the pad with the boom cap craps I scream on your ass like your dad bring it all Bring the motherfucking ruckus Bring the motherfucking ruckus Bring the mother Bring the motherfucking ruckus Bring the motherfucking ruckus Yo, I'm more rugged than slave man boots New recruits I'm fucking up MC troops I break blues And trample shit Well I start I'm unholed in that ass

• 1:38:02Speaker 05

  Coast them straight out the swamp creeping up on sight now it's fright night my Wu-Tang slang is mad fucking dangerous And more deadly than the stroke of an axe chopping through your back Giving bystanders heart attacks niggas try to flake tell me who wins them I blow up this fucking prism Make it a vicious act of terrorism you wanna bring it so fuck it come on and bring the rockets And I provoke niggas to kick buckets I'm wet and clean I ain't wet and clean who selling game I'm giving out a deadly game it's not the Russian it's the Wu-Tang crushing roulette slip up you get fucked like Touzette Bring the fucking rockets Bring the motherfucking rockets bring the motherfucking rockets

• 1:38:50Speaker 03

  On guard I'll let you try my Wu-Tang style

• 1:39:15Rick Rubin?

  What do you remember about recording it?

• 1:39:17Speaker 00

  Man so many so many memories on that one Rick I mean

• 1:39:22Rick Rubin?

  During the course of making the album when did it happen?

• 1:39:25Speaker 00

  I feel like uh maybe in the middle As far as the rendition of what it of what it ended up being but I also think that The way we was recording that album that pieces of it was was was happening during the process you know Carlos Best Was the engineer then Ethan was the engineer and Carlos was like you split the 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 the album and also experimenting was happening through the through the thing but

• 1:40:03Speaker 00

  One thing about it that I really love for me in memory is that the willingness Of unorthodoxness

• 1:40:15Speaker 00

  That as a creator, I was cool with. Like, you hear that sound?

• 1:40:24Speaker 00

  That's the CD skipping.

• 1:40:27Speaker 00

  I sampled it. And it became, it plays in that track about 10 times. That's my horns. It sounded like horns. It sounded like somebody's horns. It became my fucking horns.

• 1:40:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and it was just a CD skipping that you just happened to notice when it was skipping that sounds like horns, I'm gonna use it.

• 1:40:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. So that type of freedom of grabbing and playing. Yeah, I love it so much because if you take, like, it's a lot of frequencies in it, but if you play that shit loud,

• 1:40:56Speaker 00

  it's everything changing.

• 1:40:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:58Speaker 00

  Like, you got the four MCs, but none of them rhyme to the same thing.

• 1:41:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:03Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Some, it's always...

• 1:41:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, even the music under the hook changes.

• 1:41:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so it was composing without knowing.

• 1:41:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:11Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? That's what it was.

• 1:41:13Rick Rubin?

  How would you decide who would go on what tracks?

• 1:41:16Speaker 00

  At that time, I considered the MCs as instruments as well.

• 1:41:20Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:41:21Speaker 00

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

• 1:41:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Speaker 00

  Even if they wasn't buddies with each other yet.

• 1:41:34Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:41:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:41:37Rick Rubin?

  What was the first scoring job you did in Hollywood?

• 1:41:41Speaker 00

  My first score was Jim Jarmus' Ghost Dog.

• 1:41:45Speaker 00

  It went well, critically acclaimed.

• 1:41:47Rick Rubin?

  And what was the experience like?

• 1:41:50Speaker 00

  It was great. Jim was so, Jim was a cool guy. I didn't know shit, bro.

• 1:41:55Rick Rubin?

  He's a great guy.

• 1:41:56Speaker 00

  I ain't know shit. I was bringing music at 1 o'clock in the morning and shit. Drinking 40s, ODB in the car with me. Jim was always like, you know, it was like, it was like a spy movie. Like, I'd be needing the music and he'd be like, yo, what you gonna be Wednesday at 1?

• 1:42:17Speaker 00

  Like, because editing the movies is over at 6 o'clock. Okay, it's a schedule here.

