RZA Taught Kanye, The Truth About Kendrick vs. Drake, & ODB Used a Paper Towel Condom??? | Ep 702

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Flagrant w/ Andrew Schulz & Akaash Singh – Ep 702: "RZA Taught Kanye, The Truth About Kendrick vs. Drake, & ODB Used a Paper Towel Condom???"

Release Date: April 29, 2026
Guest: RZA (Wu-Tang Clan)
Hosts: Andrew Schulz, Akaash Singh, Bobby Lee, Miles Medows, AlexxMedia, Mark Gagnon

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Episode Overview

This episode presents a freewheeling, deeply insightful, and frequently hilarious conversation with RZA—founding architect of Wu-Tang Clan. RZA recounts never-before-heard stories from his early days in New York to tales of Wu-Tang's rise, his take on modern hip-hop battles, creative influences on future generations (notably Kanye West), reflections on community, fatherhood, and business, and iconic anecdotes about the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard (ODB). The conversation weaves themes of discipline, legacy, confidence, mentorship, and the importance of staying authentic and creative—delivered with Flagrant’s trademark no-holds-barred tone.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Wu-Tang’s Origins & the Power of a Single Choice

[04:08–14:28]

• RZA describes a pivotal moment: With $20K (half from Ghostface Killah), he nearly pursued drug dealing but, after a long, contemplative walk, chose instead to form Wu-Tang Productions.
  • RZA: “...when you do negative shit, negative shit happen... I had a baby, so life was like, what are you going to do?” [05:19]
  • RZA’s advice: “Take long walks... I advise this to anybody. Take long walks.” [07:39]
• The insight: one decision built an empire, not just for himself, but for a whole generation.

2. DIY Spirit and Groundbreaking Production

[13:18–16:09, 21:47–24:59]

• RZA breaks down early technical challenges and adapting gear for unique Wu-Tang sound.
  • The transition from the SP1200 (drum machine, 10-12 sec sampler) to the EPS (keyboard sampler) allowed for unique, influential production—enabling denser, more melodic samples.
  • This flexible approach ultimately inspired future producers like Kanye West. (More below.)

3. RZA’s Influence on Kanye West and the Musical Evolution of Hip Hop

[16:25–19:27]

• Bobby Lee: “Am I crazy to see your influence on Kanye’s production?”
• RZA: “Kanye … another genius … I try not to self praise … But there was an interview where he said his hero was RZA… When [Jay-Z’s] Blueprint dropped ... Jay said, ‘I got the whole blueprint from you...’” [18:22]
  • Respect between innovators, with RZA proud of how hip-hop “each one teaches one.”

4. The Importance of Learning, Absorbing, Evolving (Mentors & Process)

[25:21–27:19]

• RZA details his open approach—absorbing from anyone, from Marley Marl (whose home studio was a model for RZA’s future builds) to fellow Wu members.
• RZA: “We ingest so you can digest... If you don’t ingest, what you gonna digest?” [25:30]

5. Embracing Fearlessness & Manifesting Confidence

[28:34–38:03]

• RZA talks about not fearing failure, drawing from 5-Percenter teachings and formative life lessons.
  • RZA: “Fear of failure? Nah. Success is completing the task. The rest is whatever.” [28:44]
  • The Wu-Tang confidence ethos, with the crew “manifesting” themselves into greatness (“We decided we were the best … and everyone believed it.”) [37:08]

6. Group Dynamics: Who Was the Best? Ego, Camaraderie, and Artistic Growth

[38:07–41:55]

• The “best” in Wu-Tang rotated—Jizza (“lyrically the best” at first), Killer Priest, Ghostface, Method Man (noted for inventing new flows), etc.
  • RZA: “At one point, Ghost became the best… Even Dirty said it.” [39:58]
  • A healthy, competitive environment where everyone could shine and learn.

7. Creative Evolution, Influence & Giving Back

[41:55–43:16]

• RZA reflects on how Wu’s sound was imitated and how the group matured from seeing it as “biting” to appreciating being part of a larger culture.
• Pride in seeing their influence, but humility and gratitude are now emphasized.

8. Ol' Dirty Bastard: The Ultimate Expression of Freedom

[80:08–92:43]

• RZA holds forth, barely with a straight face, on ODB’s wild, legendary antics:
  • RZA: "He'd wrap a paper towel around his dick ... 'cause he didn't have a condom." [80:08]
  • Stories of ODB crashing cars, escaping from court-mandated rehab to perform in disguise, and hotel chaos.
  • “He was the ultimate expression of freedom ... the magnetism was real rock star shit.” [85:51]
• ODB’s name, inspired by kung fu movies, and the wild, authentic charisma that made him iconic.

9. Dealing with Poverty, Family, and Building Brotherhood

[48:12–51:34]

• RZA and Wu members bonded through intertwined childhoods, poverty (“19 people, two-bedroom apartment”), and real family ties.
  • “We all shared beds, had Christmas toys only if both parents were city workers …” [51:31]

10. Mentorship, Loyalty, and Wu-Tang’s Extended Family

[68:46–70:29]

• The Abbot role RZA assumed stretches back to adolescence. He and Divine acted as “Moses & Aaron”—lifting up not just a crew, but hundreds of people: “Everybody had a chance for a better day.” [69:45]

11. The Dangers of the Street and Transition to Stardom

[70:42–71:34]

• Even as superstardom approached, negative elements from their past persisted. (“The van got shot up … The Delphonics just told us, ‘We’ve seen all that in Philly.’”)

12. Creativity, Addiction, and the Bobby Digital Era

[138:09–140:34]

• RZA candidly shares he went through seven years of drug use after his mother passed; “Bobby Digital is a product of that… it accelerated my foresight… but I had to kick it.” [139:36]
• Suggests his future visions—artistic, musical—were partly an effect of consuming drugs in that difficult period.

13. RZA’s Thoughts on Modern Hip-Hop and the Kendrick vs. Drake Beef

[143:13–152:29]

• RZA views hip-hop as sport-and-art—battles as healthy and essential.
  • Cautions that, as a Black-originated culture, there’s always risk battles go from lyrical to physical.
  • Praises Kendrick’s “letter to daughter” as reaching classic hip-hop lyricism (“...that lyric was strong as Nas writing Cormega…”).
  • RZA: “I think hip hop is doing great… It continues to do what it was meant to do— inspire, enlighten, and feed so many families.” [152:15]

14. Wild Stories & Memorable Anecdotes

• Wu-Tang performing at Rikers for ODB ([43:36–45:13])
• Childhood scuffles and lessons in loyalty
• Building his first studio, scrounging for samples in NY shops (“James Brown’s Black Caesar, $100 if you wanted that sample!”)
• Navigating Shanghai film shoots—with Americans using “squat toilets” ([153:14–155:14])

15. Legacy, Regret, and Fatherhood

• Balancing creative obsession with family; regrets about not being more present but consoled by how present he was when he was there.
  • RZA: “My son said... he didn’t miss me because when I was there, I was so present.” [99:14]
• Moving family to Ohio so his Staten Island house could become Wu studios.

16. Authenticity and Technical Details in Production

• RZA insisted on “the sound of the demo” over studio polish. Emphasized the power of authenticity: imperfect, but real. [124:15–129:11]
• RZA (re: 36 Chambers): “When the beat finally drops... I’m actually doing it live … every snare manually.” [128:57]

17. Notable Quotes (with Speaker & Timestamp)

• On pivotal choices:
  • “Take long walks. I advise this to anybody. Take long walks.” — RZA [07:39]
• On influence:
  • “He [Kanye] did an interview ... they asked who his hero was. The answer was RZA.” — RZA [17:27]
• On success:
  • “Success is completing the task to achieve the goal. That’s the success. Whatever happens after that is whatever.” — RZA [29:03]
• On Wu’s confidence:
  • “It just felt like you guys had decided that you were the best at rapping … and then everybody else was like, yeah ... you can ooze confidence into reality.” — Bobby Lee [37:08]
• On passing it forward:
  • “If you’re the caveman that started fire, yo, you gotta spread it... maybe I’m the first one to hold the two sticks together to make the fire ... others continue to build.” — RZA [18:07]
• On authenticity in sound:
  • “I want my shit to be—yo, bro, that lo-fi ... hip hop started on tapes, bro, with hisses...” — RZA [124:15]
• On being the “Abbot":
  • “Sometimes there’s always one amongst you that ... can build the ark .... In the negative world, I led people to nothing; but on the positive side, everything turns around.” — RZA [68:46]

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Memorable Moments & Laughter

• ODB using a paper towel as a condom: “He wrapped a paper towel around his dick ... ‘cause he didn’t have a condom.” — RZA [80:08]
• Tales of ODB flipping cars and leaving friends behind: “Car flips upside down, Dirt gets out and just leaves ... 12 o’ clock is in the car!” [84:02]
• ODB’s inspiration for other clan names and his rock star wildness.
• The RZA, Denzel, and American Gangster: “He didn’t speak to me; he stayed in character ... But on the red carpet, he hugs me, says, ‘Great job.’ … You didn’t meet Denzel, you met Frank Lucas.” [116:19–116:29]
• Bathroom “wars” in Shanghai & RZA’s strict writer about toilets on set.

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RZA’s Closing Freestyle [160:48–163:01]

Delivered live:

“Who could split the atom into 10,000 pieces? My thesis: it can be achieved through telekinesis...
...We separate ourselves on borders and believe the lies our forefathers taught us ...
...But we all showered by the same rays of the sun, days of the month...
...I prefer to drop love, while some prefer to drop bombs...
...Maybe your God and my God are the same...” — RZA [162:48]

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Important Timestamps

• Metal Mike/NYC chatter: [00:31–03:18]
• The “$20k decision” & forming Wu-Tang: [04:08–14:19]
• Influence on Kanye & Jay-Z: [16:25–19:27]
• Wu-Tang production secrets: [14:44–16:09], [124:15–128:35]
• Ol’ Dirty Bastard stories: [80:08–92:43]
• Reflections on Kendrick vs. Drake / hip-hop beef: [143:13–152:29]
• RZA’s struggle with addiction (Bobby Digital era): [138:09–140:34]
• Closing freestyle: [160:48–163:01]

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Final Thoughts

With raw honesty and signature wit, RZA’s conversation spans the personal and the cultural, demystifying the genesis of one of hip-hop’s most idiosyncratic collectives, offering life lessons, creative wisdom, and epic tales. The Flagrant crew keeps energy high, unafraid to press for details or veer into wild humor, while RZA shines as a philosopher, craftsman, and storyteller—ever humble, ever evolving.

For Wu-Tang heads, hip-hop historians, and anyone seeking the story behind the music—not to mention a blueprint for self-creation—this episode is essential.

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Transcript

[Bobby Lee]

What's up, everybody? And welcome to Flagrant. And today we are joined by true creative legends. The inspiration to see the architect. We're here with rza, everybody.

[RZA]

Thank you.

[Bobby Lee]

Dude, thank you so much for coming. I have a. I have a question I have to ask you. I've wondered this for probably, God, I don't know, 30 years. There is a guy in my neighborhood. I grew up in the East Village, okay? There was a guy. I don't know if he was homeless or not, but he would ask for money on the street, on fourth street in Lafayette.

[RZA]

God know who you're talking about. No way.

[Bobby Lee]

No way.

[RZA]

Mike.

[Bobby Lee]

How the

[RZA]

no way?

[Andrew Schulz]

He told us this. I was like, don't bring it up. He's not gonna know.

[Bobby Lee]

So there was a guy. Metal Mike, right? Yeah, Metal Mike. Okay. And the thing about Metal Mike was. I've been waiting to ask you this for years. I can't even.

[Andrew Schulz]

I'm shocked he knows this. I'm sorry that I doubted you.

[Bobby Lee]

I didn't know if the. If he was being genuine or if he was maybe battling schizophrenia or something like that. Like, I had no clue. But the thing was, you could go up to him and you could be like, yo, what's Wu Tang up to? And he would give you detailed information about what you guys were doing, you know?

[RZA]

So crazy. He was. He was. He was homeless. And I think one day he. You know, I'm better. Maybe came up to me, maybe asked for a few dollars one day. I might have blessed him. Heavy. You know, I'm that type, you know?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

But I might have talked with him for, like, 10, 15 minutes. Right? And this is when 4th and Broadway Tower was the Tower record.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

G Street Records was in that building. So check it out. Russell Simmons lived on the top floor of that apartment. Exactly.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

It was all. It was an old Cher apartment, actually, that Russell got from Cher. But anyway. And G Street was in that building, and there was also another studio there, so I will always see him. But eventually, he became my man. That's my man. Yo. If I had something, he saw me. If he saw me, his day was good.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know, understand. He was good. Like, mom gonna eat well today. But then also, it came to a point where I was like, yo, yo, fuck it. Hand out some stickers, bro. You know what I mean? And then, like, I don't know. I don't know what we had in common and shit, but, you know, at this time, I spent, like, a whole hour talking to him.

[Bobby Lee]

Really? You guys should Connect?

[RZA]

Yeah. So you probably. If he told you some shit, bro, he got it from the source.

[Bobby Lee]

That's what I was always wanting. And there were people that would go up to him, like, this was the allure of wuang, right. Growing up in New York City, which is like. And also, you don't have the Internet this time. So the access is actual, like, you know, word of mouth information. And he had it. There would be dudes that would pull up, throw him five bucks. What up, Metal Mike? Yo, what's up, dude? Oh, and then there was just like, random insider. They're working on the album. It's coming together. That's insane.

[Andrew Schulz]

Why did they call him Metal Mike?

[RZA]

Yeah, you know, I don't know if it was Metal Mike or something.

[Bobby Lee]

Mike, Motor Mike, Metal Mike something.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah. I just remember Mike like it was something else in front of his name, but yeah, that's. Yeah, it wasn't Mental Mike. It might have been.

[Bobby Lee]

I didn't want to make any assumptions. Where's Mike at today? Yeah, where is Mike?

[RZA]

I haven't seen Mike in years, bro. Like, I feel like I haven't seen him when the World Trade center came down or some shit. Like, no, the whole city changed. I remember that shit. He.

[Bobby Lee]

He told me. He was like, yo, they're gonna hit the tower.

[RZA]

Anyway if he is out there. He seen this podcast. Yo, what up, bro? Long time, man.

[Bobby Lee]

Mike, mad love to you, bro. We always believed you, by the way,

[RZA]

Mike, you know, that's why we kept

[Bobby Lee]

asking what Wu Tang was up.

[RZA]

We always believed you, man.

[Bobby Lee]

You got all this. Like, just doing the research on you is really fun because it's like nostalgia. It's like the little memory lane you get to walk down. Like you grew up in the city. And I was watching this Drink Champs app that you did. It was like four hours with Nori. Shout out to Nori. It was unbelievable. And there's a moment early in the episode where you even go, like, I want to make sure we have time to get into shit. I think you thought it might be an hour or something like that. And it's like, you guys had plenty of time.

[RZA]

You told it all sweating in that

[Bobby Lee]

motherfucker, but you told this amazing story, and it was like a Bible verse you reference even, where you're like, one positive decision can be responded 10 times

[RZA]

or something like that. Yes, yes.

[Bobby Lee]

And it was this decision. Like, you had 20k and you wanted to decide what you were gonna do with your life.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

How old are you at this time?

[RZA]

This is right Before Wu Tang. So I'm 21, 22.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Can you, can you break down this moment?

[RZA]

And. Yeah, without incriminating, like, I always try to say no. So at the end of the day, you know, I had 10k. Ghostface had 10k. That made the 20k.

[Bobby Lee]

Got it.

[RZA]

Yeah. And the gag was the plan was to get a brick.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? And at the time, you know, my pops had to connect.

[Bobby Lee]

You gotta call Uncle Joe.

[RZA]

Uncle Joe. Yeah, Uncle Joe had to connect. And it's like, all right. So I decided to go down and meet Uncle Joe and talk to him about. About the. About it. And yeah, we, we talked about getting that brick, you know? You know what I mean? I was, I wasn't vegan then, so.

[Bobby Lee]

So your brain wasn't operating.

[RZA]

I probably knocked out like 17 chicken win that night.

[Andrew Schulz]

Cocaine is vegan.

[RZA]

But, but, but, but the paraphrase, I told her to know I should paraphrase it now. But the thing was, yo, I had a baby in the oven or maybe just born, right? So life was like, what are you going to do? And when you do negative shit, negative shit happen. Like, like at this time in a brick, a brick could get you straight. But this is like after I just won the trial, right?

[Andrew Schulz]

Yeah.

[RZA]

After Dirty had got locked up. After we fucking tore this fucking Ohio town upside down.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, shit.

[RZA]

Constantly making the fucking newspaper. And it was like criminal activity was not only hurting you, it's hurting your community, it's hurting your family. It's a fucking. Really a big chain reaction of criminal activity. But yet money leads you to want to do it, right? So, so we, so we figured, yo, if we flip this 20, we could at least get 80.

[Bobby Lee]

It's a nice come up.

[RZA]

It's a nice come up, right? But then I was like, nah, what.

[Bobby Lee]

What happens where you go? No, and that single decision might be the most influential decision in music because it's not just hip hop, but like, that one decision spawns everything.

[RZA]

So what happened? I get back to Staten island and mind you, it's got to add this part to it, you know, Ghost already been shot. You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And, and, and you know, in a way, he got shot based on, like, he said he took a bullet. Like, that was like, I got, I got, I got fought in that.

[Andrew Schulz]

Really?

[RZA]

I got fought. Yeah, because I'm part of what's happening. I bought him here to this thing and shit, you know what I mean? So my man Wise got shot, you know what I mean? So it's just like. But we talking about doing it again, you know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

And you're feeling some sort of responsibility and almost guilt about it.

[RZA]

Yes. And then I'm taking this fucking walk. And mind you, like I said, I'm acquitted of crime, right? I'm ready to have a second chance. And so. And I have a child. So I'm walking and I'm thinking, yo, and I advise this to anybody. Take long walks.

[Bobby Lee]

Amen. Amen.

[RZA]

I'm walking all. I'm walking through standard. People. People thought there was. I learned this. People thought I was losing my mind, cuz I'm walking and I'm talking to myself, but I'm calculating. I'm thinking like, yo, this, this, not this, man. You know, I got to do like this. What up, yo? What up, yo?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah,

[Miles Medows]

maybe you did have a few.

[Andrew Schulz]

Talking to yourself.

[RZA]

I'm talking to him. I was fre. Punchline came, yo. It was like, nah. And I just told Ghost, I was like, yo, we gonna separate here. You know what I mean? So, yo, I don't want you holding me down. I don't want you, like, just go ahead, live your life. I'm gonna go live my life, yo. You know what I mean? I appreciate everything. Gave him the big hug. Gave him his 10, took my 10.

[Bobby Lee]

How did he react to that?

[RZA]

He understood in the sense of like. And he always, like, Ghost always looked at me as a big brother, you know what I mean? You know, he was the big brother of his family. Maybe he saw me as a big brother as well as his brother, of course, you know what I mean? At one point, his mother called me him. That's how much me and him, we lived together, you know what I mean? So that is my brother, right? But yeah, he was like, okay, cool. And he might have went and kept doing what he was doing, you know what I mean? But I kept on that journey, right? And it took maybe a month later where I was like, I went and saw a man named Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is. He was the father of my old manager, Mel Kwan.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay.

[RZA]

He used to always like to play chess with me. And so I went over, played some chess with him and shit. And he was the one that started a company called Yamaker Records, where he signed Sir Abu and the Divine Force. And I used to always see the records stacked up in his house, little brownstone in Brooklyn on Parkside Avenue, always. And they ran the company out of their brownstone. And so I was just like, I want to start a company.

[Bobby Lee]

So that's where you're soaking up game and you're realizing, I could do this as well. And it's not this unattainable thing where I need this office in midtown, right.

