Nuclear Beef

Fresh Air Interview Audio Beef Today. The RZA explains the history of the Clan and his many special techniques.

Here's a fun interview with the Wu Tang Clan's RZA from NPR's Fresh Air program. Terry Gross tries to roll with Bobby Digital even though he is.. how shall we say.. somewhat less than articulate.

RZA : ... and the Z in mathematics yknawmean (because you know, I study mathematics) and the Z stands for 'Zig Zag Zig' which represents knowledge, wisdom and understanding. It means like, you can go this way and sometimes you're going to have to zag back cause you got to go back and check on yourself, but then you realize you was going the right way in the beginning so you zig again. And that shows you that sometimes you may know something and you can understand it, but if you don't live through it it's not fully understood by you and so that zag is me living it out. And when I zagged, you know I went through so much troubles of life and life experiences so now I have the experience so now I have to zig again. So that's what really put that 'z' in my name.

I also particularly enjoy how Terry keeps referring to him as a 'composer' like he was Aaron Copeland or something. She tries really hard, but it's difficult to buy it when she enthuses about the track 'B.O.B.B.Y.' off the Bobby Digital album. I mean, c'mon.. even people who are into his music don't like that crap.

The interview covers a lot of RZA and Wu history, from the early days of the Clan to RZA's work on movie soundtracks. He also talks about his childhood involvement with Kung-Fu movies and how he taught himself to produce records. Throughout, The RZA comes off as a very likeable and passionate individual, self-educated but clearly very intelligent. He also seems to have a very practical viewpoint on success, which up-and-coming musicians would do well to heed. RZA confesses to smoking weed at age 9 and having sex at age 11, and (even more shockingly!) shouts out Garth Brooks for doing an album as a character! Classic.

RZA: ... I just didn't have the patience to sit in a class or the attention power to sit in a class and listen to a teacher tell me these things because I would be thinking of a girl or something or thinking you know even sometimes, you know, it's funny and I'll say this out loud because I know a lot of men can relate. Sometimes you can be a 14 year old boy in the classroom and all you thinking about is having sex with the teacher, yknawmean? And it's crazy and you'll be sitting there just looking and looking no matter what she's trying to teach you, say to you, all you is dreaming about is man what if you could just take Mrs. (garble) in the back, yknawmean? And I realized that in my own self that this is a real true distraction of life and I should stay home and read and study myself and that's why you know self-knowledge is important and self-study is important, no matter cause whether you go to school or whether you go to a Kung-Fu class for instance, you're not going to learn the technique because you're going to the class. No, it's going to be your self-practice, your self-dedication on the inside that's going to help you perfect what you need to perfect.

(The RZA has a new book out, 'The Wu Tang Manual' which is a comprehensive compendium of Wu background and history. If you're John Book and you want to know about the Wu like you're reading the U-WU mailing list, you should check it out.)

UPDATE : Oops! MP3 link was broken, is fixed now. Sorry! Thanks to the Anon Y. Mouse in comments.