• 1:42:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:24Rick Rubin?

  He was cool.

• 1:42:25Speaker 00

  He was cool, yeah. He was cool. And we stayed brothers. I was just on the phone with him last week.

• 1:42:31Rick Rubin?

  Right.

• 1:42:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Then, yeah, 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.

• 1:42:40Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:42:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:41Rick Rubin?

  And how was that experience?

• 1:42:43Speaker 00

  Changed my life. Because I saw in another artist the epitome of art. And found my direction in art.

• 1:42:52Rick Rubin?

  So would you say you were inspired by the way he worked?

• 1:42:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was inspired by the 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?

• 1:43:30Rick Rubin?

  Hmm.

• 1:43:31Speaker 00

  And he said, yeah, he said, you know, I'll be in China. Well, if 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 or nobody. And then I was like, yeah, I'm told Lawrence Bender. Yeah, I'm here. He said, yeah, yeah, I've been here three days. I'm, I'm, 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 where you guys gonna be at? I'll be, 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.

• 1:44:13Speaker 00

  Now I'm writing ideas and any 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.

• 1:44:30Speaker 00

  Who have elevated his art to

• 1:44:35Speaker 00

  the highest level of art. A film considerably is the highest, most expensive

• 1:44:44Speaker 00

  form of art. It takes sound, music. It takes color, paintings, wardrobes, tempo, lyrics, I mean.

• 1:44:57Rick Rubin?

  Acting.

• 1:44:58Speaker 00

  Acting.

• 1:44:59Rick Rubin?

  A lot.

• 1:44:59Speaker 00

  Everything, almost every, a good movie has every piece of art in it. Right, even, name of weird art.

• 1:45:07Rick Rubin?

  Painting, let's say.

• 1:45:08Speaker 00

  It's in it. Your art director painted the whole fucking set. Give me one more.

• 1:45:15Rick Rubin?

  Dancing.

• 1:45:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's why you love the whole Pulp Fiction when John Travolta danced with Uma Thurman, you're like, yo.

• 1:45:21Rick Rubin?

  Exactly.

• 1:45:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's in it. And he, 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. I mean, it was in Mexico. You know, we spent a lot of nights and time together, especially when the days off and all that. I remember some of the producers was like, what is this guy doing here? And that would give you a quick story.

• 1:45:47Rick Rubin?

  So you're really a student. You went as a student.

• 1:45:50Speaker 00

  I went as a student. And I would get your tea. If, if, if you would say, yo, get the tea, I would get the tea.

• 1:45:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:55Speaker 00

  And one thing that was funny, I'll just share this with you, right? So one, so normally, let's say that there's three tables. And this table is Quentin, the producers, you know, this is the, the lead actress. Maybe Ethan Hawke came to town, that's that table.

• 1:46:12Speaker 00

  This table could be people from the crew and all that, and all that, and all that, and all that. You know, I was at that table.

• 1:46:19Rick Rubin?

  The third table.

• 1:46:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, after some nights, you know, I think Larry McCuglin, one of the greatest, Steadicam, did all the Steadicam for Scorsese and Goodfellas. In fact, his family invented the Steadicam.

• 1:46:33Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:46:34Speaker 00

  Okay? They call him Larry Vision. But, I became cool with him, you know, I didn't have the same schedule as everybody, so I could end up drinking with anybody. Right? But anyway, now I'm at that table. But.

• 1:46:51Speaker 00

  I did overhear some big like, what is this guy doing here?

• 1:46:57Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Somebody asked Quentin, what is, you know? Quentin said, I don't know. I haven't figured out what, I haven't figured out exactly what Bobby's gonna be doing as part of the film. Right here, he's here observing, but I haven't figured out what role he's gonna play.

• 1:47:12Speaker 00

  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 gonna be my first composer. He's never used a composer before.

• 1:47:27Speaker 00

  So he's gonna be my first composer for my film. And he's gonna help produce my soundtrack.

• 1:47:31Rick Rubin?

  Amazing.

• 1:47:33Speaker 00

  I was like, hey. 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. And no. But anyways, and that led, that continued to lead, lead me down the path of.