[RZA]

I could do whatever the fuck I want. He did it right there.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

And he gave me the advice. He said, go see Mr. Bill Wine. So Bill Warren, people always say he was a lawyer, but he seemed like he could. Like, like, where's Bill Warren at? He's in Hong Kong. Like, he was like, he was always mysterious. Very mysterious. His office. His office. Now that you fucking make me go back to Mr. Warren. His office in 70th street, whatever. Up in the upper 70s was in a building, at an apartment. Go in Mr. Wan Chevy Wood. I never forget the little Chevy Wood, Japanese shit he had in there. You know what I mean? But I said, yeah, I want to start a company. I want to do this. And then. And I basically, the 10,000 went to form Wu Tang Production. So I formed Wu Tang Production.

[Bobby Lee]

And at this point, do you know, I'm going to be producing everything. I'm going to be the architect of all this. Do you know the talent that you want to bring into it? Or are you first going, this is just the brand and we just need to start with one record.

[RZA]

Yeah, the idea was start with a record, start with a company, build a company, get a identity of the company, right? The logo was the identity of the company. So that was really just my business card. I mean, well, first it was gonna be some other shit. If you ever see the shit with the fucking head shit. But it became my business card, okay? And then that same business card is the COVID of protect your neck. I just went to one of those magnifying places where they put the photography. He shot my business card and just blew it up.

[Bobby Lee]

Hilarious.

[RZA]

Okay, that's my first fucking.

[Bobby Lee]

But the first inception. What is the brand?

[RZA]

Yeah, what is the brand? And I, I knew what the brand was because Wu Tang was like, like, like special. Special to me in the sense of. It was the illest kung fu movie I ever saw. It was the illest technique, like the sword style. It was the best sword style. And I just used, like I said the Bible. In the Bible, it said, when Jesus comes in the last days, it said out of his mouth came a double edged sword. And he used it to smite the nations. And I was like, well, a sword out of his mouth, that's a crazy image. But your tongue is shaped like a sword. And so I just took it as a metaphor. Then I was like, well, we got the illest lyrics. And I already had a lot of different tapes from Deck Meth. All of us, they always come to my crib and make tapes. So I said, let me form the company and go and sign them to my record company and start producing music with them, you know what I mean? The first one to sign was Method.

[Bobby Lee]

Really?

[RZA]

That's why I call him Woo Brother Number one. Oh, wow.

[Bobby Lee]

I didn't know it was first.

[RZA]

Yeah. He signed the contract first. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

And how long to get all the rest of the guys?

[RZA]

I mean, not that long. Like, you know, within six months, everybody was in, you know, do you have

[Bobby Lee]

to pitch them on this greater idea? Are they all trying to get their own record deals at the time? Like, where are people in their lives?

[RZA]

Yeah, everybody's trying to get a record deal. Everybody. What's the. Everybody's dreaming.

[Miles Medows]

Got it.

[RZA]

But me and Juzza have already touched the dream.

[Bobby Lee]

Yes.

[RZA]

Right. Juzza had an album out Worlds from a genius. We were so proud of that. I had the Prince Rakim EP out and, and, and, and it was like, into. So from their point of view, they in. They made it. You know what I mean? They're in the system.

[Bobby Lee]

So you had. You had something validated, something qualified.

[RZA]

Yeah. Now to have my own company was a whole nother thing. And it was like off the record. But on the record, we. On the record, it was other people vying too. Because what happened, Shaheem was like. Shaheem, his first lyric came out of my rhyme book. You know what I mean? He's my little brother's best friend at that time. They would steal my shit and go make them, whatever. Yeah. Until, of course, he started writing his own shit. That's when he was like 12. But anyway. But Shaheem, he ends up signing the deal with Virgin Records through a whole nother system. Right. And I felt left behind on that one in all reality.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, really?

[RZA]

Yeah, because it was like. Because, you know, Shaheem was like, you know, I thought he was one of us. He was one of us. But he was also being produced by a great producer who didn't. Who. I just think he's a very underrated, unsung producer named rns out of Stapleton Projects. If it wasn't for rns, I'm going to give him some credit here. I have the SP1200. He had the EPS. The EPS is a keyboard.

[Bobby Lee]

Got it.

[RZA]

He had to go down south, had to do something for the summer and go with his family.

[Bobby Lee]

He let you hold it he, he wanted.

[RZA]

He took the sb12 cuz you could fit that in the trunk, you can't fit the keyboard. And so he gave me the eps. And so now I like, okay, what's this shit?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And what it did, the SB 1200 was stuck with 10 seconds. 12 seconds of sample. Right. 2.5 seconds per pad. The EPS had about maybe 20 some seconds, but it wasn't limited. You could use it, other words, on the SP 1200, just so you guys could follow. No matter what, you're never going to get more than 2.5 seconds to use at a time. So that's why we speed the shit up and then slow it back down.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

On the EPS, you can use your entire 10 seconds at once.

[Bobby Lee]

So it gave you a little more flexibility.

[RZA]

Super flexibility, you know what I mean? So if you look, if you go back and think about Wu Tang music a little bit, you'll notice the two bar, four bar phrases has come in versus the one bar phrase.

[Bobby Lee]

And this is because of the limitations of production.

[RZA]

Exactly.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, so production limitations influence the way that you guys have created the music, but also creates a different sound that nobody's really hearing at the time.

[RZA]

Exactly. And it's also. It's either limiting you or expanding you. Now the other thing about the eps was that now that I got the sample on a key, it spreads across the entire keyboard. So now I got 61 keys.

[Miles Medows]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, so now you can really play with the sample.

[RZA]

Exactly.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, shit.

[Miles Medows]

And you were like one of the first. You were stacking like 10 or 15 samples on one track.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Miles Medows]

Most of the time it's just like

[RZA]

one or two and people not think and. Cause what happened, a lot of producers that they're making it. It for the. The SP12 one is a drum machine that samples. Right. The EPS is a piano. Yeah, that's it.

[Bobby Lee]

That samples. Am I okay?

[RZA]

Am I. I know what you kind of.

[Bobby Lee]

No, no, but this is interesting because I don't want to like go too far here, but like. But am I crazy to see your influence on Kanye's production? And has he said as much? Like, because to me, I see it and I see like you taking these samples, especially the old samples that are done on the keys, taking these songs, chopping, speeding them up. And then I think you see a lot of that influence in Kanye, especially with the vocals.

[RZA]

Yeah. No, no. Kanye first of all respected Kanye and another genius in art. His art and his fashion speaks for itself. But. Nah, but he, you know, since, you know, I don't know I try not to self praise itself.

[Bobby Lee]

That's what. Let me do it. Let me do it.

[RZA]

Definitely. Let me say this. Let me just say this. I also want to. They did an interview with him one year and said, who is your hero? And they answer, was Thereza. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow.

[RZA]

So. And that's respect. And I look at him as a brother, a good friend. Anytime he hits the phone and needs me, I'm there because I really respect them. But when the blueprint came out, I was impressed by that album.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? Right? But it was a hard. But I was pretty. Wu Tang was pretty. Fuck y'.

[Bobby Lee]

All.

[RZA]

You know that, right? He was pretty like. But time, time. The time was moving and, you know, and others were evolving. And when I heard the blueprint, I was like, okay, niggas got it now.

[Andrew Schulz]

Really?

[RZA]

And so I called, actually, remember, I think Jay z was on Hot 97. And I dialed up, bro, and I was like, yo, I wanted to say, yo, congratulations. This shit is this. Yeah, this shit is right? And he was like, yo, I got the whole blueprint from you, Vince.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow. So.

[Miles Medows]

Wow.

[Bobby Lee]

Has there ever been a moment in your career where you. Where the people you influence have not given you your flowers? Because it seems like everybody gives it up. It's. It doesn't seem like there's an ego when it comes to you.

[RZA]

I mean, it's in back and forth, yo, the culture has been, has, has. Each one teach one. That's one of our lessons, right? Each one teach one. So if you were able to be someone that, you know, if you were the caveman that saw using fire, yo,

[Bobby Lee]

you gotta spread it.

[RZA]

Yeah. Now. Now you using fire. They go, oh, this guy make fire good now, motherfucker. Yo, how about this? How about a grill, motherfucker? Okay, put it on the pot and put some oil in that shit. Oh, you can bake with it, guys. But maybe I'm the first one to hold the two sticks together to make the fire, right? But then once. Once it's there, others continue to build. And then for me, I gotta say, Molly Mar, right? Marty Mar was the guy that. Yo, I used to fucking wait outside the radio station to try to see this guy.

[Bobby Lee]

How old are you at this time?

[RZA]

13, 14, you know what I mean? Maybe even 15, 16, even up to there. I remember somebody said, oh, I know. Marley Marwood. Meet me at the Hoyt street stop on the A train. And you know he gonna be there.

[Bobby Lee]

That sounds like a setup, bro.

[RZA]

Me and Dodie was right there.

[Bobby Lee]

Was he?

[RZA]

No I didn't meet Marley Mar, bro. Until like 94 or something. Like years later, bro. No, I met him before that. Actually. Another way Marley inspired me was that I met him before that. When Roxanne Shantae was working on the album, I had a chance to meet her. So I'm 19 now, and Prince Joaquim has just signed the deal. And so eventually I'm gonna start making my song. But also, people, you know, people know that I'm a lyricist, Right. They don't know I'm a producer. Nobody.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, really?

[RZA]

No. You were known for rapping first. Yeah, I'm not. Nobody won't let me make the beats.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow.

[RZA]

But my. All my tracks besides, you know, I made the oh, We Love youe Rakim track. But even then, Prince Paul had to help me.

[Bobby Lee]

Interesting, right?

[RZA]

So, so I'm with. They sent me the doctor, period. Bax Bend all the producers dice Uptown Easy Mo B, Easy Mo B, Easy Mo B. Made my first B side on my single.

[Bobby Lee]

Was it because you weren't able to do at the time or they didn't trust you during the time they didn't trust you?

[RZA]

And also. And maybe rightfully so, because my equipment was a four track with the turntables and, you know, just. And you hear that shit like, okay, hold on, I'm trying to hear this.

[Bobby Lee]

But I don't know, there was something maybe that was more authentic about it, maybe that cut through.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

But the production did feel a little bit different.

[RZA]

Right, but at the time, you know, there's no proof. Right, right, right, right. So. But anyway, we, we, we. We lost the train. But at 19, known as a lyricist, I didn't, you know, break him, but I got a chance to meet Marty Mardin and I went to his crib up in the thing near the Palisades, up in that area, and the dude had a SSL in his house.

[Bobby Lee]

What's an ssl?

[RZA]

So a SSL is the mixing board. It's the board, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

So it has all the.

[RZA]

It's the board. The shit probably at the time was $300,000.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, my God.

[Miles Medows]

Okay.

[RZA]

So he has a SSL in his crib. You see these in all the studios.

[Bobby Lee]

So the barrier to entry, I think that's where a lot of, like, especially, like, young people right now making music. The barrier to entry to making music back in the day was financial, bro.

[RZA]

Oh, financial.

[Bobby Lee]

To even get in studio time was probably crazy.

[RZA]

It's still crazy. But a SSL with a 2. With a 2 inch, 24 track reel to reel Molly Mar had that in his house. It was called the Marley House of Hits. And he had a radio line already connected to his system so he could

[Bobby Lee]

broadcast directly from his house.

[RZA]

Yeah, this is. He had that shit back like 91, 92. Wow. Right? So, so I saw that. I saw the SSL in his crib. I saw this dude built the whole studio in his fucking house, bro. And so that's what I did.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? As soon as I, you know, I had a Mackie.

[Bobby Lee]

What is that?

[RZA]

So a Mackie is like two grand. All right. It's a mixer though. You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

It's the Fisher Price.

[RZA]

Yeah. Exact price. Shit. But eventually, of course, I got an ssl. I mean, I bought a million dollar SSL when I made it, bro, I was like, but get an ssl.

[Bobby Lee]

So you knew that producing was the, was the key. You knew that that was the stronghold for the business.

[RZA]

Yeah. And I heard, I said this with you, bro. I heard, overheard. Somebody was like, yo, Salt, Salt and Pepper is making beats now, right? I think my manager, Mel Kwan. Cause he knew, he knows everything I had to face. He's the one that's in. I'm just trying to get in. I said, wow. So, yeah, they paid a 35 grand to make a track. I said, 35, wow. Yeah, so when you go platinum, you could charge that. I was like, I gotta go platinum. You know what I mean? And yo, I went platinum. Yeah.

[Andrew Schulz]

Where was the place that you would go dig for samples?

[RZA]

Anywhere. But of course, in the Village there was. What's that store right there on 4th and Broadway?

[Bobby Lee]

Well, Tower was on.

[RZA]

Well, Tower was for like, if you want to. I mean. Well, Tower had the jazz, but not far from Broadway, 6th Avenue.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, that's. It's a Village Records.

[RZA]

That's called Village Records.

[Bobby Lee]

Was it.

[RZA]

Isn't that on 6th and Bleecker and Bleecker? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now he was smart, right? You go in there to buy a record, bro. Like they had like, he had James Brown, Black Caesar, which is an album. You want to get that? And I never got a chance to really make a track off that down and out in New York City, but I always wanted to. But he was selling that shit for $100.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, because he knew what it.

[RZA]

Yeah, like, like, like he had, he had the big samples in there. A hundred dollars, boy, you know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

Because he knows if you're going to use this, you're going to go make a song. You sell to be for 35 grand.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow. Oh, so he was jacking prices up like that. So. Yeah, you're an interesting one because I don't know if anybody teaches you anything. You kind of just observe and then execute.

[RZA]

Respect.

[Bobby Lee]

Of course. People teach you.

[RZA]

Yeah, I learned. I'm not shy to learn from, from, from, from. I'm learning from you today, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

I don't know about that.

[RZA]

Hey, your timing. You got some time. My time is gonna be different next time you see me.

[Bobby Lee]

But is that like. Is that your process, really just kind of like, constantly absorbing?

[RZA]

Yeah, I think. I think that's what the art is supposed to do. We ingest so you could digest.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

If you don't ingest, what you gonna digest?

[Bobby Lee]

I. Dude, I think that's. That's. At least that's my theory in terms of, like, taking time off from creating. Sometimes, like, you gotta live a little if you want to share something with the world.

[RZA]

Exactly. And then what I do, I like because of my. Whatever that is in my brain that just keep bong bonging. If I don't take time off, I shift disciplines.

[Miles Medows]

Interesting.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? So it's like, okay, well.

[Bobby Lee]

Cause I need to take time off of this thing.

[RZA]

Exactly.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay.

[RZA]

So like, like, like, like I'm writing the script right now or supposed to be writing this. I haven't written in 30 days, bro. Yeah, but, but, but I got this beat machine I've been carrying with me. Sprite sends some this little weird beat machine. It's cool, though. And I just been playing with that every day as my pastime while I'm promoting the film.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

So when I. But. So by the time I finish getting out of this and seeing the shit I see, and I don't probably been to six cities in fucking four days.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, you're grinding.

[RZA]

Yeah, but I'll get him. When I sit down, the lyrics for this, for these characters will flow out. Wow.

[Bobby Lee]

Announcements, Denver, we have added another show. It's going to be on Sunday, I think. 7:15, I believe those tickets are on sale literally this morning. So go get them right now. If they're available, then I'm going to be out with Jelly Roll. Los Angeles. Netflix is a joke festival. The Greek Theater, we just had a bunch of great comics on that show as well. Salt Lake City, you're sold out. You guys have been asking for us ad shows. I will get back to you on that. Then we're gonna be in Virginia Beach June 5th through the 6th. Then we're gonna be in Halifax, Nova Scotia. TheAndrewSholz.com for all those tickets. We should be adding some more dates soon. Thank you guys so much. Tampa, for great shows. That was amazing. Love, y'.

[RZA]

All.

[Andrew Schulz]

Yes, Tampa was amazing. I also want to thank the good people in Providence, Rhode island, that came out to the show. We had a wonderful time. And if you were in Plano, Texas, Chandler, Arizona, Pasadena, California, San Diego, or Detroit, at the end of the year, I'll be coming to you doing one singular hour of standup comedy. Come on out, take a photo, shake my hand, and have a great time.

[RZA]

Alex, what's up?

[Miles Medows]

And, guys, I'm throwing a tennis series this summer. There's three dates. Just head over to All Love Racquet Club on Instagram.

[Bobby Lee]

Instagram.

[Miles Medows]

I got the link there. We got music, food, free giveaways, a lot of tennis.

[RZA]

It's gonna be some experience. A membership that backs what you're building with American Express Business platinum unlock over $3,500 in business and travel value annually with statement credits on select purchases from brands like Dell, Hilton and Adobe and other benefits. American Express Business Platinum. There's nothing like it. Based on total potential value of statement credits on select purchases and other benefits, enrollments required monthly and other limits and terms apply. Learn [e-mail] Business Platinum fun stuff.

[Miles Medows]

What do you think's the thing in you that you're not scared to just try something new? Because starting the business, even going from the streets to music to film, like, what is it?

[RZA]

I mean, at the end of the day, it's you, right? Like, who gonna stop you from being you?

[Miles Medows]

But you never get scared, like, oh, shit, I don't know how to do this thing. And then you just, like, no.

[Bobby Lee]

Fear of failure?

[RZA]

Nah. Cause, I mean, I don't fear failure. I'll say this to you. I believe the success is completing the task to achieve the goal. That's the success. Whatever happens after that is whatever.

[Bobby Lee]

You can't control that.

[Andrew Schulz]

What about interest that you took up? Were you ever afraid of being bullied or seen as weird? When you're young, being into all these kung fu movies or reading Eastern philosophy or Islam, are you afraid people are gonna be like, oh, what do you. What is this thing?

[Bobby Lee]

You're playing Chess? Yeah.

[RZA]

Yeah, I might. I might have a. I might not now, though. But. But my mom, my high school girlfriend told me this. She had a chance to, like, bring me back all my letters and.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, wow.

[RZA]

Yeah, just, you know, it was just a time, and she was just, like,

[Bobby Lee]

trying to get back in.

[RZA]

No no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. She's totally, totally a sister. No, of course I'm married. My wife. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it was, it was, it was. It was to give a memory of myself because I wrote a letter that was very egotistical, conceited. Of what life is going to be for her and what life's going to be for me. You know what I mean? Are you right? No, she turned out well. But. No, no, but the point of it was that. And I hate to say this, my conceit and confidence was almost at a level of Naiveness can blind you sometimes, right? But that energy meant that that is what I am and I can do.

[Bobby Lee]

Yep.

[RZA]

So. So, so, so there's a lesson when you study the mathematics, right? And. And you know, the mathematics can be controversial to some people, but this is the 5 percenter. Yeah, the 5% mathematics. The first question, right, it says, who is the original man? And then it answers the question. It says, the original man is the Asiatic black man, the maker, the owner, the cream of the planet Earth, the father of civilization.

[Bobby Lee]

Preach.

[RZA]

The God of the universe.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

Okay, that's the first question, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And you gotta memorize that. So now you're walking around. Wait a minute, that's me.

[Bobby Lee]

That's me.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? Yeah. And then later on there's a. No, serious. Later on there's another lesson that it says, this question is crazy. Not crazy crazy like crazy like Mike.

[Bobby Lee]

Mike got on Mike.

[RZA]

But crazy in the sense of. Okay, but the question says, why do we let. Why did we let a half original man like Christopher Columbus discover the poor part of the planet Earth? And it says, because the original black man is God and owner of the Earth. And knowing every square inch, he chose for himself the best part. He didn't care about the poor part. Now take that into consideration. You got to choose for yourself the best part. And once you choose that best part, you can't care about the poor part. Now where's the true best part? Where? Wherever you stand, bro. Where you stand. And so with that confidence, I mean, I got that when I was 11.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, wow. So that's deep.