• 1:47:51Rick Rubin?

  How many have you done since?

• 1:47:53Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:47:54Rick Rubin?

  A lot.

• 1:47:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:55Speaker 00

  I know the TV series, I've got, I've been, got two Emmy nominations for music, BAFTA.

• 1:48:02Rick Rubin?

  How's it different working on a score versus working on tracks?

• 1:48:07Speaker 00

  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 servicing 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.

• 1:48:33Rick Rubin?

  And neither did he. So that, that also is interesting that.

• 1:48:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, he never worked with nobody.

• 1:48:37Rick Rubin?

  He never worked with somebody to do score. So in some ways, you found your way together.

• 1:48:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'm the riser right now.

• 1:48:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:44Speaker 00

  I'm the producer.

• 1:48:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:46Speaker 00

  I call the shots.

• 1:48:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:47Speaker 00

  I'm in a situation to where I play something and they're like, no. That don't work, Bobby.

• 1:48:55Speaker 00

  It was, I, I went through a situation where it didn't work all week.

• 1:48:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:00Speaker 00

  And I was like, oh, fuck this shit. My mind, and so, you know what I mean? And then I just let myself be freed. And one day, but, and the scene that I, that didn't work, he burst in the womb one day. That's it.

• 1:49:13Speaker 00

  Whatever you was doing right there, that's what we need for the scene where she fights the crazy eighty-eight.

• 1:49:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then it was like a moment whereas that scene was out of the movie, but they didn't tell me. And I'm working on it. And then I'm like, you know, it was Friday, you know, Friday is what my day to show shit. And mind you, I'm into editing for, you know, editing is twenty weeks.

• 1:49:40Speaker 00

  So I don't get there as, you know, my time is still hip-hop time.

• 1:49:45Speaker 00

  So I'm not getting there like everybody else.

• 1:49:47Rick Rubin?

  You're not there in the morning.

• 1:49:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, nine AM, so I'm after lunch, but I'm hanging till dinner.

• 1:49:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:52Speaker 00

  I even hang till midnight, but I'm not getting there before lunch.

• 1:49:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:55Speaker 00

  But he, uh, the scene was out of the film, but I didn't know. And Friday, I said, oh, check this out. Hey, listen, and I, I took an old sample that we had used, a Xanifir sample, and chopped it up to the scene. And it was like, you just saved the scene. I was like, what?

• 1:50:15Rick Rubin?

  So it was gonna be out, but because he liked the music, it made it in the movie?

• 1:50:19Speaker 00

  Not only that, the music was such a good crate dig.

• 1:50:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:23Speaker 00

  It was the music in the trailer.

• 1:50:24Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:50:25Speaker 00

  It was a great, it was a great dig. Yeah.

• 1:50:27Rick Rubin?

  So cool. Have you ever studied martial arts philosophy?

• 1:50:33Speaker 00

  Of course, yes.

• 1:50:35Rick Rubin?

  Of course.

• 1:50:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, I study martial arts philosophy like even today. You know, I was actually studying, there's a filmmaker named Lao Kao Lung, who made the movie Thirty-Six Chambers, he's a director of it. He did, he directed about eighteen films. And I've just been studying him for like the last two weeks. He's passed away in twenty thirteen.

• 1:50:59Speaker 00

  I think he's one of the greatest directors that ever lived. And, uh, he's a real Kung Fu master from the fourth generation of the Hung-Ga Form.

• 1:51:09Speaker 00

  I actually learned the Hung Gar Form myself. I was trained by his classmate. And when I was a man with the 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 Hung Gar Form. I'm like fourteen years old and I was just use the book and try to figure it out. Then in real life, I get a Hung Gar 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. Like, the universe is crazy, right?

• 1:51:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:43Speaker 00

  Yes, I studied martial art philosophy and I would 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.

• 1:52:27Speaker 00

  And you could either be the one that oppose the community or inspire the community or even defend the community.

• 1:52:34Rick Rubin?