[RZA]

Yeah. So now I'm 16.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Like I'm writing her a letter. Like, if you don't.

[Bobby Lee]

Shoes up.

[RZA]

If you don't break. If you break up with me,

[Bobby Lee]

you

[RZA]

gonna do the poor part. And the best part is gon. So going back to your question, it's like, with that type of confidence in me, right? And no doubt because Papa Wu always said that, too. So. Papa Wu. I remember Papa Wu when I was, like, 14, and he used to always drink vodka. Everything he said made fucking sense, okay?

[Bobby Lee]

There's always a guy on a block sober. Nothing that stole.

[RZA]

Everything he said makes sense. I was sitting there one day, had a cold. I just kept sniffing it up. But, you know, he said, nah, God, let it run. Just trying to get it out the tail, trying to come out, guys. I was like, you're right. I mean, he said, yo, God. He said, yo, said there was some. Some shootout shit. He said, man, a lot of niggas die from the sound. You know what I mean? So they be scared, right? He said, when you consider shooting God, do the knowledge first. Don't let the sound scare you, right? People run. And I was like. And, yo, he said that to me. Trust me. And would you believe, like, two years later, I'm in the club, okay, right? And shots go off. You start doing the Knowledge, yo, and the. And I didn't know. I seen people moving. I said, well, I'm moving. No, they do not. Bam. I saw the fall. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not exaggerating, bro. You took him out. No, no, I stole the knowledge, Ricky. Yeah, yeah. Yo, and when the bullet hit off, niggas. Hey, yo, hey, yo. When the bullet hit him, we didn't see who was shooting. But I tell you this, bro. When that bullet hit him, the face, he made the impact of that bullet while he was running unforgettable. It's almost like a vibration came off this motherfucker's face, bro. Then he hit the fucking floor.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow.

[RZA]

Then after that, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Cause you should count the seven sometimes. Six. Okay,

[Bobby Lee]

why? Why count to seven?

[RZA]

Because. Because

[Bobby Lee]

we need a security cam footage of a shootout.

[RZA]

Everybody's running.

[Bobby Lee]

It's just a few dudes.

[RZA]

Like one. Yeah. Because you should try to do things within the pace of seven breaths. You should think seven times. You know what I'm saying? You could think. You actually can think seven times before you respond. That's how fast your mind moves. But motherfuckers is going off the impulse, off the fear, right? So the punchline I was trying to get to. I digress. By going to the runny nose into the shooting. But other thing Papu said was that, yo, God, don't let doubt into you. You know? That's why Old Dirty says it from the song Rawhide. Because he always, Papa, always was talking to me. Dirty, 12 o'. Clock. You know, the young guys he was the older guy, I'm saying. And he would say, yo, God, don't never let doubt into your mind. God, doubt stops you. And so I entered a lot of these arenas without doubt. And Dirty says it on the song Rawhide. He goes, I never let doubt into my mind. Cause I know when I touch the mic, there's the rhyme. You know what I mean? So it's like, don't say it, bro. Flow. And so that's been my personality with so many things. As you get older, of course, human nature, life experiences failures. Right. Like, don't act like I don't have failures. You know what I mean? But my failure is that failure. It's like we were talking about chess earlier. Like, I played a lot of chess. Because you could die a thousand times on the chessboard. Okay, so what? Play again. Just make sure that don't happen in life. You know what I mean? So, yeah, anyway,

[Bobby Lee]

I just love this idea of, like, don't let doubt creep in.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

And like the confidence in the. And the power of confidence. There was this thing with Woo I felt. And not even was still is. Is that like. It just felt like you guys had decided that you were the best at rapping and nobody else decided it.

[RZA]

And you guys did.

[Bobby Lee]

And then everybody else was like, yeah, I think they might be the best at rapping. It's like you can almost. You can almost like ooze confidence into reality.

[Miles Medows]

And.

[RZA]

Yo, listen, hold on now. If you go pound for pound and you write out our lyrics, you might find that we were right.

[Bobby Lee]

No, I'm not saying you're wrong.

[RZA]

I know, I know, I know.

[Bobby Lee]

But, like, it's like you guys believed

[Andrew Schulz]

it, manifested it first.

[Bobby Lee]

It manifested it into reality.

[RZA]

Right, right.

[Bobby Lee]

And then it just became this thing where it was. It was almost like people who were hip hop heads took on Wu as an I as part of their own identity. Like, if you. With Wu Tang, it was a way where you could communicate. Like, yeah, I like real hip hop.

[RZA]

Right.

[Bobby Lee]

I like real rap.

[RZA]

Right, Right.

[Bobby Lee]

Opposed to. I don't know, maybe there's some mainstream. I should have talked on anybody. But it's like, yeah. And I. I always wondered where that ethos came from. But it's got to come from you guys believing it.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

And if it looks like there's fractures in the belief, why would someone else believe it?

[RZA]

Exactly. That's true.

[Miles Medows]

So if you all felt you were the best, who in the group was the best of the best?

[RZA]

But that's good because it interchanged. Oh, so Even. Even to you.

[Bobby Lee]

It interchanged.

[RZA]

Yeah, we talked about that at one point, yo. Like, first of all, the jizzle was the best.

[Bobby Lee]

That's who I always thought you thought lyrically was.

[RZA]

That was the. Okay. But then as time went on, somebody else could sit in that seat. Right? Or somebody could say something that year.

[Bobby Lee]

Like, who?

[RZA]

Like, one point, Killer Priest was the best. You know what Killer Priest is? No, exactly. Right. But he's one of us, right? At one point, Killer Priest, we was like, killer Priest is the illest nigga.

[Bobby Lee]

What was the song? What was the.

[RZA]

He fucking wrote when he wrote that heavy Mental album and he had a. He had to sit almost. Almost there. But what happened was he. You may know him from this. On the Jizza album. He's on that song Bible. Basic instructions.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Before leaving Earth.

[Bobby Lee]

Before leaving Earth.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah, right. But at one point. And so Judah, he's a Jizza student as well. So Killer Priest, me and Master Killer are all students of the Gizza. And 30 became my student. And the rest of the Wu brothers, look at us, Me, Dirty and Jizza as the three disciples, the three elders. And then they pick it from. But then when Ghost became the best, yo. Yeah, no, seriously, Ghost became the best, and it was like, back here, you know what I'm saying? And, yo, and then even. Even like. Like with Ray. Ray, like. Like ray, like from 2004 or five or something, like when he started doing a purple tape part two or what about what? Well, part one, it was Ghost that just like. Like, who the is this guy? Like, I remember Dirty said it. Dirty was like, yo, Ghost is the best now. You know what I'm saying?

[Bobby Lee]

Now, is there ego between the guys or is there, like. Is there this, like, camaraderie where you just kind of accept this martial artist is the nicest at this point in time?

[RZA]

I mean, you may feel differently, you know what I mean? So. But it's never, you know, if you feel that way, what you gonna do? You gonna go. You're gonna go, right?

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, so you could.

[RZA]

On.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

You know, who knows? Killing it right now, to me, almost like 20 bars back to back. Meth.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Meth has gone crazy. What the. Meth is like.

[Bobby Lee]

He's lifting

[RZA]

superhero on the mic. Yeah. In the gym. On the front of the camera.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And it's like, at one point, you know, he was always.

[Bobby Lee]

He was nice.

[RZA]

Yeah. He was always like. Like, trust me, when we first came in, like, every one of them had something for me sitting here as the abbot that was the best in that field and the best technique that adds to the woo. You know what I mean? It's like I knew Ghost and Ray was street, and all the street is with these for real and not no facade.

[Bobby Lee]

Real.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah. These are the high school dropout felons that's about to fucking make a record.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

With the talent to do it. You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

Right. And you knew meth could cross over.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

You knew meth was gonna be mainstream.

[RZA]

And also, I felt that even though as he got. As time changed, I think he. He, he, he, he. He's less flowing than he used to. Cause now he's kind of patterning his. Like, he kind of has a pattern that he maybe used 10 times in a row. But in the beginning, I said, nobody in the industry flows like meth. Meth invent flows every day. In fact, if you go back and check Method man flows, you can find 10 other successful rappers that are taking that.

[Bobby Lee]

Took that one flow, and it made it their entire.

[RZA]

Their entire flow.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay, when you guys see. You said this earlier about, like, it's important to pass it on. Like, you make the fire and you go do that. When you guys are talking amongst yourselves, are you going, man, look, we birthed all these dudes. Like, are you seeing your influence in music? Not just music, but, like, especially in music. And is there, like, a pride in it? Or is there a part where, like, oh, they're biting. There's some sharks out there.

[RZA]

You know, I mean, in the 90s, it was probably. We probably reacted more like biting. But now it's because I want a sound like me on no album.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

But then as we evolve, it's also like we actually. I think we actually appreciate the culture, the other heroes, and even admire them now, which is serious. It's a beautiful thing, bro. To get out of your own way, bro. Yes.

[Bobby Lee]

You know, but hard for creatives.

[RZA]

Yeah. But beautiful, because it's just like, you know, it's like Mike Tyson, Right? Of course. He was the champion of my generation, bro. Like one of the. Like, come on. Mike Tyson.

[Miles Medows]

Come on.

[RZA]

Right? But Muhammad Ali's generation's like, nah, Muhammad Ali.

[Bobby Lee]

Every generation is gonna have their own. There are kids that grow up with LeBron. They never watch Jordan play.

[RZA]

Exactly.

[Bobby Lee]

We're arguing with them, but why would we. They only know LeBron.

[RZA]

Exactly. And now the beauty of it all, though, is that there is a Hall of Fame.

[Bobby Lee]

Yes.

[RZA]

Right. And it ain't one person in that hall of Fame. There's hundreds of people, so.

[Andrew Schulz]

But you just got inducted into.

[RZA]

That's what you got inducted into. Congratulations, brother. Thank you. Thank you.

[Andrew Schulz]

Can I. Can I ask the story about odb?

[RZA]

This is. Wow.

[Andrew Schulz]

This is what I heard from Joe Rogan. He references this recently. Yeah, he ref. I saw a clip of it, and I didn't hear the whole story, so I'm so curious. He is incarcerated Rikers for a period of time, and then you and the rest of the squad go to visit him. And what happens in that visit or.

[RZA]

They let us in. Wu Tang perform in Rikers, bro. Can you perform straight up?

[Bobby Lee]

But do you have to, like, petition the city?

[Andrew Schulz]

Tell us the whole story.

[RZA]

I forgot who did the business. I think Mook, my cousin Mook, he was brought on the management team. He might have been the one that kept working his hand to get it done. But Dirty was locked up, bro. And I don't know who came with the idea. Cause it wasn't me, but it was like, yo, let's go and visit. Let's go perform and write this. We can't perform and write. Cause we're old Dirty, like. Like, in jail, they gonna let him come and Wu Tang is gonna perform and Rikers island, bro. That's crazy. No, sis. But the funny part, I don't know

[Bobby Lee]

if you could be in prison going, ooh, baby, I like it Wrong.

[RZA]

Skip that one. Skip that one. See this guy? You know what's so crazy? Dirty went in there. Vegan. No, when I came in, we got in there, they was like, lunch. He was like. He had two hamburgers. He was like, yo, God, fuck that. So you gotta eat meat in this motherfucker. So you gotta eat meat in this motherfucker.

[Andrew Schulz]

So you guys show up and is it planned that there's gonna be a concert or.

[RZA]

Yeah, yo, yo, seriously, like, they had it set up, bro. They. They let the guys out and they let the, you know, the prisoners to get their little location. Yeah, they got the rule they had. Wasn't a great sound system.

[Bobby Lee]

Right?

[Andrew Schulz]

This is the producer talking.

[RZA]

It wasn't the great sound system. Like, but, yo. No, but we did that. We did that for him, with him, for him and for. And for the. For Rikers, bro. Which is crazy in hindsight. Like. Like. Like there's so many things that's kind of like. I won't say a blur, but, like, you bring that up, it's like. That kind of don't make sense.

[Andrew Schulz]

It sounds crazy to me.

[RZA]

Yeah. No, at this phase, it's like, wow. The what? I would Call it our camaraderie, our brotherhood, our. Single focus, awareness. Like I'm gonna say that single, like. Like it's our world. We're moving in our world regardless of the world.

[Miles Medows]

How do you get so many people

[Bobby Lee]

to get on board?

[Miles Medows]

Get on board with one vision?

[RZA]

Like, that was we.

[Bobby Lee]

We.

[RZA]

That was we. You know, we gave our word on that. You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

Did it help that you guys had relationships prior that it wasn't just an art thing? Because sometimes people can be looking for opportunity in art. Not just art, but just any kind of, like, entertainment. So maybe the relationship isn't as strong as you think it is because it's actually more opportunistic.

[Andrew Schulz]

This is literally family.

[Bobby Lee]

You guys were actually family.

[RZA]

Our mothers knew each other. Yeah, you know what I mean? Our mothers knew each other. Some dudes first. Blunt is at capadonna's house. His mom's left no smoking. Not to talk about Ms. Linda like that. My mom's name is Linda too though. Right?

[Bobby Lee]

But I'm just saying, could be any Linda.

[RZA]

Yeah, but you know, it was just like. But she said she'd rather it happened there where she could see them than rather somewhere in the streets. You know what I mean? I think Ms. Dell, you know, my mom's like, Dex said, you know, they come to my crib and you could make these demos and you could turn the music up and you could get that music out. You know what I mean? That was our. Some of us, our childhood young adult. Like me and Raekwon's in the third grade together, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Crazy.

[RZA]

So it's just like. And he was. And not only we in the third grade together. He was my best friend. Like, you know what I mean? Like, he wasn't in third grade. He was like some kid over there that I remember from the third grade. No, we walked home from fucking school every fucking day, you know what I mean? Before this shit happens. And then with a month story on that, then I move to Brooklyn and shit. I go to a fucking. I'm like 11, 12. Go to a wee spot. That's how I was back then. He's working in there. In Brooklyn. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

[Bobby Lee]

Like reunion.

[RZA]

Yeah, that's how the woo life is like that. You know what I mean? It's like it was so connected. But I think it starts with my mother. You, God mother. And my mom's like, you guys, I know when you was in Howard, When I was living in Howard, My mother was living right there. It's like, oh, whoa. Right? So Our mothers. And our mothers had history and vibes. And so when we came together, it was another layer. Some of us. Not that because meth is from Long Island.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

But still, he moved to Staten island at 14.

[Bobby Lee]

Got it.

[RZA]

So now in two years, he's part of the crew. Yeah, he's in it. Yeah.

[Miles Medows]

Wait, but you moved to Brooklyn and then you moved back to Staten Island.

[RZA]

Yeah, I've been back and forth between Brooklyn and Staten Island. I'm born in Brooklyn, FYI. Kings County Hospital. Of course. Right, of course. Gonna die. But at that time, it's gotten better.

[Bobby Lee]

It's gotten better.

[RZA]

It's got time and Brownsville, baby. You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

Basically.

[RZA]

But my grandmother always lived on Staten island, so.

[Bobby Lee]

So you're there on the weekends or whatever.

[RZA]

Or there because, you know, man, let me say one thing about my family, bro. Before I was 20, I lived in 21 different locations.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow.

[RZA]

Yeah, that's us. But it was always like, you know, like, oh, Linda and those kids back on the streets again.

[Bobby Lee]

Really?

[RZA]

Yeah, it was tough. You know what I mean? It was tough. You know what I'm saying? But that's New York. It was always something like, oh, my mother just got a new apartment. She sent us down south until she got herself together. Right. Okay. Now she's bringing us back, Mind you, it's already five of us. It's a two bedroom.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Right. Now it's six. Right. Another six kids. So now we come back. We happy to come back home. Somebody, I don't know if my little brother might set the mattress on fire.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh,

[RZA]

back down south, back to Staten island with grandma. Then all say, oh, you got another place where you live? On 169 Cooper Street. Fucking. That's the LL train to Wilson Avenue, bro. Bro, that's a long ride, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

How did you guys had. You're 11. One out of 11.

[RZA]

Yeah, one out of 11.

[Bobby Lee]

Where does somebody with 11 kids in New York City live?

[RZA]

Swear where they can, bro. No, listen, I don't know. It's. Yo. When ghost. Like, when ghost wrote the song. Because Ghost. So Ghost, I think he's one of five or six. Dirty is one of seven dirty parents. This is talk about New York. They're both city workers. His father's transit and mother is a 911 officer. So they got Christmas toys, you know what I'm saying? Ghost house is single mother. My house is mostly single mother. My father moved away when I was three. Then my stepfather moves in, but then he goes to jail, so. So it's that my dynamic is that. So my mother is a single mother. And when we say ghost said four in the bed, two at the front, two at the head. Yeah, that's. That's my house right there. Wow. Man. It's like, yo, you wake up somebody. Toes in the nose.

[Bobby Lee]

I mean, just. You just think about, like, people listening or watching right now. They might go, okay, if you have a house, you can find different places to put people when you're in an apartment.

[RZA]

Yeah. Let me give you one more of those. I want to go poverty porn here. But, bro, at one point, 19 people, two bedroom apartment, bro. No way. Check this out.

[Miles Medows]

And you're not even Mexican.

[RZA]

You ever seen those moving blankets?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Yeah, you gotta make a pile.

[Bobby Lee]

No way.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? Yo, I'm going to school and I got the. And I got a girlfriend, right? Like, this is. I'm bringing her over. No, everything I did was timed like. I know. Like if I. If I. If I leave school early, get there too.

[Bobby Lee]

Nobody's gonna be at the house.

[RZA]

Exactly.

[Bobby Lee]

But you gotta get her out before 3:30 when the rest of the kids are back.

[RZA]

Exactly. Wow. It was a very. Yeah. I didn't have a nickel for the bus, bro. I had the bus pass and no nickel. I'm not making this up, bro. But you know what happens, though? I walked this. This is high school.

[Bobby Lee]

Why? Because they gave you the half fair?

[RZA]

They gave you the. No, the half fair was not bad. I had the nickel pass. It's even better than a half. All you gotta do is pay a nickel.

[Andrew Schulz]

But you didn't even have the nickel.

[Bobby Lee]

When I was a kid, I had a. I had a bus pass where you could just go whatever. It was like they gave you the school bus pass.

[RZA]

Yeah, but you got 40. You had to pay 45 cent or something.

[Bobby Lee]

No, it was.

[RZA]

You were totally.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. In the white schools, they just give you the whole. That's crazy.

[RZA]

There you go.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, I got the half past. That's crazy.

[RZA]

Discovering the poor part of the planet Earth. We let him do it. No, the. The.

[Bobby Lee]

The pass was based on how close you live to the school. So we live downtown, but I went to Wagner Middle School.

[RZA]

Okay.

[Bobby Lee]

Wagner's on 76.

[RZA]

Okay. Okay.

[Bobby Lee]

But we live downtown.

[RZA]

Right.

[Bobby Lee]

So I think it was far enough where you got the.

[RZA]

The full. But that's for the train, for the subway.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, but you can use it for the. For the bus.

[RZA]

For the bus. Yeah. But Staten Island. Look, Staten island don't really got a train system like that. So they Just make bus.

[Bobby Lee]

And they make you pay a nickel.

[RZA]

Pay a nickel. You got to pay a nickel.

[Bobby Lee]

And would the bus driver ever not let you on for.

[RZA]

Bro, some days I got on because I. I put my hand over that.

[Bobby Lee]

Kicking a kid off the bus for not having necklace, bro.

[RZA]

They kicked me and my little brother off the bus. My little brother always tell me this story because this happened in Brooklyn, though, so dirty house was. He lived in Linden Plaza. So now I moved back to Brownsville. I'm living in Van Dyke Projects.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay.

[RZA]

Right.

[Bobby Lee]

Which is tough.

[RZA]

That's it right there.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And this is the eighth grade, though, so like I said, I live 21 places, bro. Yeah, I've been to. If I go through the list of schools I've been to, you know what I mean? Most people go to two. You go to three schools.

[Bobby Lee]

You go to elementary, middle, high school.

[RZA]

Done. Yeah. No, bro, you went to 20, not 20 schools, but I went to a lot of schools. I went to for elementary. I went 1, 2, 3, 5.

[Bobby Lee]

Jesus.

[RZA]

For. For junior high. Only did two in junior high because junior high is a short stretch. But I did is 61 on Staten Island. And then I went to 275 in Brooklyn, which is on Rockaway and Hagman.

[Bobby Lee]

Listen, how is that. Is that by you?

[Miles Medows]

No, no, no, that's Rockaway, Boba.

[RZA]

You know. You know where Amboy and all that shit is? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like. It's just like mop. Those are real. They real like that neighborhood. Those are my homies back in that day. You 13 years old, but the dude you hanging with in the eighth grade, he's 16, you know what I'm saying? He's in the middle school. He's 16 in the middle school. Yo, and that school had a fucking

[Bobby Lee]

driving you to middle school, yo.

[RZA]

That school had a fucking. Bro. It had like another. Like a mental health wing. Like a mental impaired wing.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, yeah.

[Miles Medows]

Oh, yeah. But yeah, they put the rereads in, though.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah, you put that. They should do it like that.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, you think it was too close?

[Andrew Schulz]

It's a spillover.

[RZA]

That's not a good idea.

[Bobby Lee]

You know, you had a few trickle into your class.

[RZA]

Like you're dealing with some. You're dealing with a lot of. A lot of. A lot of different problems, bro. But anyway. But anyway, let's get out of that. What happened?

[Bobby Lee]

What happened? That's what I didn't know in which way. I didn't know what happened. When they were mixing the classrooms, man.

[RZA]

All type of Bro, I mean, you're dealing with. First of all, you dealing. First of that school. The school is. Trust me, that school was like. It was dangerous, man. Okay. And maybe I was, you know, I was naive. Part of the danger at the end of the day. Right. You know, running with the. With the. With the. But, yo, like, like. Like, soon as. From that school, you know, they made the paper. Yeah. You know what I mean? And not. Not in a good way.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? You know, like, like, so there's shooting here, shooting here, death here, death here, death here. So. So there's two things that's happening. One, one, you're dealing with poverty and oppression in communities. Two you dealing with now taking this, these communities. This, this, this. And you stuffing all this energy in one place. You got some that ain't playing with a full deck. They up in there, too.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? You got girls that's up in there, too, and they loose, and it's too much shit, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And then you got teachers that don't care. I did have one teacher that did care. Right. I had two that care. But this one teacher, I never forget. I forgot his name, but I won't forget his moment. I was scientifically advanced, right. My ideas about science was like, you know what I mean? And they wanted to send me to Stuyvesant.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, wow.

[RZA]

Yeah. You know what I mean? It's like I was there for anybody

[Bobby Lee]

who's not from New York City. Stuyvesant is like the elite of elite schools in the city that you have to test into. And, like.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

I mean, I didn't get close.

[Miles Medows]

Yeah, me neither.

[Bobby Lee]

There's Stuyvesant, then there's Brooklyn. Second. And those are the three, like, most elite educations you can get in New York City. Outside of going to some fancy private school and even a fancy private school, I don't know if the education is going to be as, like, competitive as a stuff.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah. And. But I just started playing hooky. Really? Yeah. Started playing hooky.

[Bobby Lee]

So the teacher sees you and he's like, all right, this kid is actually really sharp. We have to do something to harness this energy. We gotta get him out of here because there's a direction he can.

[RZA]

Gonna send him over there. And then my drama teacher, I do remember his name, Mr. Greenberg, he realized that I had this type of, like, the thugs was listening to me.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, so you had, like a leadership call.

[RZA]

Yeah, the skinny dude got all the big motherfuckers fucking with him. Right. And so he realized that. He's like, they keep gravitating. But I was kind of. My knowledge was ahead. You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

So does he pull you aside and say something?

[RZA]

Yeah, he's like, okay, I want you guys to perform at the school. At the school play. You know, what a big school performance this year, right? You know, I'm gonna pass all of y'. All. Basically, you guys do this, and. Motherfuckers. He says, and I want you to kind of lead it, right? So I get the team together, right? And I put together an idea that we're gonna do, like, a. We're gonna be preachers, and we're gonna do a sermon, and we're gonna do all this shit, right? And it's kind of cool. And we do it for the teacher. We rehearse it. And he's like. You know. He's like, you. Yeah, it's gonna work. The day of, nobody shows up.

[Miles Medows]

Damn.

[RZA]

All the. But these are. Trust me, these are thugs, bro. They're not getting on that stage, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

But that's how, like, the fear of talking in public is greater than the feel of shooting people in the snare.

[RZA]

Yo, you know what?

[Bobby Lee]

Isn't that crazy?

[RZA]

Isn't that. But what happens is that so. But it's what I learned from that.

[Bobby Lee]

Wait, do you still do it, though?

[RZA]

Well, no, check it out. That's what I learned. I get there, and it's a slot, and Mr. Greenberg is like. I'm like, nobody's here. He's like, well, go do it yourself. I'm like. He says, go do it yourself. And he walks away. And the slot is coming like. It's like 20 minutes of the slide. I'm like, like, what the fuck? Like, I'm thinking about it, and then I go sit in the audience, bro. And when the time comes, guess what happens? The curtain opens, and Mr. Greenberg is there by itself. And he pissed on the fucking greatest improvisation I ever seen in my fucking life. He's using different voices. He's doing all types of shit, bro. I mean, blowing my brain. And I was like, holy shit. And I learned from that moment that, yo, bro, just do it.

[Bobby Lee]

Just do it.

[RZA]

Just do it.

[Bobby Lee]

No doubt.

[RZA]

Yo, I left school. I never went back to that school

[Bobby Lee]

after that moment or after that moment, bro. Why?

[RZA]

Cause this is, like, towards the spring. They're getting close to summer. Fuck school, right? I'm just saying, can't learn in the spring.

[Andrew Schulz]

The weather Park's open.

[RZA]

I said, I'll go to 442nd street sitting in the theater. Then they started. Then you get arrested, right. Back in those days, they was arresting me and Dirty was in the back of truant vans weekly, bro.

[Andrew Schulz]

Yeah.

[RZA]

I don't know. You think about this? Yeah, I gotta think about where the. Is the. The system at, right? Well, I guess the system is. That the system is penal.

[Bobby Lee]

Yes.

[RZA]

The system is more penal than. Yes. Yeah, that's what it is.

[Bobby Lee]

But you're not trying to create opportunities.

[RZA]

Yeah, it's penal.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

So anyway, but, yeah, I know how we got to all that. We're going outside.

[Bobby Lee]

So what do you do?

[Miles Medows]

So you.

[Bobby Lee]

You leave school?

[RZA]

You know I leave school is.

[Bobby Lee]

Do you leave out of, like, guilt or shame, or do you leave just out of both? Interesting.

[RZA]

So you did both? No, I felt up that. I felt up that I didn't stand up for the moment. I felt even more fucked up. But yet I was inspired that wait. Cause I never even seen my teacher do this shit, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

So you saw a different side of him and you're like.

[RZA]

Yeah. In fact, he always said, like, his claim to fame was that he was invited. I don't know if it was the Grammys or the Oscars, but he did something that he got an invitation to California, whatever that was. And that was, like, his claim to fame. He's just a Brooklyn school teacher. White man, green eyes, kind of looked like. Kind of had a little bit of oversized Hackman in them, little jeans, because they have a little Gene Hackman in them. And Mr. Greenberg, that's. And you know, you don't even believe his story. Yeah, like, yo, yeah, I've been, you know, I've been. He's an English teacher and a drama teacher.

[Bobby Lee]

Right.

[RZA]

But when he did that, I believed him.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? And I'm sorry, did he do a

[Miles Medows]

rendition of, like, your play or. He just freestyled, yo.

[RZA]

He just freestyled, bro. He did voices. He did Abbott Costello shit. Yo, this dude was good, bro. He was killing it, I'm telling you. I was like, holy shit. But then, like I said, I kind of whimpered out of there. Then go back to class. I was smoking weed already by then anyway, so there's no that which was sad. I don't smoke weed now, thank you. But I was, you know, just ran with my man Scientific. Shout out to Scientific. This dude was scientific, yo. It's another guy who taught me something. Let me tell you what he taught me. So now towards this, this is like, all in the same, like, last two months of that, of me being at this school. I'm getting out of here. Okay, I'm leaving. But Scientific, he'll never come to school anyway. But it's me and him, another brother, General Bourne and some other brothers and shit. And you know, you know, we who we are down. But nobody's really coming to school that much but me, right? And then there's this big giant bro that. I don't know how I got into a beef with this bro, but this had it out for me. He had to be 17, bro, or either from the special ed side or something, bro, this dude, yo, this dude, you know, man, I did not have the confidence to fight this dude, you know, I mean, I'm 12, going on 13, right, 13, whatever. Going on 14 maybe. Whatever, whatever. I didn't have it.

[Bobby Lee]

You're not fighting a 17 year old. You're not fighting that man.

[RZA]

And not. And he was, he was. Yo, and his physical appearance, you know, I mean, like some dudes like, yo, they look like it.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah,

[RZA]

he got the size and he got the fucking look. Yeah. And he just was like, yo, after school, you know what I mean? It's going, it's going to do me in. And, and yeah, I had to duck out early that day, you know what I mean? And, and when I did, I ducked out. I went to my man Scientific neighborhood. Scientific was selling weed and all that, so he was already slinging. And I caught up with him and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yo, yeah, you know, yo, this, this, yo, no, fact, no, I caught up with. I didn't tell him. Somebody else told him.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, that you had the fight and then you weren't there.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

So you pull up with Scientific. Scientific's like, yo, why aren't you.

[RZA]

Yeah, so. So I'm like this right? Scientific is up here. To me at the time, he's like Joe Pesky type. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the giant dude is up here. Okay. And, and Scientific comes to school. He don't never come to school. He comes to school the next day, bro, and comes to my class and everything. And then, you know, come to class, we get out the class and he said, hold on, who was it? I said, oh, oh, him. Yeah, Come on. Walked over, grabbed this motherfucker by the collar, bought him, smacked him twice. Pow, pow, pow. Do you ever fuck with Rakim? My name was Rakim then. You ever fuck with Rakim again? Yo, you know, know, you know, he my son. That's my son. Whoa. Yeah, I was inspired. Like a, like that was, that was a David Goliath moment for real. Yo, and I, and I. And I took heed to that. Like, like, like, like two things. One, it's great to have somebody that's champion with you.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, hell yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? No, nobody takes over nothing, you know, no general, no, no king takes over the country without good generals, you know? I mean, no general takes over without good soldiers, you know what I mean? So that's vital. And then you got to know when to be the general, when to be the soldier, you know what I mean? I was a general at that time too. Because, yo, he just did that for me. No reward, no return. He just don't feel with him. Yo, somebody just told me this the other day. Wow. Okay, I'm shout you out. What's up, Ellis? So Ellis, he's Method Man's manager, he just told me a story that he never told me. He's proud of us being in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. And he just told me about some shit that was going down in the hood back in the day where, you know, some dudes had it out. For me, it was just a neighborhood war shit. But he told them not. They came to get him to join the fight against you. Yeah. And he told them, nah.

[Bobby Lee]

Meth or Ellis.

[RZA]

Ellis.

[Bobby Lee]

Ellis said, no, I'm not doing it.

[RZA]

I said, no, that guy is special. Is going to be a star.

[Bobby Lee]

How old are you at this time?

[RZA]

Maybe 18 now. Maybe 17. 18.

[Bobby Lee]

And so this beef is potentially very dangerous. Beef.

[RZA]

Yeah. At that time. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow.

[RZA]

Yeah. And he, he just told me that he just shared. He never shared it with me. He just shared this with me like after the Rock and Roll hall of Fame announcement. So. Yo, yo, I'm gonna tell you something I never told you. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Basically, right.

[RZA]

Like, he saw that. He saw that I was trying and I was striving and I had. I had an energy, you know what I mean? So I think that's been one of my blessings in life, is that. Is that sometimes, sometimes there's always one amongst you that is the Noah. He's the one. He's the one that could build the ark.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

He's the one that could guide you out. You know what I mean? And not just putting it all on myself. I think me and my brother Divine could be kind of like, we become our. We become your. We become the Moses and Aaron of our community. We become that Moses and Aaron that's able to. If you look at Woo Bow, it's a lot of people that comes out that come in. It ain't like Two, you know what I mean? It ain't even just the 10, right? It's hundreds. All reality. But even on the artist side, if you start going to Sons of Man, Royal Fam, Killer Army, Black Knights, North Star Cream Team, I could keep going tmf, you know what I mean? You could keep going, gp, like, you could keep going. You. Everybody had a chance for a better day. Everybody had a chance for, like, yo, you know, I mean, we could do this. You know what I mean? I don't care if it's 30, 40 grand, 50, 60 grand a year.

[Bobby Lee]

Better than nothing.

[RZA]

Exactly. It's a chance, you know? And some of them is hundreds of thousands.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? So, so that. That. So, so, so, so that I take that blessing in my life to be. To be what they call the Abbot. And I probably was even the avid back in junior high school. Yeah, I probably was an avid in high school. Not even conscious of it, not identifying it. And. And doing all the negative, even in the negative world. I mean, it was like 22 people in my crew, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, really?

[RZA]

Oh, wow. You know what I mean? But I was leading them to nothing. Like, he got shot, he got shot, he got shot.

[Andrew Schulz]

Wow.

[RZA]

But then in the positive side, everything turns around. Families. Families, communities are better.

[Bobby Lee]

Did any of the negative stuff follow you into the positive side? How long before that subsided? Like, were you concerned, as you guys are on this rise to superstardom, that some fuck shit from back in the day was gonna catch?

[RZA]

I mean, Wu Tang was.

[Bobby Lee]

They were involved with a lot of.

[RZA]

Yeah, I mean, you heard about the fucking. The Delphine Phonics come to do a song with the Wu Tang Clan. You know, the Delphonics are Philly soul group.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, yeah.

[RZA]

They. They like. We big fans of their. Right? Yeah. Ghostface. Oh, he loves them.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And. And, And. And William Hart. Major Harris. Major Harris is the one who made the song Time Won't Let Me Wait, the one that Luther Ranchers did over. Anyway, these are big soul songs for us, right? They come visit us to do a song, and then somebody like, yo, let's do a pizza run. I don't know. Pizza blunts and 40s and some paper. I didn't go. I had to stay in the studio. I'm working on the track. Come back, man. The van got shot up.

[Bobby Lee]

No way.

[RZA]

Yeah. Busting shots. And they was like, hey, man, don't worry about the blood. We seen all that in Philly. But I'm just saying. Yeah, of course.

[Bobby Lee]

The element of danger was there all Right, guys? You see the light? You know what time it is? All right. You know what time it is? Bluechew got a new product. Your girl's getting dug out. Andy Du Fring. Andy Du fr. The man crawled through for freedom. You don't got to do it, do you?

[Miles Medows]

Talk about the Epstein victim.

[RZA]

I'm like, what's going on?

[Andrew Schulz]

Come on. How do you always make it bad? How do you always find talking about

[Bobby Lee]

Shaw you to death or something? Jesus, Shaw. Shank Redemption.

[Andrew Schulz]

Bring that up and add about Blue. Shoot, that's crazy.

[Bobby Lee]

Doesn't your go to the left a little bit? That's the shank part. Yo, Shaw. Shank Redemption. Your girl, man, she deserves it. Stop being selfish. It's not just about you. Yeah, we know you're going to finish. Okay? What you can do is with blue, true gold, you're hard within 15 minutes. Ain't no way in 30 minutes anymore, you might not have 30 minutes of chit chat. Chat. You might talk yourself out of some. In 30 minutes, that could happen.

[Andrew Schulz]

And then you just rock hard and alone.

[RZA]

Rock hard alone.

[Bobby Lee]

What are you gonna do? Covers. You gonna wrap them covers? No, we're not gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about what? You're gonna do that girl. Because it's 15 minutes or left. You got 15 minutes of chit chat. I used to have a. A little story that I would tell. Really? When I didn't have anything to say, and I told it to a girl twice by accident. She told me. She's like, you already told me that story. I was like, listen, man, I got another 26 minutes. Like, I ran out of material. Okay, we got to do it.

[Andrew Schulz]

But now with Gold, it's faster.

[Bobby Lee]

Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. That's nothing. Light work, and you're gonna get. You. You buy two months of Bluetooth gold, you're gonna get your third for free with the promo code flagrant. That's promo code flagrant. Visit bluetooth.com for more details and important safety information. Your girls should check out that.

[RZA]

Save the information.

[Bobby Lee]

You know what I mean?

[RZA]

It could be dangerous.

[Andrew Schulz]

It could be treacherous.

[Bobby Lee]

It's. It's treacherous.

[Andrew Schulz]

Want to know how I got these scars?

[Bobby Lee]

All right, that's.

[RZA]

Okay.

[Bobby Lee]

Cut that out. Stop watching movies late. Stop watching. Did you know he was referencing Shawn?

[Andrew Schulz]

Tank Redemption, bro. Come on.

[RZA]

Come on, Joker.

[Bobby Lee]

You want to know how I got these?

[Andrew Schulz]

The Dark Knight.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, okay. Yeah. Dark Knight. Anyway, we thank vuetube for sponsoring this podcast.

[RZA]

What is going on?

[Bobby Lee]

This episode has also been brought to you by Talk space. Guys, guys, guys, guys, guys. There was a time where people were like, I don't know if I'm gonna use Talkspace because I want to make sure that I meet my therapist in person. Data that doesn't happen anymore. Your therapist doesn't have office. Your therapist is zooming. Everything is on zoom. And Talkspace was ahead of the curve. Covid changed everything. Now everything is Talkspace. So you might as well use TalkSpace, the number one rated online therapy bringing you professional support from licensed therapists and psychiatrists that you can access anytime, anywhere.

[RZA]

It's easy. Yes.

[Bobby Lee]

To get started, you can easily sign up online and get paired with a licensed provider, typically within 48 hours. Talk space makes getting help convenient. You can take your appointments from your own home and you can even talk it out between sessions by sending text messages to your therapist. I know you can't do that with your non special Talkspace therapist ignoring your ass all week. Get therapy and medication all in one place. Unlike other telehealth companies, psychiatry is available through Talkspace. So you can get the medication you need to supplement your talk therapy if needed. Talkspace gives high quality care that's backed by science. Talkspace partners with major research institutions to validate their treatment methods, making sure you receive the best care possible from anywhere. Talkspace makes getting the help you need easy, accessible and affordable. Plus, most insured members have a zero dollar copay. So what you're going to do right now, as a listener of this podcast, you're going to get $80 off your first month with Talkspace when you go to talkspace.com flagrant and enter the promo code SPACE80. That's S, P, A, C, E. 80. To match the licensed therapist today, go to talkspace.com flagarant and enter the promo code SPACE80. Now let's get back to the show, guys. In the spirit of New York, a great New Yorker rza, the RZA on the podcast, Bobby Dej. I wish that we got to talk about our New York Knicks.

[Andrew Schulz]

You think he's an expand?

[Bobby Lee]

What do you mean? There's no choice to be anything but.

[Andrew Schulz]

I mean, I don't know. He lives in Ohio for a little bit.

[Bobby Lee]

In Charlotte for a little bit. What's coursing through his veins?