  So when you study it, you learn the physical forms, but the philosophy is always taught along with the physical forms, yes?

• 1:52:42Speaker 00

  Should be.

• 1:52:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:43Speaker 00

  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 wanting it through his mind.

• 1:53:14Speaker 00

  You know what I mean?

• 1:53:14Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:15Speaker 00

  And so he's taking the Daoist approach versus the Buddhist approach. And he actually ends up melding the two.

• 1:53:25Speaker 00

  And you meditate a lot and you sit.

• 1:53:29Speaker 00

  It's actually.

• 1:53:31Speaker 00

  If you have some physical training and then you could sit there and in small spaces move your muscles and have your mind move everything it's supposed to move in small spaces. You'd be just as strong as a motherfucker lifting weights. You know what I mean? That's the Wu-Tang way.

• 1:53:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:50Speaker 00

  You know, the Shaolin way, of course, throw a thousand punches.

• 1:53:55Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about writing.

• 1:53:57Speaker 00

  In what capacity?

• 1:53:59Rick Rubin?

  For some type of content to come out of you. What happens?

• 1:54:06Speaker 00

  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 one is my imagination. And then if you're blessed, it's inspiration that's nothing to do with you.

• 1:54:24Rick Rubin?

  But you don't aim for the inspiration that comes?

• 1:54:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't aim for neither, none of them. But if I'm forced to write, like I say right now, you go, oh, let's, 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 RZA lyrics.

• 1:54:45Rick Rubin?

  The RZA lyrics are more philosophical.

• 1:54:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So Bobby Digital, like I had a verse, I'll give you a few lines that says, uh,

• 1:54:53Speaker 00

  you know, it's gangster shit a little bit. Four Shelly's ripped through his belly. They shot him right outside of Mike's Deli. Get to the telly, call my bitch up on the celli. 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, I don't eat meat. I rest twice a week, I can speak without moving my lips. I got fifty pairs of sneakers. Fingerprint proof rubber grips, hollow tip clips, eight ounce button lips. I sip and I love barbecue chips.

• 1:55:24Speaker 00

  That's just me. A clockbird from the block, straight away from a flock. She just crossed near the bus stop. I had a snapper, I twisted top off. You know? 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 cane, I slowed my game. My thick gold chain made the odds flame, so I stood up against the bodega's 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, so that's easy to write, because I could just go through myself like, yo, I saw that girl, I can write. But then if you're writing

• 1:56:07Speaker 00

  the preexistence of the mathematical biochemical equation as the manifestation of rock, plant, air, fire, and water, which are in the basic formation, solid, liquid, and gases that formed the land masses and the space catalysts. And all matter that exists must first be observed through a physical comprehension, but it takes your nose to be struck.

• 1:56:27Speaker 00

  That's a RZA, you know what I mean?

• 1:56:28Rick Rubin?

  Big difference.

• 1:56:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, really different. It's cool that you gave them different characters, essentially.

• 1:56:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:56:37Speaker 00

  And then when writing a movie, well, I learned from the Tarantino school.

• 1:56:43Speaker 00

  And in a way, I think, I definitely would use my imagination, but also hip hop. Quentin is a hip hop director, right? He's a music guy. Because he

• 1:56:58Speaker 00

  have a catalog of thousands of movies in his head.

• 1:57:01Rick Rubin?

  So he's like sampling ideas from things he's seen.

• 1:57:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I find myself doing the same.

• 1:57:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. Let me say, inspiration, you know, we don't have nothing to do with that, right? That's, that's even deeper than RZA in a way, a philosophical, because...

• 1:57:24Speaker 00

  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 about it through mud. I woke up without words, woke up with music in me, yeah.

• 1:57:45Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your relationship to piano. When did you learn to play piano?

• 1:57:51Speaker 00

  I mean, I always liked the piano, always had one, never took formal training. Just always just fiddled with it, right? By fiddling with it, I just got better and better. Loved it since I got the AS, once I got the EPS, that was the keyboard. And I realized that I'm more of that type of musical creator when it comes to producing or songwriting. And so, uh, yeah, I loved the piano for years.