[Andrew Schulz]

From Brooklyn. He grew up, born in, you know, Brownsville.

[Bobby Lee]

What's coursing through through his veins?

[RZA]

I don't know.

[Bobby Lee]

It's the New York Knicks.

[Miles Medows]

It's the Knicks. Maybe Dolan's all in that.

[Bobby Lee]

Golly, I still got playoffs. I want to go to. No, in all seriousness, Nick's taking this series. By the time this comes out, because we're recording this Tuesday game tonight, we'll be.

[Miles Medows]

We'll be up.

[Bobby Lee]

We'll be up three two. We'll be up three, two. And then I think what are the chance. What do we have at the. The winning the series? Is that 69. What does couch you have at 69?

[Andrew Schulz]

69.

[Bobby Lee]

So it's a slide. It's light. It's light.

[Andrew Schulz]

I mean it's picked up from last week. Last week we were looking at this and the odds were like, you know, 16 or something.

[Miles Medows]

No, it wasn't

[Andrew Schulz]

single.

[Bobby Lee]

Dig out the side of your face. Talking out the side of your face.

[RZA]

That's not a thing.

[Bobby Lee]

Yo, cut that off. Yeah, cut that out.

[RZA]

I understand.

[Bobby Lee]

Cut that off.

[Andrew Schulz]

The match Magic's odds. Because I don't know if you guys have been seeing, but the. The boys down in Orlando have been cooking. I mean they just won against Detroit.

[Bobby Lee]

Give a Magic.

[Andrew Schulz]

Detroit's the first.

[Bobby Lee]

The volume on. Look at the volume on it. Go, go. Look at the volume on it.

[Miles Medows]

Got 24 chance of winning a mil, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

A million 1.7, right? All right, go look at the volume on the Knicks.

[Andrew Schulz]

Okay, what do we got?

[RZA]

Wait, wait.

[Andrew Schulz]

One point It

[Bobby Lee]

n. Something got to be off.

[RZA]

Something got to be off.

[Bobby Lee]

No, bro, if you want to.

[Andrew Schulz]

If you want to make some money, you got to. You got to back up the Orlando Magic.

[Bobby Lee]

I'm telling you. Damn. I guess they're gambling they're the eight seed.

[Andrew Schulz]

They're the eight seed. Cuz there's the first.

[Bobby Lee]

See, there's nothing to do over there, bro. Yeah, I think it's more of a boredom thing.

[RZA]

No.

[Andrew Schulz]

Yeah, no, they got. They got money. They're. They're, you know, they know how to make a come up.

[Bobby Lee]

How do they find time to watch the games in between, like cheerleading conferences?

[Andrew Schulz]

Okay, there is a lot of cheerleading.

[Bobby Lee]

Like, how do they do it?

[Andrew Schulz]

There is a lot.

[Bobby Lee]

There's so many.

[Andrew Schulz]

That's what you do. That's the second screen viewing right there. You just pull up on the side

[Bobby Lee]

while you're watching the cheerleading howler.

[Andrew Schulz]

Just put up 20. Yeah, it's kind of nice. I mean, cade Cunningham had 25, but coughed it up eight times. All right, then this is your angle of Or. Sorry, not that part. This might be the most fraudulent first seed we've seen in a minute.

[RZA]

It.

[Andrew Schulz]

I mean, you're telling me you win 60 games, you can't score for five minutes in the playoff

[Bobby Lee]

punch Lies.

[Andrew Schulz]

This is your style. Detroit plays like a team that just discovered the playoffs are harder, right?

[RZA]

I mean, come on, bro.

[Andrew Schulz]

Hot take.

[Bobby Lee]

Clip this or cut that part.

[Andrew Schulz]

If Orlando wins the series, it's going to be the one of the worst collapses for a first season of modern playoff history. This is career altering for Trey Young and the Hawks.

[Bobby Lee]

You know the worst collapse is. I think it was your grandma's rectum.

[Andrew Schulz]

During World War II. Cut all this stuff out. And remember, remember, whenever rectum can't put this in, bro. My nephew's been watching the show.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

[Miles Medows]

What's the odds in your grandma.

[RZA]

That's not a couch. That's not a couch.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay.

[RZA]

The closer line.

[Andrew Schulz]

Detroit season went from work contenders to we're a documentary.

[Bobby Lee]

Anyway, let's get back to the show.

[RZA]

Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer.

[Andrew Schulz]

In that early crew, who was the funniest one? Like, especially when you were like, growing up, like middle school, high school, is there someone that sticks out? You're like, yo, he was the funniest guy.

[RZA]

I mean, dirty is the funniest, bro. Yeah, dirty is so. Dirty is the type of dude, bro. I know you know you got children and all that, but know that your pop's the type of yo that wrapped a paper towel around his dick. Cause he didn't have a condom.

[Andrew Schulz]

Him.

[RZA]

Dis put a dish. Put a dish rag on his bro.

[Bobby Lee]

He might have been in the other school.

[RZA]

Put a dish rag on that bro. Bro.

[Miles Medows]

Yo, that is lit, yo.

[RZA]

I always wonder more.

[Bobby Lee]

We need more dirty stories, man.

[Andrew Schulz]

That's super absorption. That might work.

[RZA]

I've seen the commercial. I've seen the commercials, though. Nothing drips when they hold it up.

[Andrew Schulz]

That's the brawny promise we came from.

[RZA]

Fucking. I told Joe Rogan this story the other day, but I say he was the ultimate expression of freedom. In fact, I'll tell you a different story. Yo, the dude. The dude fucking takes the car. Like, Yo, I wanna like. Yo, chill. We making a song. We got. We haven't got the Woo Mansion, got the studio in the basement, the whole Molly Mar thing, right? We got ours.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

All right, so let's you know, let's make some song. All right, all right. I just gotta run to this one hour and do something and. Yeah, I think I know what. He had a bm. Whatever the fuck he had. Goes out, tears the car up, crashes, comes back, asks for somebody else's car. I'm get another. Yo. Yo, he gets it, though.

[Bobby Lee]

No.

[RZA]

Who gives him the car? Me, of course. Of course, of course. It's me, right? Yo, does it make it out the driveway?

[Bobby Lee]

Another one.

[RZA]

But now, now, mind you, the driveway is a little bat cave shit. No, don't do this. No, no, no. Give us some justification. The driveway, bro, is going to the bat cave. It's like this. It's like the driveway is at least three New York City blocks. We live. The house is in the fucking woods. Batman. Shit. All right, so there's a chance at high speed going out.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, he's clipping something.

[Andrew Schulz]

What kind of car are we talking?

[RZA]

First he fucked up the bm. I think for me, it was my Range Rover.

[Bobby Lee]

Damn. Okay, so he fucks up that one.

[RZA]

Yeah. Then he wanted another one, but somebody came and got him instead. Now the big idea. Where the fuck was he going? When? Nowhere. What you call yo?

[Bobby Lee]

Did he ever say where he was going?

[RZA]

Yo, what you call him? Rest in peace to 12 o'. Clock. So. So there was this dude that would give us. Get us cars. Like, you know you can buy them, right? Like, we. First of all, to be honest with you, we don't got license, bro. We sitting on a half a dozen cars with no license. Let's just keep it real. This is hip hop.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Yo, I don't got. I didn't get a license to like 0203. Straight up. I got my license like in California or some. When I'm with my new wife or something. I don't drive now at all. But 12 tells me dirt just got the new Benzion. This is. He's happy now. He is the type of dude that he. He like. He drives like a maniac. Yeah. I'm not here for this. So all I need to do is describe what somebody told me on the bqe.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay.

[RZA]

He crashes the car. The car flips upside down, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay,

[RZA]

Dirt gets out, out and just leaves and left. 12 o' clock is in the car.

[Bobby Lee]

Just upside down.

[RZA]

He just left, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

What happened to the other dude?

[RZA]

He's all right, but he was like, yo, the nigga just left and went to try to get another car, son. No way.

[Bobby Lee]

No, dude, way.

[RZA]

I'm not exaggerating this shit, bro. 12 is just upside down.

[Andrew Schulz]

Like, yo, dude, I was.

[RZA]

I was like, yo, what the. I was like, what the happened?

[Bobby Lee]

Take off my seat bel.

[RZA]

Six o'. Clock. Let me. Let me. Let me digress to something. So anyway, first of all, thank you for inviting me, dude.

[Bobby Lee]

Of course.

[RZA]

I'm doing a big press run for my new film.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, no. I want to talk all about the film. I watched it last night.

[RZA]

By the way, the reason why I'm bringing it up is because my character is named Unique. Yeah. Yeah. And ODB name is Asan Unique.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay.

[RZA]

So I named the character after him.

[Bobby Lee]

That's awesome.

[RZA]

And there's a scene in the movie where the car is upside down.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

But this time, this guy helps. So point being made is like, my love for my cousin and for him. I'm glad that I'm able to be an artist, that I could find ways

[Bobby Lee]

to inject real life stuff.

[RZA]

Real life stuff. And I make it magical. Of course. But, you know, ODB's older brother name is Ramsey. That's why my story is unique and it's Ramsey. And my older brother name is Randy, and that's why his government name is actually Randy.

[Bobby Lee]

So the. Yeah, you said the ODB is the ultimate expression of freedom.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Is that the magnetism of him?

[RZA]

I think so.

[Bobby Lee]

Because I remember. I mean, I'm sure you remember the moment where it's like. It was like MTV was obsessed with them. He had crossed over to. And I don't know if you could write. Not you, of course you could, but, like, the average person, I don't know if they could just write down why they love this guy, but it was a visceral reaction. Before you could, like, game Algorithm and, like, promote something. Like, I don't even know if MTV was going, is this the right thing to promote?

[RZA]

Right. It didn't even matter. Right? It didn't matter.

[Bobby Lee]

You could make the argument that he was doing everything for them not to promote him and it was working.

[RZA]

Right, Right.

[Bobby Lee]

It was like, true rock star shit.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

And not rock star in, like, the contrived version where you've seen rock stars try to pretend to be rock stars. Like, okay, like, my forefathers put all the furniture in the hotel room on the ceiling, so I'm gonna do that. It was like watching somebody that didn't know how to exist in any other way, shape, or form.

[RZA]

Yeah. He. Bro. Yeah. Talking about hotels, I was just saying, yo, bro, you know how many hotels got destroyed

[Bobby Lee]

even?

[RZA]

Yo, I remember sleeping with this Wu Tang ain't even popular yet, bro. They. They invited us to the what if. The BMG conference or some shit. And they trying to, like, convince the executives that this is the new group. Yeah, they're gonna be this, they're gonna be that. The single was doing well, but pit money on these guys, right? And fucking, we go there and they want us to perform in front of them, and we do. First of all, Dirty starts the performance off and just breaks it to somewhere over the rainbow. Okay? So that's to give you. But. But that night, yo, this is great. No, serious, bro. But that night. What is.

[Bobby Lee]

What are these execs? What are these execs in suits thinking?

[RZA]

That's what I'm saying. Okay, but forget that. But then that night, bro, and I ain't lying. I'm not gonna act like I wasn't part of it, like. Cause I can sit there, I like to talk about him, but still, I'm gonna give him the ringleader role of this, bro. I don't know what made him get the idea. I don't know if. Cause maybe like, the girl was in that room or this or whatever, you know, groupies or whatever, whatever. But he was like, yo, yo, God, I got this fire hydrant, right? Fire extinguisher.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

Say, yo, look at this. You hit one puff and it, like, it does. It does this. He's like, yo, let's go hit rooms.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay, okay, Yo.

[Miles Medows]

Yeah, I did.

[RZA]

It did. It would open the door, you would light up the whole room just like. Or even you could put it, like, right there and push it through and

[Bobby Lee]

then put it through.

[RZA]

Whoa, wait, who? But now, I mean, everybody was heated. Meth was super heated. He had a. He had a dime piece in there probably back then. I don't know. Okay, but not that, you know, I don't know.

[Andrew Schulz]

Like I said, just opens the door, covered.

[RZA]

First of all, you don't realize that that stuff is not easy to come off.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

Fire extinguishes shit.

[Bobby Lee]

It's fire retardant.

[RZA]

Yeah, you gotta basically throw that couch away. Just ruined the whole floor of the hotel. And so now Steve Epica gotta get this bill. He didn't complain then. He just. He talks about it now like, you don't know. You fucking got, like. You guys like the. Like, we had the chairman of BMG there, bro, and they fucking came with this fucking bill for Wu Tang Clan. It's like he had to convince them

[Bobby Lee]

it was gonna be worth it. Yeah, he was right.

[RZA]

He actually said. He might have said, like, they rock Stars. He might have used that as a fucking slogan, unintentionally, but. And here we are in Rock and Roll hall of Fame.

[Miles Medows]

That's fire.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow. It's just. Yeah.

[Miles Medows]

I always wondered, like, in the 90s, everybody's trying to be, like, gangster and all that type of stuff. Why did. Did ODB choose Old Dirty Bastard for his name?

[RZA]

Well, I gave him that name because all of. Most of our names come from inspired by kung fu movies one way or another. Okay, so there was a. You know, kung fu. I don't know if you guess you watch them, but they always. You Old Dirty bastard. They always say that like, that's the.

[Bobby Lee]

That's the translation. That's the Dub Dover version.

[RZA]

Yeah, it's a Dub Dub Dover version. And then. And then there was. And the drunk master was always considered the Old dirty bastard. And Old Dirty did the drunken style. That's what he said. My style. I do the drunken style. I mean, he could get. He could drink 1040s and still get on the microphone and bust your ass. You know what I mean? And he actually gave Raekwon the name the chef. Raekwon had his name, but Dirty was like, nah, he's the chef. He's the only one that kind of like that dirt actually gave that title. Raekwon was Raekwon.

[Bobby Lee]

But the chef, why did he make him the chef?

[RZA]

I feel like it was for two reasons. One, from the movie the Mystery of Chess Boxing, there's a character called the chef that ends up teaching the student. But you don't know the chef could kill and kick ass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that was one of the reasons. And also, you know, cooking up, by the way. Yeah. Cooking up marvelous styles. Yeah, we'll pour yours in four months. Fair enough. Cooking up marvelous styles. So that's why you got the chef, of course. Ghost Face Killer from the movie Mystery of Chessboxing. Ghostface Killer. Everybody wanted that name, though.

[Andrew Schulz]

After the fire extinguisher, everyone was Ghostface. Didn't he break out of prison one time to go perform with y' all in New York?

[RZA]

Or, like, not break out of prison,

[Bobby Lee]

a rehab facility or something?

[RZA]

Yeah, they was looking for him and he fucking left. And he showed up at the Hammerstein Ballroom in disguise.

[Andrew Schulz]

What was he disguised as with the dirty hat on.

[Bobby Lee]

Cheers.

[RZA]

Cheers. Cheers.

[Bobby Lee]

Cheers.

[RZA]

Cheers.

[Bobby Lee]

Cheers. Mark, you want a little.

[Andrew Schulz]

I'll get a glass. If someone.

[Bobby Lee]

Miles, can we get one more glass in for.

[Andrew Schulz]

Well, you gotta start. You gotta start.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay, so the Hammerstein bowler, he's in

[Andrew Schulz]

disguise he pulls up, he probably still has like a medical bracelet on or something.

[RZA]

Yo, that was a weird night.

[Bobby Lee]

I bet

[RZA]

there was something beautiful about it, though. Okay. Because he was there and he wanted to be there.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? And I was so happy. I kind of. I don't like how I reacted that night. Like, I think, like, I think I did it. I think I was wrong that night.

[Bobby Lee]

Why would you.

[RZA]

I think I was like, too happy and too in the moment of the brand and too in the moment of the visual look of it, that I didn't really take the consideration of the danger that my cousin was in. Oh, wow. Yeah. I think I was too much being a fucking avid executive type motherfucker, chasing

[Bobby Lee]

the success and what this event would be and how amazing this would be received. Yeah.

[RZA]

I think I was up in ep. I saw the footage of it and I dirty said, you know, how r. Now I can't stay long. Like, I can't, like. And I was like, you know, like, yo, we got dirty, man. All that, bro. This is serious. And I just. That. That. That was a. I think that was. I think that's have been a few of my. I'm just speaking my. Think a few of my flaws is that the. The, the. The, like, the this. The small humanness of it, the small human compassion of the moment, I may sacrifice that for the bigger picture.

[Bobby Lee]

Yep.

[RZA]

And then you got to say, is the bigger picture worth it?

[Bobby Lee]

I mean, hindsight is 2020 or whatever the cliche is. Like, it's easy to look back and is someone who's achieved all the things and go, oh, I wish I did those little moments differently. But that perspective also might have allowed you to have 100 people escape poverty and, you know, live their dreams.

[RZA]

Somebody said that. I'm glad you said that. Tarantino said that to me one day, he said, because one day I really was really like, I don't know, I felt like going back. It was shit happening. And I just felt like, I don't know, maybe I should fucking do something, you know? And he was like, come here, sit down. Let me pour you a drink. Oh, actually, he said, I'll make you a margarita. So he makes me a margarita. Making a margarita. He makes me a margarita. And he did say this to me. And now I'm taking back. I'm not taking back what I felt wrong at, because I did. I do realize that for the wife, my sacrifice, yo, I wouldn't even like if my moms wanted to come. No. Why? Because I felt like what we was doing was just too much and too that for her.

[Bobby Lee]

Well, that's being protective of your mom. Yeah. Even though I respect for her almost.

[RZA]

Yeah. I didn't want her to see me jumping up cursing like that either. Right? Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Now I'm sure as a parent, you're like, one of my kids has achieved something that.

[Andrew Schulz]

Yeah, he's Moses.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. It's like almost nobody in history has achieved. And I just kind of want to witness it.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

She don't care if you're cursing, bro. She knows you heard curse words.

[RZA]

I was wrong about that. But then also, like, me and my siblings been talking and it's just like, at one point, if you wasn't woo, bro, you couldn't see me.

[Bobby Lee]

Really?

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

It was that tight, bro.

[RZA]

I was so engaged, you know? Oh, wow. So I'm serious. I mean, my first house. I remember myself, I bought my first house to Cleveland, which was. I would drive by the Rock and Bowl hall of Fame all the time too. So it's a blessing to be in there. But I bought that house.

[Bobby Lee]

Whoa. That's wild.

[RZA]

Yeah. That's crazy. But I bought that house to move my woman and child to Ohio so that the Staten island house can be the studio. And I stayed there.

[Bobby Lee]

Interesting.

[RZA]

Okay. And I stayed there. I'm talking like months and funk and. And liquid sports and Cuban links, bro. It's like when Raekwon said with the boots that paved the way, nigga, I didn't change my shoes, bro. He was like, yo, these niggas wearing that same. You wearing them same shits for two years, Abbott. Like, so. So I'm just saying that I'm not knocking it. I'm just saying that when you think about those moments, like, Dirty on stage, his life is on the line in all reality. And I'm like, the woo is more

[Bobby Lee]

important than this moment.

[RZA]

Yeah. And what happened the next two days

[Bobby Lee]

later he gets put back.

[RZA]

Exactly. And I didn't even get, like. I didn't even get, like, my love for him is like, in the Bible, it says David and Nathan. I don't know if you read the Bible.

[Bobby Lee]

I don't know about David and Nathan,

[RZA]

but there's a story in the Bible I was like, the reason why David lives. And while he doesn't kill Saul to become the king, because Saul's son was Nathan and he was, you know, the prince. Yeah, but David is about to become the king over this nigga's father. Right? But. But their love was so strong. Like, their spiritual love, like, wasn't the. I mean, some people try to misinterpret that shit. I don't know, but it was, it was their spiritual love was just like, yo, that's. That's my man. Yeah, that's it. Yo. And they was like this and, and that. They was saying that love was so strong that it helped David become the king. You see what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

And so I'm trying to send me

[Bobby Lee]

an A was like so severing that love wouldn't allow him to be the king that he needed to be.

[RZA]

Exactly. And so with Asan, it's just like, it's like in that moment, it's almost like I even sacrificed that love because I'm not even give him that, that hug. I'm not going to see him until years later when it's not even him. You see what I mean? So that's what I mean. Like when in hindsight I'm like, like, okay for the woo. What a sacrifice. And that's my family. Like, he's our brother.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And all of us love him.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And all of us probably could say something very similar. But he's also my blood. Yeah. Yeah. So that's another equation there.

[Bobby Lee]

Do you. Do you regret not spending more time with your kid and having them go to Cleveland?

[RZA]

I don't regret now. You know, I have a beautiful wife and my new wife came in to help me raise my children. My ex wife, we ended up.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? And my new wife came in and my son. Now we going deeper here. But my son said this to me and I. All praises due to Allah. Because. Because I'm happy that I can hear my son say this. He said that he never. He didn't miss me because when I was there, I was so present. He was like his friends, he's like. My friends asked me. I was like, no, like dad.

[Bobby Lee]

Nah.

[RZA]

Like, like dad is the type. And I'm that type of dude, bro. Like, I mean even right here, I'm like. But the like, like I'll put on a. I'll make a movie just for my son. Like, you know what I mean? Like, look at this I made for you. Like, and I'll sit with his toys and then I score. And then I score it. I'm that type of like, I'm like, you know, I'm that type of. I am. When I'm there, I'm engaged. Yeah. So he said. So he told me. He didn't. You know, all my sons, you know what I mean? But daughters maybe A little more. Takes a little more. And I figured. And I gave more. Like when. It was when I realized when I was. And I said this to any father, that when you realize that something is off course in your household, you gotta get in there. Get in there, bro. Take the time. Be patient. You know, my daughter, I didn't know what to do. Right. I didn't know how to communicate with her. I was working on that TV show, Gang Related, and we had this other guest actress who maybe had two episodes with us. And, you know, she would hear me vent because the lead actor, Ramon, we became, you know, we do a TV show. He'd become brothers. Right? Something. You hear me? Like, yeah. My daughter. And she said, well, girls are different, Bobby. You need to just text her every day, even if she don't respond. Text, call every day. I said. And eventually. Saying eventually, she will respond. And about four or five months later. Yeah. And then we build the relationship. That's beautiful now. Wow.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. You need to push through that boundary. Cause what she's feeling is that you don't want to be there. And it's very difficult to show love to somebody who is rejecting the love.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

But that's actually when they need it the most. Yeah, that's tricky.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. The kids stuff. Yeah.

[Miles Medows]

So fascinating. You mentioned this earlier. It's like when you lock in on something that's like, sole focus. And then, like, you haven't been writing because you're focused on editing the movie and things like that. So you'll get so focused. Have you adjusted to find, like, balance to be able to do multiple things, or is you still operate the same way?

[RZA]

I think I got balance now. It's just like, look, in the middle of this interview, we pour some heaven sake. You know what I mean? So I've not found the balance, but because there's certain things that I love that I do. You know what I mean? So. So I love piano. 90% of the time, if I'm home, the first thing I do after a cup of coffee is sit by the piano, get out of here.

[Miles Medows]

You wake up.

[RZA]

Coffee.

[Miles Medows]

And just hit the.

[RZA]

Wow. Or the guitar. The guitar is right by my bed, bro. So I get up, I'm not gonna have the coffee, pick the guitar up. And you know what? I'm not a singer. You know that. But I could sing my wife a song. I'm quite sure she might. She's enjoying it because it's me. But I know I'm not. I'm not hearing no Luther Vandross. Notes over there. But at the end of the day, though, I love music. And also before I face the world, you know what I mean? It's like I try to give myself some time, and then the second thing I've learned is, well, first of all, the blessings of life, right? So even, like we all say. Cause you said you took a year off or something like that, right?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

So you ran around, you did your shit, but then you home and you fucking. Your home is heaven.

[Bobby Lee]

That is the problem. Sometimes it gets really comfy, right?

[RZA]

But that's the beauty of going out, right? Kings don't build castles for kings. Kings build castles for queens so that when they come home, they're in heaven. I like that. That's. I've been blessed with that kind of life, you know what I mean? On this project even more. My wife is a producer, so I came here from. I left her. She's right in the hotel room waiting for me to come back.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow. Was that tricky to have her input on the.

[RZA]

It's great, great, great, great. Cause first of all, it's truth.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

It ain't gonna be no bullshit. That's corny, motherfucker. Even I said something the other day sometimes. Come to the interview the other day, I guess I was. I don't know. I started talking about some sex or some. And she said after the. She was like, chill out. I'm talking about the sex. I was relating it to something in the film. You seen the film?

[Bobby Lee]

Of course.

[RZA]

And. Right.

[Bobby Lee]

So it's a nice little scene. Nice little scene.

[RZA]

Yeah. Got some little debackery in there, too.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, it was. She was.

[RZA]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

She was bouncing on him, man. She was bouncing on him, bro. It is weird because they're in high school in the movie, so you're like, yo, I know, I know. These actors aren't.

[RZA]

It's art, bro.

[Andrew Schulz]

It's art.

[Bobby Lee]

Disbelief.

[Andrew Schulz]

A little bit.

[RZA]

Yeah. So anyway. But it's in the movie. It's in the movie. But she's right. That's not what the movie's about.

[Bobby Lee]

Yo, does he nut right when the cops come. Come in?

[RZA]

That's funny.

[Bobby Lee]

I thought it was hilarious.

[RZA]

I thought that was hilarious.

[Bobby Lee]

The second the cops come in and the dude just busts a little. The girl. The girls bounce on like crazy. Like, I would have been nutted. But he doesn't know

[RZA]

I would have been nut.

[Bobby Lee]

But he doesn't nut until the two cops come in. Like, hey, put it together. What type of internalized trauma is that?

[Andrew Schulz]

You need a little more Sometimes a little more.

[RZA]

Oh, but they got to get him over the edge.

[Bobby Lee]

Exactly.

[RZA]

So that guy RJ Sea plays that actor? Yeah, he's great, man. He's good, man. You seen him in the. The Book of Clarence. You ever see that one?

[Miles Medows]

Yeah, that was good.

[RZA]

It's good. Yeah, yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

What's Book of Clarence?

[RZA]

That was. That was Lakeith's big, big role.

[Miles Medows]

Oh, Keith Stanfield, Jay Z produced that, I think.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

How did you get Michael Jackson's daughter in that?

[RZA]

Paris Jackson? I got lucky, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

That was crazy.

[RZA]

Yo, she.

[Bobby Lee]

Cuz I didn't know she was in it.

[RZA]

Yo, Mike, till you saw it.

[Bobby Lee]

I'm watching. I'm like, yo, wait a minute. Is this Mike's kid? Like, this is insanity.

[RZA]

Yeah. See, it was my casting agent, Kim Hardy. She said that Paris is acting now and she's looking for good roles. You mind if I send her the script? I said, yeah, send it to her. And then she responded. And then we got on the zoom and. Yeah, I was like, you know, first of all, it'd be a pleasure. The thing about her that I think is special is that she don't need to do it.

[Bobby Lee]

At all.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

At all.

[RZA]

Right. And when you're doing a movie, bro, you gotta get up six in the morning, sit in a fucking makeup chair, deal with a bunch of motherfuckers you don't know, and then go be somebody that you're not. Right. Most people do it for money.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. Or a lust for fame. Yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

She don't need none of that. So the only way she could do it if she's a. What an artist. And she is, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Really, she loves it.

[RZA]

She's an artist, bro. First of all, she has every actor got something like Shamik Moore, who's the lead character. He's a SpongeBob.

[Bobby Lee]

Interesting.

[RZA]

He's a sponge.

[Bobby Lee]

He'll sit here, soak it up.

[RZA]

Soak you up. Go give you back. You know what I mean? She has what I call the muscle memory of an actress. I've seen that in Uma Thurman and I've seen it in Lucy Liu, which is the way this table is. It's going. If the scene was this, She gonna do it again. Exactly, exactly.

[Andrew Schulz]

Interesting.

[RZA]

And I was like. I said, okay. I said she's. She's actually meant to be an actress. It's up to her if she wants to be. She can easily be.

[Andrew Schulz]

Did you ever. Did you meet Mike?

[RZA]

I never met Michael Jackson.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, wow.

[RZA]

No, the only one I know when I met him in our crew was Ghost and Ray, because they called me that day.

[Bobby Lee]

What the. What was. How did that happen?

[RZA]

They was. I think they met him. They met him twice. They met him at the Hit Factory in New York, and then they met him at the Hit Factory in Miami. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

What did they say when they get, like.

[RZA]

They said he was like a prince. Like, like a. Like a. Not prince. The artist. Of course there was a guy. He was like a Prince Esteem. Yeah. Like. Like, Like, Like, I couldn't imagine. Like, he probably, like. Like. Remember I talk about the guy who had that little small vibration. Yeah, he probably had a vibration that was like.

[Bobby Lee]

Like, bro, I see it and you as, like, a person who's famous. You. You know it, and you probably feel it, right? Like, you know, when you're in a room and people recognize you, you can feel the attention going to you, and then there's people that like. Like, I was. I remember once I was at the Comedy Cellar. It's a comedy club in New York, and greatest comedy club in the world.

[RZA]

I know that. You know.

[Bobby Lee]

You know, of course, so. And Madonna was there for some reason. And like. Like, I don't think we forget how famous Madonna was, like, you know, or is like, of course. But it was a fascinating thing because it's not like there aren't famous people that go there regularly. But she was just at a table, and the feeling was nobody in that room could concentrate on whatever they were pretending to talk about. Like, you and I are talking, but both of us are kind of veering off.

[RZA]

You're feeling this energy. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

And, like, I always wonder what that

[RZA]

does to a person that's vibrating the

[Bobby Lee]

energy and just getting that energy vibrated back, like, constantly gravity on you, no

[RZA]

matter where you go, you know, Let me. Let me give you a small theory on it. And I don't got those type of people's energy right. I got my own. But I. So it took me years for my wife to watch me perform. Hmm. If she looks, I'm stumbling, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Interesting. Oh, wow.

[RZA]

You know what I'm saying?

[Bobby Lee]

Why. Why does she know a different version of you?

[RZA]

Whatever. Like, I don't. Maybe. You know what I mean? It's. Maybe it's like. It's like. Yeah, it's like, don't look at me. You know what I mean? Because it's this. You know what I mean? So it could be. Also, I'm so enamored by her. You see what I mean? So it could be, you know, the same way. But I'm saying that I'm trying to say that. That maybe that's some energy in that. To where a celebrity or somebody. They have a chi that rattles you. You know what? I did an interview on KTLA last week, and I've watched KTLA every fucking morning. I wasn't really on point the first minute.

[Bobby Lee]

You were nervous a little bit going into it.

[RZA]

Yo, bro. The first minute, I didn't even think. I was nervous, though. I was backstage talking to motherfuckers all, shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you gonna. Dude. Yeah. Cool. Oh, okay. Give me. Put the mic on. Yeah, yeah, put the mic right here. I got an inside pocket. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Boom.

[RZA]

I sit down and, oh, these, Like,

[Miles Medows]

just froze up a little.

[RZA]

Ain't no time for nothing but, like. So I said, yeah, you know, like, shit, yeah. You know, but you know what I mean? I'm like, you know, I mean, I'm trying to get it together. It took about a beat, and then I got like, my is stone. But it was like. It started. Soggy dick, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Have you met people like that where

[Andrew Schulz]

you just get into presence and you're like, oh, they're cheating. Like, they're vibrating at a different level.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Andrew Schulz]

Who are some people that come to mind?

[RZA]

I mean. I mean, over the time and so many different people you meet like that, like, you feel them, you know, Mike Tyson was like that to me because. Because I was such a fan, you know? I mean, he's my brother now, but, like, for me, it's different, right? Because I can't, like, say the name. Name, name, name, name. But I think. I think Denzel Washington had an energy that made me, like, kind of like a little. I say a shrinking energy, right? Because that's the best way to use. I think that's a good terminology. A shrinking energy. Motherfuckers that can shrink you. You know what I mean? And I think he had it on American Gangster. He's the greatest actor in the world at the time. He's Denzel Washington.

[Bobby Lee]

Still?

[RZA]

Yeah, still. And I just, you know, like, they was like, oh, you want to meet Denzel? And I was like, yeah, exactly, right? And it was like, okay, we're gonna bring you to his trailer. Now. You don't go to a. Only groupie is gonna go to your trailer, right? I mean, I'm a groupie, bro. Hold on, hold on. You know what? That's what I'm trying to tell you. I went to his trailer, but normally I'm not going to nobody's trailer, right?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

So I Go to his trailer and they knock. Boom, boom, boom. And the door don't open. Now they came and got me. Oh, no. So they boom for the knock again. The door never opened, bro. It never opened. Okay. And eventually my car came and took me the home.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay, so.

[RZA]

So I don't meet him and. Right. So. And I was a little puzzled by it, but. And I always. My hand was sweating anyway, so maybe it's a good thing I did to him. But then there's a scene in the movie where they say where Russell Crowe's character is going to examine him and go through all the history and they're going to break it all down. And the scene was written that Russell Crowe and Denzel are going to have that moment. But Russell, he already done built this camaraderie with all the actors and his police force. He was like, no, mate. Me and my guys are going to do that. You know, that's like, I wouldn't do that by myself. My whole crew who helped bring this down would be here. That's. That's how it would work. And Ridley Scott was like, okay. You know what I mean? And so now I'm in a scene with Denzel.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[Andrew Schulz]

Wow.

[RZA]

Right? And bro, he didn't speak to me. Like, he almost didn't look at me, you know. And I remember like on the first two takes going back out, and Ridley Scott was like, I don't, you know, like, what's up with this guy? And I was living in my own head. So I kind of took it a little personal. But it wasn't. Not me. He didn't speak. He didn't speak to none of us. He spoke to us. Okay. And that even that was. And so it kept going. So anyway, this take five and really trying to tell him, you know, give him some director advice, whatever the fuck he was saying. Right? And now we at take take four or five and it's the same thing, bro. You know what I mean? I threw some lines in Staten Island. You know, I try to, you know, try to. You know what I mean? And when you watch the film, it's in this. The scene is in there. And. But at. On the very last moment of the last. Okay, we got it right. Some. Somebody says something. He said, what? I post. He said, what? Why would I be smiling with a bunch of cops on Frank Lucas? Why would I be friendly to a bunch of cops? I'm Frank Lucas. He's staying in character.

[Miles Medows]

Oh, wow.

[RZA]

Right now I still didn't get it. I mean, how could I? I'M new. Yeah, yeah. This is my what, second, third film.

[Bobby Lee]

Imagine your second third film and you're sitting across Denzel watching.

[RZA]

Yeah, It's a blessing. Yeah. But I'm new. So now. And I, and I go home and I tell my wife, I'm like, I don't think Denzel liked me. She said, what you mean? I said, I don't know, baby. Like, like, like, like, like I knocked on his door, you know what I mean?

[Andrew Schulz]

Going through every moment, like, yeah.

[RZA]

And she's like, oh, no. Cause she loves Denzel, of course, and shit. And so I wanted to be able to come home and say, yeah, Denzel, my man. But what finally happens, bro. Which shows how amazing he is. Now it's the premiere, and we walk in the red carpet and somebody comes from behind and grabs me and gives me a big hug, like from the back. And I turn around. Fucking Denzel Washington. Whatever it is. You're great in the film and shit. Like, oh, shit. He's like, take a picture. And took a picture with me and my wife and all of us. And I seen him after that, we cool.

[Bobby Lee]

Cool.

[Andrew Schulz]

Wow.

[RZA]

But I was like, oh. And I was, you know, everything was like, ah, yeah, right. He knows me. He likes me. I'm cool.

[Andrew Schulz]

Because you didn't meet Denzel. You met Frank Lucas.

[RZA]

Exactly. And that's, that's, that's the kind of professional that he is. And that's the kind of professional that, that really, if you're serious about that craft. Right. I think that's a smart approach. I don't know if I could do that because, Because I come from different disciplines, so I bring a different discipline with it. Sure. You know what I mean? But he's one of the best to ever do it, so it makes totally total sense and shit.

[Miles Medows]

He probably tells that story. He's like, I was waking up. The cops is begging on my door.

[RZA]

Exactly. Who the fuck that was.

[Bobby Lee]

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[Andrew Schulz]

You're telling us a story before of going to this rapper from Detroit, his first album release party.

[RZA]

Oh, oh, I went to Eminem's first album release party. I met him there. I was the party. The only east coast in there, bro. It was in la.

[Bobby Lee]

How did you know about him?

[RZA]

Who, Eminem?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. Because before the album is released, I think the single's doing well.

[RZA]

Yeah, the single's doing well. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

But he wasn't the sensation immediately.

[RZA]

Well, he. I mean, I think lyricists recognized him immediately. So.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay, so the community, the people who

[RZA]

are rap, rap, rap lyricist recognize him immediately. Now I didn't meet him back, so I had other guys that worked underneath me me. When my up and coming crew was staying at the Oakwood apartment. So there's a place in California called the Oakwood Apartments. In those days, all corporate motherfu. All artists would get an apartment as a corporate housing.

[Bobby Lee]

Someone else has been told me about this. Yeah, it was also I think like if you were doing pilot season.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Like your mom and you would come. If you're like a child actor and you get an apartment at home, you get an apartment.

[RZA]

The Oakwood apartment. A lot of actors or up and coming artist. Yeah, Eminem was there at the Oakwood and he met some of. Some of my. Some of the younger killer bees. Like a guy named hall of Cars and all these dudes.

[Andrew Schulz]

Interesting name.

[RZA]

That's his name, bro.

[Andrew Schulz]

Some guys are killer, you know what I mean? What's bigger than a killer?

[Bobby Lee]

How'd it go for. How'd it go in the entertainment business for Heaven?

[RZA]

One single actually. Rest in Peace, he passed away, you know. You know who could quote Holocaust lyric from beginning to end?

[Bobby Lee]

The Jews.

[RZA]

Seth Rogen, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Get out of here.

[RZA]

Seth Rogen knew that shit. When I met Seth Rogen, he knew that whole fucking verse. The verse is amazing. It's not a.

[Bobby Lee]

Is he in German?

[RZA]

Okay. I think like, like I never actually had to say his name like that. I guess he's him.

[Bobby Lee]

Cost.

[Andrew Schulz]

You just call him Cost or holla.

[RZA]

He was good. Yeah, he had. He had some. It was a west coast killer bees and. But anyway. But anyway they. They met Eminem back in those days and. And they told me about him and like, you know, I mean, because they was. They were getting to ciphers.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay. So they knew there was like some news percolating.

[RZA]

Yeah. But when it. But when I went to the album release, I just went like. And those. I think in that phase of my life trying to move, I moved to Cali. You know, I'm type of motherfucker that will show up, you know what I mean? If. If somebody like, oh, they got a hip hop. So and so tonight and so and so you want to pop in? You know, I mean. Yeah, why not? It's a party, yo. And I'll be the only motherfucker, yo, bro. I'd be the only motherfucker from the east coast in the whole fucking party. You Know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

But there was love for Wu Tang.

[RZA]

There was love already. No, I felt super comfortable. And there's love. I mean, come on, Dr. Dre, that's like the Godfather of it all. You know what I mean? And even when I first met him, it was like a pleasure, like a

[Bobby Lee]

joy, I imagine, when he meets you, given how much he cares about especially, like rap and lyrics. He's meeting someone he's admired for a very long time. Time is there.

[RZA]

Like, it's mutual.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, of course. Of course.