• 1:58:18Rick Rubin?

  Once you got into it, how much time would you sit at the piano typically?

• 1:58:22Speaker 00

  I've 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 with me are there. And if I only know two chords, I'm playing those two chords for an hour.

• 1:58:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:45Speaker 00

  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 in San Francisco. There's a great piano store that was somewhere downtown San Fran. And I just remember going in it and they couldn't afford a piano yet. Didn't even know a piano would be $20,000, $30,000, you know? I mean, thought maybe, you know, at that time, the biggest, most expensive keyboard would be two grand.

• 1:59:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:21Speaker 00

  You know, so the guy told me the price. And then there was some gentleman buying one, you know? He looked a little bit like, it 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, but I wasn't shy. I was like, yo, could you show me something? How long you been playing? Right? He said, I've been playing for ten years. I said, how long? He said, you get good. He said, I'm still ain't good.

• 1:59:50Speaker 00

  I said, well, 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, uh, yeah. But I just started reading music theory that year.

• 2:00:06Rick Rubin?

  That year?

• 2:00:07Speaker 00

  That year, yeah, nineteen ninety-six. I started to read at least music theory. So I could, you know, play on my keyboards. And that's why I'm Wu-Tang Forever. You do hear chord progressions and turnarounds.

• 2:00:18Rick Rubin?

  What's the first piano you bought?

• 2:00:20Speaker 00

  The first one was a Yamaha Upright. Had a disclaimer on it as well. Yep. Bought three of those in my life.

• 2:00:27Rick Rubin?

  And would you sit at it and play a lot?

• 2:00:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yep. Until my, uh, my ex-wife, she fucked that piano up.

• 2:00:37Speaker 00

  There's a great story in my old neighborhood. You go to the piano store. They got a great story about the piano. Like, she fucked it up.

• 2:00:46Rick Rubin?

  In what way?

• 2:00:47Speaker 00

  Oh, she beat the shit out of that piano, like, hammered it. She knew I loved it, so.

• 2:00:51Rick Rubin?

  Oh, I see.

• 2:00:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, she destroyed that motherfucker. And then took, then took it back to them. Because she had to get me a new one, you know? And then tell 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, in the piano place for a long time until I, uh, I actually never corrected the story. I didn't want to go under the bus, but yeah. But, um, but since then, wow. I mean, you know, I got a piano in every home and just bought my first Steinway, actually. Not even six months ago, bought my first Steinway.

• 2:01:28Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 2:01:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:01:30Rick Rubin?

  Well, we're lucky that we have a piano here.

• 2:01:31Speaker 00

  Yes, you do.

• 2:01:32Rick Rubin?

  You feel like, um...

• 2:01:34Speaker 00

  See if I could play something out of me?

• 2:01:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, why not?

• 2:01:37Speaker 00

  Let's see what I could do.

• 2:01:38Rick Rubin?

  Well, you got a couple of pianos here.

• 2:01:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, whichever one you like. Let's see what's going on here.

• 2:03:17Speaker 00

  This is basically the story of the ballet.

• 2:03:23Speaker 00

  What's happening in the ballet is that...

• 2:03:30Speaker 00

  We start off in the key of C, which is Ionian. And then, um...

• 2:03:41Speaker 00

  The relative minor of C is A minor, right? And it becomes Aolian.

• 2:03:50Speaker 00

  Right? So C is...

• 2:04:00Speaker 00

  Major, right?

• 2:04:03Speaker 00

  And then the next

• 2:04:06Speaker 00

  mode would be Dorian, which would normally be minor, right? And it's key of C.

• 2:04:14Speaker 00

  But in my ballet, it's actually major, so it's

• 2:04:18Speaker 00

  it's more heroic.

• 2:04:29Speaker 00

  And we follow throughout

• 2:04:32Speaker 00

  through these modes. And then once the Ionian went minor,

• 2:04:40Speaker 00

  that's to make it back to that major. And then I go through that whole thing. And the thing that worked with the Ionian, working the modes back, is from Ionian,

• 2:04:55Speaker 00

  the low C.

• 2:05:00Speaker 00

  Right, that diminish.

• 2:05:04Speaker 00

  And then from that diminish, you want to make it back. And you could do it any way, right? You could do it other ways. You could go...

• 2:05:24Speaker 00

  If you take that same concept and don't think about the modes, I mean, think of the modes, but don't think about the key.

• 2:05:34Speaker 00

  So now, I must still do the same thing, starting Ionian, right?

• 2:05:40Speaker 00

  But this here,

• 2:05:43Speaker 00

  it's not in the key of C. It's more of a jazz type thing.

• 2:05:52Speaker 00

  Once again.

• 2:06:08Speaker 00

  Now I'm gonna do the key.

• 2:07:06Rick Rubin?

  How did the idea for the ballet come?

• 2:07:09Speaker 00

  From finding my old lyrics inside my Tommy Hilfiger duffel bag.

• 2:07:21Speaker 00

  And then wanting to put music to the lyrics. But in a way, like, I didn't wanna rap. While I rapped, I didn't wanna rap over hip-hop. I just wanted to have a different expression.

• 2:07:33Speaker 00

  And it just kept evolving into different iterations until I thought I was gonna write like a hip-hop opera. And then it was a guy named Evan Lambert, one of the presidents of Universal.

• 2:07:45Rick Rubin?

  I know Evan, I love Evan.

• 2:07:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, so Evan, I had played maybe a couple of tracks to him when I was getting, you know, "Yeah, welcome to my new opera."

• 2:07:55Speaker 00

  He's like, "Opera?" He said, "Well, operas are usually in Italian." He said, "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 John said, "I want you to compose my film," and I never composed a film, the first thing I did is 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,

• 2:08:39Speaker 00

  which makes sense because when you blow a flute, you can flutter. The trombone was representing the wolf.

• 2:08:46Speaker 00

  The tuba, the elephant. Okay. That opened my brain to, you know, fast composing. Come back now, 20 years later, and I'm doing my ballet. I identified what Evan said, and then I pursued it as such.

• 2:09:05Speaker 00

  Right? 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 lyric, you can chop it up, but this is written between the age of 14 and 19, all these lyrics. And one was called "Joe was a nerd." And it says, "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's name was Dexter, but they called him Dex. His sister's 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,

• 2:09:50Speaker 00

  but she was willing to try. Brad lit a blunt and passed it to Joe, said, 'Come on, man, smoke.' 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,' as he 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 pour to prove he was cool. And Lisa was like, 'Yo, thinking about Joe.' Then she said, 'Hey, Dex, 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,' and they proceeded to snort. Now, at this time, Joe acted... 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 vomited.

• 2:10:33Speaker 00

  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 it 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 them, there was quarts of red blood spitting from his head. It spilled it from his head and Monica said, ah, Joey is dead. And they all started to run and never mentioned this incident again to anyone.

• 2:11:07Speaker 00

  So, so that was a story that I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna write this into this thing, along with another one I won't say to you.

• 2:11:16Rick Rubin?

  Okay, and it's like, it's like a children's story, but an edgy children's story, I'll say.

• 2:11:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, basically, you could, you know, the slick Rick Tom, where it was starting, it was happening, yeah. 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've got these six college students. What can I, 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 Ionia, 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 gotta go through all these different things. You know what I mean? To go through, you gotta go through the mud and what comes out of the mud in Buddhism?

• 2:12:05Speaker 00

  The lotus, it grows out of the mud. And that's why the last song on that album is the Lotus arrives.

• 2:12:12Rick Rubin?

  Have you performed it live?

• 2:12:14Speaker 00

  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. Standing Ovation, which was amazing for my spirit.

• 2:12:28Rick Rubin?

  Did you play piano, or did you just compose and watch it?

• 2:12:31Speaker 00

  Just watch it, yeah, yeah. I, I don't play piano in front of people. You know, my wife, kids, maybe, friends, but I love sharing.