[RZA]

Yeah. I gotta say. Yeah, no, no, it's mutual.

[Bobby Lee]

He loves the game. You could really feel it.

[RZA]

Yeah, no, he's giving me. He's giving me some great compliments in his mutual. It's like he's. He. He's one of. He's one. If anything, if you wanted to sound like a record, you gotta. You gotta. You gotta emulate him. You know what I mean? I wasn't trying to sound like a record, honestly, until I was trying to. Trying. But, like, for many years, I didn't try to. I was trying to sound like the demo, you know? I mean, I wanted my. To sound like, yo, son made this.

[Miles Medows]

Like, I said, I was all grimy.

[Bobby Lee]

You wanted it to?

[Andrew Schulz]

Yeah.

[RZA]

I want my shit to be like, yo, bro, that lo fi. Yeah. You know how it is when you first. I mean, especially, like, I'm a generation older than you guys, but hip hop started on fucking tapes, bro. With hisses.

[Bobby Lee]

My dad. My dad used to work in NBC. Would like, produce the news on NBC. He was first in Baltimore, and then he came up and. And he did a news story, and it was the first ever news story on. On rap music. And he went up and there was a guy named. It was up in the Bronx. There was a club. I forget the name.

[RZA]

Fever.

[Bobby Lee]

I don't know, I gotta ask him. But it was. DJ Hollywood was.

[RZA]

Yeah, DJ Hollywood.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Classic. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

And he was like, dude, he was like. This guy was like. He was just kind of freestyle, and he was going, like, off the. And imagine, like a white dude, like,

[RZA]

grew up in New York, never heard this before.

[Bobby Lee]

He hasn't heard of it. He's there and everybody's telling him about this. Like, this is very real. My dad's old. He's 80 years old, you know, and he goes. And he actually met with, like, Russell in his, like, midtown. One office with no desk, right? It was just a telephone and two chairs, right? And. But he said he was. Curtis Blow was there and stuff. But he said there was something about that, like, that DJ Hollywood guy. And I was always curious. So, like, people came up, or at least were, like, aware at the time. Time, yeah.

[RZA]

DJ Hollywood had tapes floating around. Like, I'm more of the era of Cold Crush Brothers. Which is. Which is, you know, Cold Crush Brothers. No. Okay. So Cold Crush. I mean, people are arguing that Grandmaster Cass of the Cold Quest Brothers is. Might be the third rapper in history. Really? Like, you know what I'm saying? You might be the third. Heard they saying there's a guy named Cope larocque. Yeah, right. He might be the first rapper in history. Melly Mel.

[Andrew Schulz]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Grandmaster Cass. These are amongst the considerable. These are considered some of the first. And if not definitely in the Bronx, you know, I mean, where it comes from. So.

[Bobby Lee]

Right.

[RZA]

So, yeah. Cold Quest Brother, that song from the Cold Quest Brothers. The Fantastic Five, Fearless Four, Crash Crew.

[Bobby Lee]

So this is percolating at the time.

[RZA]

This is. That's tapes, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

And this is like. I'm trying to figure out, like, what it connects to. Like, I remember when I was a kid. Do you remember, like, the Jackass that showed Jackass on tv? Before Jackass, there was this thing that Bam Margera and his brother and their friends did. Did. There was a skate video called CKY and CKY2K. And it would mix skateboarding with pranks.

[RZA]

Okay.

[Bobby Lee]

This is the first experience I had with something that was, like, viral through, like, handing it to people in the same way that tapes, I think, where, like, I remember getting, like, Big L's tape.

[RZA]

Right, right, right.

[Bobby Lee]

And it was almost. People would gatekeep Big L a little bit.

[RZA]

It was like, it's a secret, right?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. I don't know why they felt like they wanted to be secret, but the only way you could hear about shit, it wasn't marketing, it wasn't fucking promo.

[RZA]

Somebody had to hand it to you.

[Bobby Lee]

Someone handed it to you, and maybe you could, like, burn a copy of it.

[RZA]

Oh, yeah, you got your fucking Kanye box. Yep. And you fucking.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, press record. And then.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's. That's. So that vibe and that feeling was always important to me. The vintage sound of hip hop. So you leaned into that. When Jizza did his first album, Worlds From a Genius, it was in the studio. Like, he had a demo first. I had the demo on cassette. Then when he put the album, done it.

[Bobby Lee]

So what, you made it more like the demo?

[RZA]

No, what do you. What I'm saying is that I have the demo of his album, which I love.

[Bobby Lee]

I love, love the album was Too refined.

[RZA]

Then I get the album. Like, yo, it sound like, what is. Like, what happened? Like, something is like. It don't sound like you.

[Bobby Lee]

The grittiness, the soul.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah. Whatever they did in that mixing board. So. So now my goal was to make sure that that doesn't lose. So when you put on 36 chamber, right? This is. Go to the tape, you turn it over, the cream. Yo, you. You hear. You hear the tape be like, hey, hey, yo, son. Class. Hey, yo, son. Like, all that happening, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

The chaos, it's real. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

It's real. And then when the beat finally drops, because you don't think it's gonna drop. You know what I mean? And I'm actually doing it live. I'm doing that live. I mean. Cause I'll be like, on seventh chamber, I pressed every snare manually.

[Andrew Schulz]

Wow.

[Bobby Lee]

So you're keeping the timing yourself.

[RZA]

Yeah, Every fucking snare. And you can hear it flap. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. I got it now. You know what I mean? I'm living. Yeah. You know what I mean?

[Andrew Schulz]

It's not perfect, but it's real.

[Bobby Lee]

Yes, exactly. Not perfect is what people. So the guy that does the audio, you met him earlier at the time, Cassetta. He's the best at, in my opinion, doing audio for standup comedy. But the thing that we always talk about, like, when we're filming specials, is, like, you need to hear the audience sometimes. Sometimes people who do audio for standup, they're. They just want the words to sound perfect. And then the audience and I go. When you're at a comedy show show, sometimes you won't even hear what the saying. Because people laugh.

[Andrew Schulz]

Someone's ordering a drink behind you somewhere, just, like, making.

[Bobby Lee]

That's why y', all, like, give people that experience where they feel like they're there.

[RZA]

That's smart, because your special actually do sound good. That. Yeah, no, no.

[Bobby Lee]

Shout out to Tom.

[RZA]

You know, I mean, because I've. I've seen specials where it's like. It's like it's hollow. Like, somebody put a filter over that.

[Andrew Schulz]

And they do, because they want to make it perfect for the standards of what, you know, the stereo should be.

[RZA]

Yeah, right. Netflix wanted, like, this.

[Bobby Lee]

It's not a sitcom with a laugh track. It's human beings who laugh at weird times. Sometimes they laugh late.

[RZA]

Right.

[Bobby Lee]

Sometimes they're kind of like repeating a word from it.

[RZA]

Right.

[Bobby Lee]

Make it ugly.

[RZA]

It's like. Like Richard Pryor. Right?

[Bobby Lee]

Remember when they're walking in, when he was live.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Andrew Schulz]

A guy walks up to him, takes a picture. It's like. It's so real.

[Bobby Lee]

It's the realest moment.

[RZA]

And he lives, lives off it. He lives into it.

[Bobby Lee]

I think that's one of the special sauce with Wu, is that you felt like it was not only the characters, right? Characters, I'm using that respect, but like not only the people that populated it, but also like the sound. Everything about it felt so authentic that it made things that weren't that feel mainstream or I don't want to say processed, but like in reflection of it, like.

[RZA]

I know what you mean. It's like. It's almost like you're like the hoodie skateboarder is better than the Olympic ice skater. Yeah, yeah, fuck all that shit. Even though it's all great, it's all great talent, but it's like, I don't

[Bobby Lee]

need the tassels, bro.

[RZA]

I can see my side right there. I don't need the tassels.

[Bobby Lee]

That's it. I want his sneakers scuffed.

[RZA]

Right, right, right. I want his jeans ripped. Right? Makes sense, yo. Yeah, but I will say there was intention to that, to the sound, you know, it was intention and. And it stayed like that for a while. Because when I did the Method man album, I felt like that we went to the studio on that album. I didn't. I never liked. I ain't gonna say I never liked. I love what we did, but I just felt like it was. I let too many fingers touch it. So when I went to Cuban Links, I ain't let nobody touch it, Nobody touch it. You know what I mean? I didn't even go to the studio. I did. I picked up it. The board in my house, put the two track reel in my house and that's. And if you even listen to that album, even though it's going to sound whatever way it's going to sound, you may hear stuff that has more sonic weight to it, but sonic ideas and the way that the MC sound. I had every one of their compressors set. So when Ghost came, you listen like in the early albums, Ghost sound like Ghosts again and again and again and again. Eventually he stopped sounding. He sound like Ghost, but it started sounding a little different than the place I had him in, you know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, because they stopped putting those compressors in the same place.

[RZA]

Stopped using what we use.

[Bobby Lee]

This is.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? It's like the setting. Like we came there today. I had a setting like you. Maybe these lights are preset for you.

[Bobby Lee]

Of course.

[RZA]

Every time you sit here, bro, it looks like your show if you guys gotta break this shit down and move proof.

[Bobby Lee]

You had the ghost setting.

[RZA]

Yeah. I had to go at everybody setting, bro. I want to ask you a question.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Because I just. We talk about Mitchell Pie.

[Bobby Lee]

Who?

[RZA]

Name. You know, name five.

[Bobby Lee]

Patrice O'.

[RZA]

Neill.

[Bobby Lee]

Patrice O'. Neill. Patrice O'.

[RZA]

Neill. That's a favorite.

[Bobby Lee]

Patrice O'.

[RZA]

Neill. Wow.

[Bobby Lee]

That's my top five.

[RZA]

He's funny. Yeah. Wow. That's good.

[Miles Medows]

Die line, die line.

[Bobby Lee]

Now, listen, listen. This is. I've seen everybody live, and I've seen them on their recorded stuff, right? So it's. I'm not just judging off of, like, what you see on video. There's some people where you see, they're like. They're special. And in my opinion, it's not, like, the best representation of them. Not even because of the jokes. Sometimes, like, their energy doesn't permeate the television.

[RZA]

That's true. You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

And there's some people who permeate the television, but, like, in person is not as impressive.

[RZA]

Right.

[Bobby Lee]

I don't know what that is. I don't know what that force is, but some people have that. That gift or that thing.

[RZA]

Right.

[Bobby Lee]

To me, it was just.

[RZA]

He was the most.

[Bobby Lee]

He was just the most fully formed. Like, he could give you great jokes. He could bring you into the joke. He could make you think it was happening in real time, and he could do a joke about the toughest thing and get you to laugh at it.

[RZA]

I'm gonna go back and study him. I've seen some of his work, but not a lot of it. And he is funny. Money. But I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go get. I'm gonna go take another observation.

[Bobby Lee]

Elephant in the room is the one that's probably available now on Netflix.

[RZA]

Okay.

[Bobby Lee]

Now, come. Et cetera. Look, he passed like, rip.

[Andrew Schulz]

Like, he didn't put out a ton.

[RZA]

I don't know that he passed. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

It's almost like a biggie. No, no, biggie was bigger. He was more renowned. But, like.

[RZA]

Well, he's. He's one of those super.

[Bobby Lee]

Like, a big L. Maybe that's Maybe a better. Like, everybody knew about him, but to me, it's, like, not even.

[RZA]

Okay.

[Bobby Lee]

I haven't seen anybody touch it. Yeah.

[Andrew Schulz]

Who's your favorite comedian?

[RZA]

For me, like, Richard Pryor just always seems to, like, had always. Like, he was. He. I still got him as number one because he was able to. My stomach growling. Hear that?

[Bobby Lee]

That was a long. I thought it was the subway. That was a Long growling.

[RZA]

Bro.

[Bobby Lee]

I never heard someone say, my stomach's growling. Well, it's still.

[Andrew Schulz]

You got a subwoofer in his soul.

[RZA]

I drunk before I ate my stuff. He's like, yo, bro, that's what you're giving me?

[Andrew Schulz]

Seriously, that's rice.

[RZA]

That's this one rice in there. Some koi.

[Bobby Lee]

But Richard is fantastic.

[RZA]

Reason why I say him, for me, is I just never seen nobody before or after animate anything into a situation.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Like, he's like, yo, the dog had. The dog always barking at me and. Right. And he said, then he had the monkeys. And then the monkeys die. And. And. And the monkeys died. I was sad. My monkeys died and shit. And I was sitting there, and the dog, they used to chase me. He jumps over the fence and he go, hey, man, sorry about your monkeys. Yeah, that's sad. I was gonna eat them and shit. You know what I mean? He's like, you know, don't let that shit get to you, man. You know, that shit could fuck you up, you know? Yeah. Be strong, man. All right, he said. Then the dog licked my hand, and he ran and jumped back over the fence. But before he landed, he looked back and said, now, you know, I'm gonna be chasing your ass again tomorrow. I was like, so is that a different.

[Bobby Lee]

No, Richard's.

[Andrew Schulz]

And the jokes still hold up. You listen to, like, old Prior. Like, they still work. Like, a comic could do them today. Like, maybe changing, like, a little, like, some language stuff. But, like, it's. The essence is still there. A lot of old comics. It kind of ages.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. Comedy doesn't. Comedy doesn't age well a lot of times.

[RZA]

Hold on

[Bobby Lee]

again, trains coming.

[Miles Medows]

Who's an artist you would love to work with that you haven't been able to?

[RZA]

I don't know. Right. I'm open to artists. I just. I just musically, you know, I never. This is corny, but I said it 100 times. I'll say it again. I never really worked with Lionel, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

She's out there again.

[RZA]

I know, but I know, like, if that was something that I think should have happened and. And definitely in our primes, it just never happened, y'. All.

[Andrew Schulz]

That would be fire.

[Bobby Lee]

Can you.

[Miles Medows]

Maybe you can get her to put out another album? I know we've been waiting a long time for that.

[RZA]

She already got the Apple number one Y album of the history.

[Andrew Schulz]

Like, I think they got it right, too.

[Bobby Lee]

I mean, she killed it.

[RZA]

I mean.

[Bobby Lee]

Okay, so just real quick, big L to you. What was happening in your life around that time? Very New York.

[RZA]

Big L's my man, bro. Wait, you knew him, bro? I don't talk a lot about Big L and cuz. That's my man. And. And me and Big L was rhyming back before Wu Tang.

[Bobby Lee]

Get the fuck out of here.

[RZA]

Wait, so.

[Bobby Lee]

So people outside New York, I don't know if they really know Big L that much.

[RZA]

Yeah, he's. He's growing, though.

[Bobby Lee]

It's weird. He's growing even in, like, Europe sometimes I'll be like, yeah, he's.

[RZA]

He's like one of those, like. It's certain jazz musicians, too, right, that you. You realize that they were another pillar of it, right? Another energy of it that you go. You don't realize until you realize it.

[Bobby Lee]

I think he was. I think he was ahead of his time, bro.

[RZA]

Like, he was special. And. And. And. And that was my man. That was my man, man. I know Method man said one time that I don't want to be people. You know, times that got tough with Big L. So he. He. He became a street pharmacist.

[Bobby Lee]

I thought his brother was the street guy and he was with.

[RZA]

Either way. I remember I had to dial him. But that was my man, though, right? I mean, I was. I had a. I had a drug moment. I'll talk too much about my drug moments, right? So. Yeah, but I had a drug moment a little bit. I was up and.

[Bobby Lee]

Really?

[RZA]

Yeah, I was lost in the sauce, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Using or. Or. Yeah, distributing.

[RZA]

No using, bro.

[Miles Medows]

Really?

[RZA]

Like. Like, yeah. I kept it to. You know, especially after my mom's passed. Yo, my mom's past. It's just like. I don't know. I lost myself for some years. Yeah. It wasn't reasonable. It was kept. You know, I kept it contained. And, you know, I mean. I mean, I contained. It wasn't publicly exposed. You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

What was the.

[RZA]

I didn't get into that, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

You don't even want to get into it.

[RZA]

I call it. You know what? I made my own formula.

[Bobby Lee]

Get the out of here.

[RZA]

If the I was doing, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

You are a producer, bro.

[RZA]

Yo, bro, the. I put. Yo, trust me. You package the. I made trillion.

[Bobby Lee]

Trillionaire. Trillionaire.

[RZA]

I'm serious, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Really?

[RZA]

You package what I. What I came up with. Wow. How long.

[Miles Medows]

Like, how long were. Did you go through that period?

[RZA]

I feel like it lasted at least. At least probably seven years. No way. Like, Bobby Digital is a product of that. Oh, wow.

[Andrew Schulz]

Wow.

[Bobby Lee]

How did you. How did you kick it? How did you.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Andrew Schulz]

What cut you out?

[RZA]

Yeah, like, we'll talk about that another time.

[Bobby Lee]

Fair enough.

[Miles Medows]

Okay.

[RZA]

Yeah. Wow. But it's gone. I don't even smoke weed.

[Bobby Lee]

I know.

[RZA]

Wow, that's interesting.

[Bobby Lee]

Saki's barely indulgent. Saki.

[RZA]

Wow.

[Miles Medows]

Cuz I love when you started doing the Bobby Digital stuff. I was like, oh, wow. I'm just seeing a new side of you. And I know that I was.

[RZA]

But I saw the future.

[Bobby Lee]

Wait a minute, what do you mean Bobby Digital? You saw the future? You're as inspired by this consumption or because you've always had kind of foresight

[RZA]

in what was going on that accelerated my foresight.

[Bobby Lee]

And then was part of that future bad if you didn't kick it. And that's why you're like, I gotta get off this guaranteed.

[RZA]

Wow.

[Bobby Lee]

So some like spiritual experience type of thing thing.

[RZA]

This guy, he's trying to dig in me.

[Bobby Lee]

Sorry, bro, don't do it.

[RZA]

Let's come back. Let's come back.

[Bobby Lee]

Come back to another time. Wow. Sorry, sorry. You were saying about L, you guys were close and then you had to call and be like, listen, dude.

[RZA]

Like, no, I was calling him. He had one throat in my formula. I need a sample. Well, at least 20, 20 machines. He had 25 of the formula. I had to get it from him.

[Miles Medows]

Yeah, but that was a real thing that rappers used to do. Like would go to other rappers or other rappers hoods and like battle. Like that was a real thing. Cause you hear stories of Big L and Jay Z having these rappers. And that's how you met El?

[RZA]

Yeah, I met him at a battle. Yep. Wow.

[Bobby Lee]

And nasty.

[RZA]

Just nasty, nasty. I forgot who was there. I feel like Fat Joe might have been there back then too.

[Bobby Lee]

Was it uptown? The battle?

[RZA]

No, we was in DC. This is like 90 kick. I feel like this is 90 outta here.

[Bobby Lee]

And pre written stuff or whatever.

[RZA]

Whatever. You got that, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Maybe the reason I like a lot of it is cuz, like he had some bars that were hilarious. Like I think a lot of the. The. There's a lot of dudes that battle rap now that are like genuinely geniuses at it.

[RZA]

Geniuses.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. Like I watched so many of these guys and they're phenomenal and they're funny and it's kind of like joke writing in a way.

[Andrew Schulz]

It's like Roast jokes.

[Bobby Lee]

It's like Roast jokes, right? And. But he would just have these lines that would have me dying, bro.

[RZA]

No, he's good, man. He was special. Just first of all, just like he's my, like, he was like my man. Like what I mean by My man is like. Like, every time I saw him, I felt good. You know what I mean? Like. Like, you know, and even when Ghost saw him, who didn't know him, like, I knew him, he felt good.

[Bobby Lee]

Really.