• 2:12:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:42Speaker 00

  You know, me and my son, at my phone, I got so many recordings of like, okay, you go three minutes, I go three minutes, whatever happens.

• 2:12:48Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:50Speaker 00

  Don't worry about it. And we, and we go, and, and sometime we say something interesting, sometime we don't. And so, taking the musical modes and telling the story, that's the other side.

• 2:12:59Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful. And then tell me about how you recorded it.

• 2:13:03Speaker 00

  Recorded it in Colorado, in the Symphony Hall. Mixed mics, you know, Newman's and...

• 2:13:09Rick Rubin?

  How was it different hearing it

• 2:13:13Rick Rubin?

  with an audience in the Symphony Hall versus how you imagined it when you played it on the piano in the first place?

• 2:13:20Speaker 00

  Incredible, or 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?

• 2:13:39Speaker 00

  That's maybe the lowest brass, you know, your cello will start here, though.

• 2:13:49Speaker 00

  The end, right? You know, your violins will be...

• 2:13:59Speaker 00

  You know, your flutes.

• 2:14:02Speaker 00

  But your flute will also get down here, but you also have your oboes and your other woods down here, right? So, you'll know that, you'll know that if you did a chord like this.

• 2:14:17Speaker 00

  Right, C7. You could look at that and look at the range of that. And what instruments fit here?

• 2:14:27Speaker 00

  If I did the, if, or if I did the, actually, I'll do a D here, right? But I'll do an inversion, right?

• 2:14:37Speaker 00

  So now I got, I got that flute.

• 2:14:48Speaker 00

  And then, so anyway, so thinking like that, right? But then when you hear, 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.

• 2:15:04Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:15:05Speaker 00

  And so it felt amazing. And they knew me. That's the other thing. Chris Dragon, our conductor, you know, we had built a friendship already from some previous things. By the time we recorded it, we had performed it. We had rehearsed it. We had 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 gonna 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-

• 2:15:45Rick Rubin?

  In the live performance, did you have choir?

• 2:15:47Speaker 00

  Yes, in the live performance, there was choir as well.

• 2:15:48Rick Rubin?

  Is there a recording of the live?

• 2:15:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:15:50Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 2:15:51Speaker 00

  And there's, and there's might be one song that's on the bonus that has one song of the live. You could hear the crowd and all that shit. Yeah. And so you have to figure out what instruments. But basically, the human voice is here to hear. But I mean, naturally, we could get away up here, we would, but-

• 2:16:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:07Speaker 00

  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 of ballet, Through Mud, this track, the title track. Well, which I actually love that the instruments emulated what the voices was doing.

• 2:16:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:25Speaker 00

  And since the voices was only doing single vowels, it actually sounds better on the instrument.

• 2:16:29Rick Rubin?

  Interesting.

• 2:16:29Speaker 00

  Which leads me to something else in the future, like, okay, you know, if I'm gonna use a single vowel, I might as well use an instrument.

• 2:16:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. 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?

• 2:16:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was many changes that had to be made, whether I wanted to or not.

• 2:16:54Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 2:16:55Speaker 00

  Because the digital, you know, you're using Dora Cole, Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton, which all played, they all pumped up on this shit. Also, I 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,

• 2:17:30Speaker 00

  right? And, you know, you get synthesizer, I got one button to get that.

• 2:17:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:34Speaker 00

  Right, so I could 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, now 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's sound close to something real.

• 2:17:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:00Speaker 00

  But now I give it to the orchestra, it's like, no, it doesn't make sense, because

• 2:18:06Speaker 00

  the flat tune though won't be there, or the guitar won't be here, or the human is not gonna do it that way.

• 2:18:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:14Speaker 00

  Right, or you're sitting there holding a note on a flute.

• 2:18:22Rick Rubin?

  Flute player only has so much air.

• 2:18:24Speaker 00

  Exactly, he's out of that.

• 2:18:25Rick Rubin?

  Right.

• 2:18:26Speaker 00

  Okay? So what do you want us to do? You know, do you want us to, um, divisive? Yeah, so divisive meaning, I'm dividing the note between two people.