[RZA]

Like, you know, some people was like that. Like, you see them and it's like, yo, it's my man right here.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? He make you smile. He's real. He's still real. He wasn't old, nothing but real. He was an artist and he was real. You know what I mean? And I ain't saying, like, I spent a thousand days with him. You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

Sure. But you felt a connection with him. You thought he was positive energy.

[RZA]

Yeah, it's special.

[Bobby Lee]

What happened to that?

[RZA]

And he'll bust. Look. Yeah, he has 16 ready anytime. He has 16 ready for you. You want it? You know what I mean? You got it.

[Bobby Lee]

Did you ever have to battle him?

[RZA]

I don't know. I don't know about that, G. Speak on that. Wow.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow.

[RZA]

Damn.

[Miles Medows]

I want to know that one. Maybe off air.

[Andrew Schulz]

Well, yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

That's round two. That's round two. We're going to learn a lot of stuff.

[RZA]

He's a special. He's a special dude. So let's keep that specialty there. Let's do it.

[Andrew Schulz]

In thinking about, like, rap beefs, I'm so curious, your perspective on the current state of hip hop and rap. Like, obviously Kendrick and Drake had this massive thing, you know, a year, and, like, I know you kind of helped Kendrick a little bit when he was first starting off, like, helping with some samples and clearing some stuff. And then obviously you and Drake, it seems like, have some relationship with, like, Wu Tang forever and things like that. So I'm curious, when you saw that going down, what was your perspective? And like, now, like, things are kind of settled. What can you say about it?

[RZA]

I mean, hip hop is a sport as well as an art form. Right. It's like chess. Chess is a sport, but it's also an art form and it's also a competition. So hip hop, to me is very similar. So. So I thought it was great and healthy. The only thing that's, you know, that's. That's. That's. We could look at that in perspective. Is that because it's black culture in a way, even though it's not. But it's just. It is.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

Yeah, but it is. You know what I mean? I say it's not because where's Rick Rubin? Where's Charlie Chase? You know what I mean? Charlie Chase. Was part of the first crew, Grand Wizard Theodore. Some of you know, I think Charlie Chase was Puerto Rican. Tito from the Fearless Force. Puerto Rican.

[Bobby Lee]

It's a black contribution to pop culture that has become the dominant force in pop culture.

[Andrew Schulz]

Yeah, just capital C culture.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But. But. But, you know. But you know, the brothers put a lot in.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

No question.

[Bobby Lee]

They created it.

[RZA]

Right?

[Bobby Lee]

So.

[RZA]

And because of that, it comes with our stigma of you stuck in my shoe, y'. All. You know what I mean? In the old days, you couldn't even wear a kango, bro. Why you got to defend that? No, I'm serious.

[Bobby Lee]

Yo, why do you have to.

[RZA]

Yo, bro, if you wore. Can go.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

In the days when hip hop was first formulating. Yeah, you better be able to fight or have a gun or run fast.

[Bobby Lee]

What am I saying when I put on my kangle?

[RZA]

You saying that I can hold this down, kid. It.

[Bobby Lee]

Wow.

[RZA]

If not, give me. Get. Give me that. Holding it down.

[Bobby Lee]

Nobody stole from me my North Face. Yes.

[RZA]

I'm saying, look how they stole your north face. They snatched it.

[Bobby Lee]

You had me and my buddy in a. Outside Ans Plaza.

[RZA]

Remember?

[Bobby Lee]

Ans Plaza?

[RZA]

Is that booklet?

[Bobby Lee]

No, it was in on, like, 34th. Remember, there was a mall. It was like an inside 34th street on 34th street in Manhattan. There was, like, an indoor mall. I don't even know if it's still there.

[RZA]

I don't think I went to that motherfucker.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. I never went anyway. It was by, like, msg.

[RZA]

Okay.

[Bobby Lee]

And like, there was a little phone booth outside. This is back when we're using payphones, like, call our parents and shit. No, I was like, fucking 11, 12 years old. A couple kids ran up on me and him, and they're like, yo, we're gonna need that. And I was the last one of my group that got robbed.

[RZA]

Right. Right.

[Bobby Lee]

Like, I watched my buddy get his jacket, his no Face backpack taken, and it was like I was front row at the Garden, bro. I was like, yo, this is crazy. You got another life.

[Andrew Schulz]

You thought they were going to skip over you.

[Bobby Lee]

I don't think they want mine. I got purple. But anyway, yeah, they got my.

[RZA]

But. You know what I mean? But. But that's how hip hop was. Like, you know, you could. You be in that street jam and you got your. Whatever you got on, you got to be able to hold that down. Right? Right. So. Meaning because of that nature of it, when. When a hip hop battle starts, we don't know if it's going to always stay with the Art, we don't know if it's going to always stay on the. On the. Say on the wax. And so that's what makes it delicate. And then when the lyrics, you know. You know, to me, when Kendrick wrote that lyric to his son. I mean, to his daughter, to his mom. Yeah. Oh, gee.

[Miles Medows]

He broke him apart.

[RZA]

That was deep.

[Bobby Lee]

He broke him apart, bro.

[RZA]

That was deep. Well, I was just like, that's. That's. You know, that's. That lyric was strong as Nas writing the Cormega, you know.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, I thought you were gonna go ether.

[RZA]

But no, no, the song, the Cor. Mega, bro. One love for us who live this. Nas wrote one of the best rhymes in history with that and the other song, they Gave youe Power. I Gave youe Power. He's writing from the perspective of a fucking gun. Oof. Wow. And Kendrick, to me, rose to that level when he fucking wrote this fucking letter to this dude. But now it becomes. It goes back to what Jay Z said recently. It's unnecessary because can it become personal? Can it become back to Biggie and Pack, right? You know, Pac says I your wife, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, you said it kindly. Yeah, you said the kind.

[RZA]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Miles Medows]

Yeah.

[RZA]

But still, that's a hard. So it's a rhyme. I lost my first battle to a right. I didn't lose a lot of battles. I lost this one battle, though. I won most of my battles. Maybe two of my life I lost. But this dude, and I may be. I'm 13, 14, and my name is a scientist. All my lyrics is scientifically deep, bro. I tell you how the sperm go to the zygote. Mitosis. Exactly. Right? I said that. It's girls and the whole crew, you know, so like. Like 20 people, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And, you know, I'll go first. I said that. I thought I killed this. This said. I don't know. I forgot his name. I don't know. It's Mikey D or some whatever. My mc Mikey D. You talking that scientific. I make you get on the knees and suck my dick.

[Andrew Schulz]

Damn.

[RZA]

And the crowd.

[Bobby Lee]

What?

[RZA]

You can't say that. What you say?

[Bobby Lee]

What the fuck, Master?

[Andrew Schulz]

It's not clever.

[RZA]

There was no comeback. You can't. There's no comeback.

[Bobby Lee]

He called you a nerd, right? Yeah.

[RZA]

And now. And yo, and we thought about, like, do we fight? You know, me and Dodie, we was like. Like, yo, I can stab this.

[Bobby Lee]

Really?

[RZA]

Like, yo, it felt deep because this

[Bobby Lee]

throwing out a suck my dick is.

[RZA]

Yeah, it's deep.

[Andrew Schulz]

You had to fight.

[RZA]

It's Deep sleep. But it was a lesson. That's. Look, you, you hear Dirty, he'll, he'll say like that quick after that.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

By the time. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'mma bust your ass right now. I'm the one man army a song. He even said, right, you could suck my dick. He said it in his own.

[Bobby Lee]

So that's what he learned from that moment.

[RZA]

You learn like sometimes all that Dirty said on that song, Stomp said, want to get up and rap and rap and rap and rap and rap, man. That's it. That's it. Should I make as a head?

[Bobby Lee]

That's fine. I mean, sometimes, but sometimes that's what resonates the most.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Andrew Schulz]

Damn.

[RZA]

But so going back to your question, I, I, I think hip hop is doing great, bro. Yeah. Like, regardless of, of what's, of what is lacking, of what that battle did. And you're along May 15th. Drake will let us know what the Iceman thinks about it. And you'll know, but you'll know it's his talent, it's his skill. Is he coming in Muhammad Ali, Right. I gotta be careful saying this because when Mike won the belt back, but I was so hurt. I was personally heartbroken when Buster Douglas

[Bobby Lee]

took from him or. Yeah, bro.

[RZA]

Busta Douglas. I'm telling don't get Buster Douglas out this. You could get Buster Douglas.

[Bobby Lee]

You can.

[RZA]

You gotta be careful, bro. The dude took down the champ. You know what I mean? And nobody expected that. No. Right. So now how do you come back from that? You know what I mean? And I'm not saying that this was a Buster Douglas fight. This was two swordsmen at their peak, throwing round for round for round for a round.

[Bobby Lee]

All respect to Buster Douglas, but Kendrick's not Busta Douglas. No.

[RZA]

Hell no. Kendrick is a master. Drake is a master. The two Sports clash. Somebody swore it broke on that one. Okay, but he went home, right? That's like chess. You could come back and rock another day. And so I'm so excited to see what he do with this new album. He may go, who knows what he's gonna do? We're gonna find out. But if he comes like lyrical back on that bong, but if he comes back, like, yo, I'm making hits upon hits bong, you know what I mean? So I'm excited about that. But I love hip hop. I'm pessimistic about it and I think

[Bobby Lee]

that you're optimistic or pessimistic.

[RZA]

No, see, I love hip hop. I'm optimistic about it and I think that it continues to do what it was meant to do, which is inspire, enlighten, and feed so many families. Love.

[Bobby Lee]

Where can we see this movie, man?

[RZA]

In theaters this weekend, May 1st.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

You know what I mean? Theaters everywhere. Go check it out.

[Bobby Lee]

Presented by Quentin, by the way, your homie, Quentin Tarantino.

[RZA]

So one spoon of chocolate. Presented by Quentin Tanner, 19. Oh, produce. Executive producer.

[Bobby Lee]

So it means that they're going to be white characters. Saying the N word 100. Those are the qualifications.

[RZA]

That's the qualification family. Is that feet?

[Bobby Lee]

No, I. I was. I was disappointed.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

I'm a man of culture like Quentin.

[RZA]

Hey, Bobby, no feet in this movie, buddy.

[Bobby Lee]

Can you.

[Andrew Schulz]

Can you send us out on one more story?

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, oh, yes, please.

[Andrew Schulz]

There you were telling me before that there was a time that you went to Shanghai.

[RZA]

Oh.

[Andrew Schulz]

And you had to try to figure out a bathroom situation.

[RZA]

Do you want to store your rhyme? All of it.

[Bobby Lee]

All of it.

[RZA]

All of it. Okay, then I'll give you some more to fuck with. I'm gonna start with the story, then I'm gonna see if I got one bar for you.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, yes.

[RZA]

To chop up. Okay. Yes. So no, we was talking about, you know, filming, you know, just. So One Spoon of Chocolate is my fourth feature film.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

And my first film was called the man with the Iron Fist, and I shot that in China. Russell Crowe, Dave Bautista, Lucy Lewis. Such a great cast. Right. But in 2010, 2011, when we was doing the film the outside of Shanghai, all the bathrooms still had the standup joints. Yeah. You gotta squat the plot.

[Miles Medows]

You know what I mean?

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

I've seen them. Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

They still got them in parts of southern France.

[RZA]

Oh, wow.

[Miles Medows]

Can you bring this up? I don't know.

[RZA]

So that means that. That you. Bro, there's a hole in the ground. Hole in the ground. Or. Or. But even a hole in the toilet. I'm not in the toilet. But like. Like, you go into a stall.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

And you. You squat and you plot, right.

[Miles Medows]

Oh, what if you got bad knees?

[RZA]

You got to be strong, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

They don't got bad knees in China, bro. They.

[Miles Medows]

That's why they just look like squatting on the street and like that all the time.

[RZA]

Boom.

[Bobby Lee]

What?

[RZA]

So. So check it out. Right?

[Andrew Schulz]

That's a nice one.

[RZA]

That's a nice one. To know what to go back. Go back to one. That. That top. Top. Fourth one there. Right here? Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

Yep. There you go.

[Miles Medows]

What?

[Bobby Lee]

Little gr.

[Andrew Schulz]

So you don't.

[RZA]

That's a nice one as well. They wasn't that nice back Back, back, back when I went there, right? But here's the punchline. So now I'm bringing over 20Americans as heads of departments and things of that nature. So we. Like. Yo, we can't. First of all, I'm the most finickiest bathroom user you're gonna ever meet. That shit is on my writer.

[Bobby Lee]

What's on your right?

[RZA]

What type of bathroom? I gotta have a personal, clean, private space, bro. Yeah, yeah, that's mine.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

Nobody else could use it. You know what I mean? You got to mark me off my space. Yeah, very.

[Bobby Lee]

You had 10 siblings growing up, so

[RZA]

now I need my own bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, yeah.

[RZA]

Well, I had. On my. On my TV show, my. I had to. I had a trailer that was. That's my dumper, right? And my younger brother, who really doesn't really respect me as the rza and maybe not even as his big brother, because at first, mind you, he's like fucking little Hercules looking black Superman, two inches taller.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, wow.

[RZA]

Muscles. It's about 350, 400. Oh, shit. Right? So. But regardless, he's still my little brother. Yeah. Younger brother. So, bro, would you believe that? We get to set, I go say, I'm gonna get breakfast for everybody. Get breakfast. I give him breakfast and everything. And then I had to go and do some fucking, you know, check the monitor, whatever. He didn't do it, bro. He didn't do it. The dude goes in my trailer and blows it up.

[Bobby Lee]

No,

[RZA]

no, I came in there, bro. Yo, I kicked him off set. I banned him, yo.

[Andrew Schulz]

Too much Szechuan, yo.

[RZA]

Yo, he had a job. I had him working in security. He got fired that day, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

No way.

[RZA]

I said, yo, bro, you know, I only got one fucking rule. That's it. Don't use my bathroom.

[Bobby Lee]

So.

[RZA]

So going back to China, right? So. So we said, okay, let's build a Western bathroom.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. That's a reasonable thing.

[RZA]

And we do.

[Andrew Schulz]

Yeah.

[RZA]

So we build it, and we build with urinals and we build with toilets.

[Bobby Lee]

Great.

[RZA]

Right? Of course. You know how Western bathroom is. You walk in the bathroom.

[Bobby Lee]

What's first, urinals, then toilets.

[RZA]

Okay, okay. So day six, seven, whatever. Rick Yun, another actor. He's an Asian actor. He's in the film as well. He plays Zing Yi. He comes into the lunchroom. I also had a separate lunchroom because in China, lunch is whatever you open it and whatever's in that. I had a catered lunch. So you working with the me you got. You could choose 10 things.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah.

[RZA]

So Rick comes to lunch and he's just like, yo, bro, bro, I'm disappointed, man. So what you mean? You sound disappointed in my people, bro. That's what you talking about, bro. We having a great time. No, bro, I just came from the bathroom, bro. Yeah, Ed. Yo, bro. Somebody in the urinal. I don't believe him, bro. I can't believe. I'm like, nah, I can't. I like Eddie myself, bro. That don't sound like. It don't make sense. Not scientifically possible.

[Andrew Schulz]

It's not scientifically possible.

[RZA]

Like, how even do this. I don't believe him. Four days later, I go to bathroom.

[Bobby Lee]

No, no, no, no.

[RZA]

Two of them shits, bro. I'm like, what the fuck? I don't get it. I couldn't. But I understood what happened. We should have put the urinals.

[Bobby Lee]

Secondly, they got too excited at the urinals. They thought it was a fancy toilet. They're like, I don't even got a squat no more. It's high.

[RZA]

Yo, I'm not exaggerating this. I'm not making it up, bro. I just learned a lot about culture. All right, we need a bar now. We need a bar. Let see what I got, right?

[Bobby Lee]

That be hard to do.

[RZA]

You got to arch up and shit.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah, exactly.

[Andrew Schulz]

I can imagine how scared they're going to start to flush. It doesn't go. They're like, oh, dude.

[RZA]

So give me a. Give me a. What kind of bar you like?

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, dude, that's on.

[RZA]

And you.

[Bobby Lee]

You.

[RZA]

You.

[Bobby Lee]

It's on. You. You're the architect, bro. In a notes app, too, right?

[RZA]

I love it. Yeah.

[Miles Medows]

Every day. Still me. That's fire.

[Andrew Schulz]

You heard his orchestra album. He did a whole album with the Denver Orchestra.

[Bobby Lee]

Oh, yeah, it's just a. A whole.

[Andrew Schulz]

On orchestral piece.

[RZA]

I gotta give you something good. Cause I got a feeling that somebody gonna see it, you know? Okay, so this particular bar, right, was supposed to be. So at the end of my movie, One Spoon of Chocolate, there's a song that comes on that my buddy Bacon produced and I rhymed on. And he gave me this track a while ago. Go. And in the track, the hook says, maybe your God is something like my God, right? It says, all the bullets and the guns we use, like, to hide our lies. You know what I mean? It says, maybe your soul. I'm just. I'm paraphrasing. Maybe your soul is like my soul. You are suffering in the past and nothing ever lasts forever. Maybe we can pray together and see eye to eye that your God and my God is the Same God, Right? And then I wrote a verse for it which we didn't use.

[Bobby Lee]

His name is Bacon.

[RZA]

Yeah.

[Bobby Lee]

It's gonna get hard to Muslims and Jews to get on.

[RZA]

Exactly. That was a bacon.

[Andrew Schulz]

Turkey bacon. Turkey bacon.

[Bobby Lee]

Turkey bacon.

[RZA]

So. But who could split the atom into 10,000 pieces? My thesis. It can be achieved through telekinesis. Was made from its image. We could trace all ourselves to the same lineage. We all have the same arm. Leg, Leg, arm, head, appendages. We fought scores of wars with hordes of men carrying shields and swords, guns and missiles in the name of the Lord. And they gave him a thousand names. But the birds, the bees, the sea and the trees, the sun and the moon and the stars, they see him as the same genderless creator of the Genesis without a nemesis. The one with no beginning or ending. Omnipotent. But we separate ourselves on borders and believe the lies our forefathers taught us. Even the Arabs were subjugating their women and burying their daughters hiding inside of castles made of brick and mortar. Then build cities that pollute the very air and water from the Spanish Inquisitions, the Crusade. Muslims against the Christians, Buddhists against the Taoists, Hindus and superstition. All prowess or power attacking the powerless. Is this an act of war or an act of cowardice? The inability to accept we all showered by the same rays of the sun Days of the month. We all start off smaller than the microdite and grow from old to young. We all walk with two legs and speak from one tongue. I prefer to drop love while some prefer to drop bombs. At the barbecue my aunt and uncle used to argue about what God would do, what you should do, what they expect God to do. But doing for themselves was hard to do. The solution could be if we just came together. But they didn't bother to.

[Bobby Lee]

To.

[RZA]

We play together as kids on the military, we slay together Politically we can hate together. But why don't we just get on our knees and simply pray together? Stand together, face each other and see eye to eye without shame and proclaim. Maybe your God and my God are the same. That's right. Bong. Bong.

[Bobby Lee]

Yeah. Good goat, man.

[Miles Medows]

This was an honor, bro.

[RZA]

Thank you so much.

[Bobby Lee]

I'm sorry. Steal that one. My bad.

[RZA]

Yo, thank you. Thank you so much, bro.

[Bobby Lee]

Thank you so much. This is amazing. Make sure you guys go check out the movie. Yes.

[RZA]

Tickets on sales now. Tickets on sales right now. One spoon of chocolate. Bong. Bong.

[Bobby Lee]

Go check it out. And you got more coming as well, right?

[RZA]

Yeah, I'm on a mission.

[Bobby Lee]

I love it. I love it. And when you have been on a mission in the past has been incredibly fruitful. So we look. We look forward to indulging in this fruit, my friend.

[RZA]

Thank you. Thanks for inviting me, my man.

[Bobby Lee]

This is awesome. Thank you.