• 2:18:35Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 2:18:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. So now divisive is a-

• 2:18:38Rick Rubin?

  So one starts it, and then the other one takes over?

• 2:18:41Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 2:18:41Rick Rubin?

  And the first one comes back?

• 2:18:42Speaker 00

  Exactly, divisive. So, that has to be written on that chart.

• 2:18:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:47Speaker 00

  That means now, the copyists-

• 2:18:51Speaker 00

  Gotta know that. And so, and then I had a great team. You know, I mean Scott O'Neil, of course, Mitch, and Tan, who was actually on my staff for the TV show. Right? So that's, 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.

• 2:19:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 2:19:15Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:19:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:35Speaker 00

  But I'm gonna do that. Cause he just told me that shit like in August.

• 2:19:39Rick Rubin?

  There's a lot of great versions of it too to listen to. It's inspiring to listen to.

• 2:19:43Speaker 00

  You know, I don't read music fast. Like I can't put the music in front of me and bada bada bada bada. Right? I read like, uh, maybe a sixth grader by now, but it's still, so maybe at 60 BPMs I can read it, you know? At 90, no, no, no, that's not happening. You know, I could go do, re, mi, re, mi, re, fa, fa, sol, la, ti, ti. I could do that. Now, once I hear it now, oh, that's what he's doing. So then I gotta see that, oh, it's mostly a C's, it's the one that, and then I could go ahead and try. But that's been my, my biggest weakness is imitation.

• 2:20:29Speaker 00

  That's my biggest weakness. And it's 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.

• 2:20:43Speaker 00

  I wouldn't mind imitating him. 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?

• 2:20:57Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 2:20:57Speaker 00

  I remember when I got the guitar. You know, I started laying my vagina. I was like, what you gonna, you know, vagina. They were like, what you, you know, you starting a guitar at this age is like. But you know what? I'll just do it.

• 2:21:12Rick Rubin?

  Just pick up the instrument and make sounds.

• 2:21:14Speaker 00

  Let me see, see what I got in it. It might not be, it's the bass. It don't matter what it is, though.

• 2:21:19Rick Rubin?

  There's a guitar there, the third one, the furthest one. Nope, that one, yeah.

• 2:21:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:21:26Speaker 00

  It's just like, I'm still gonna, you know.

• 2:21:50Speaker 00

  Fine, I'll sit, fuck it.

• 2:21:51Rick Rubin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:22:01Rick Rubin?

  And you don't need to be able to read music to do that.

• 2:22:03Speaker 00

  Nope.

• 2:22:03Rick Rubin?

  It's more like playing with the instrument and having fun.

• 2:22:20Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 2:22:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:22:26Speaker 00

  Fuck it, you know what I mean?

• 2:22:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, so much fun to make music, isn't it?

• 2:22:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like let it out.

• 2:22:30Rick Rubin?

  It's great.

• 2:22:30Speaker 00

  So, anyway.

• 2:22:32Rick Rubin?

  You mentioned the morning you pray. Tell me about your prayer life.

• 2:22:35Speaker 00

  I hold some of that personal, but I was gonna say pray, man. You know, we grew up, people said, "Don't pray."

• 2:22:43Speaker 00

  I'll tell you one thing, an old gentleman told me, he was a, I think he was a Jewish brother.

• 2:22:49Speaker 00

  He actually have no hands.

• 2:22:54Speaker 00

  Anyway, he works in the store, but he always helped me carry out the boxes.

• 2:23:01Speaker 00

  And I don't know, one day, you know, we started being friends, we started talking and we talked about prayer.

• 2:23:08Speaker 00

  He said, "What did you pray for?"

• 2:23:12Speaker 00

  And I told him, "I don't pray for nothing. I just give thanks."

• 2:23:17Speaker 00

  He was like, "Oh, that's good." "But pray for guidance."

• 2:23:22Speaker 00

  I said, "Okay, I'll take that."

• 2:23:51Speaker 06

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• 2:24:06Speaker 07

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• 2:24:10Speaker 07

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• 2:24:53Speaker 07

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