- You know, the funny thing about talking about your past,
it feels like you always have the answers, right?
And it's easy to say that "Oh, I knew, I knew, I knew".
And most things I won't be able to say
that I knew I was on the right course,
but for the Wu-Tang Clan, I knew.
Peace, whatup yo?
This is RZA, right here, from the Wu-Tang Clan
and this is the timeline of my career.
♪ I got too many ladies ♪
♪ I got to learn to say no ♪
♪ Ohh, We Love You Rakeem ♪
When I first started makin' music I was part of a crew:
me, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and GZA
called "All in Together Now".
And we had joined the manager named Melquan.
And Melquan thought that I had the lyrical talent
to be a solo artist,
so he put me in the studio to record songs, on my own.
But none were as catchy,
or as poppy as the hip-hop movement was at that time.
And so Tommy Boy suggested that I recorded a song
that had more of a pop appeal
and kind of fun, female-orientated song.
"Ooh We Love You Rakeem" became that song.
It became my first single as a recording artist,
my first release, my first video.
When you try to go and become an artist,
and you record a song, and you get a video,
you feel that life is gonna be all uphill.
But the song didn't work,
and so eventually Tommy Boy pulled the plug
on my album project.
There was a defeat in all reality,
but I think my determination
and my personality of not accepting defeat,
I didn't blame myself.
I didn't blame nobody.
I just felt like it was a bad move
and I gotta make a better move.
And so, even though I felt the defeat of it,
that defeat actually fueled me
to make sure my next attempt became successful.
♪ The ruckus, ten times ten men committing mad sin ♪
♪ Turn the other cheek ♪
♪ And I'll break your fucking chin ♪
♪ Slaying boom-bangs like African drums [we'll be] ♪
♪ Coming around the mountain when I come ♪
For me, creatively, I realized that the best thing
I could do is express myself, unfiltered,
uninfluenced by outside opinions.
If I'm feelin' good about it
and if my immediate crew around me is feelin' good about it,
something has to be good about it.
So I returned back to my hip-hop roots.
Was just makin' beats in my my basement,
making songs, spontaneous, based on a vibe,
and I was feelin',
it was all about, just coming with a natural,
unpredictable talent that I felt that I had inside me.
And that led me to start making beats
that was probably obscure,
very different from a lot of producers at the the time.
And it also led me to connect with my Wu-Tang brothers,
other MCs who also was hungry
for the raw style of hip-hop,
the style of hip-hop that was really based in lyricism,
and MC battles, and challenges.
And you take that energy
along with, I think, some of mythology
that we acquired through watching kung-fu movies
and reading comic books.
When we fused our natural lives together,
it definitely effected and created a product
that stands the test of time.
For me to go back and reflect
on the first sessions that Wu-Tang had,
I mean, there had to be something,
like Columbus discovering America,
like a new frontier.
But to get all nine members and all this energy,
bundled together in the studio session
was unknown of, unheard of,
and for me, it was just total excitement.
And as the producer,
I never left the studio.
You know, you look back and see me in old documentaries,
you'll see me just,
you could tell my Under Armours was smelling bad, y'all.
Because you could tell that I slept there,
I got up in the next day,
I kept goin', I kept goin'.
It felt, kinda, almost like mad scientist
tryin' to create something.
Exuberating, exhilarating, all the energies
that I felt recording that album
has never been captured again in our reality.
It was experimenting and going into what was unknown.
You know?
But bravely going into it, you know?
Creatively.
It's that style of bringing sound energy together
was definitely new
and as that mad scientist producer,
it was like the trip of a lifetime.
♪ Escape from your Dragon's Lair ♪
♪ In particular ♪
♪ My beats travel like a vortex ♪
♪ Through your spine ♪
♪ To the top of your cerebral cortex ♪
♪ Make you feel like you bust [buzz] from raw sex ♪
After going through the first five albums
into the "36 Chambers",
"Return to the 36 Chambers", O.D.B,
to "Cow" by Method Man,
"Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..." by Raekwon,
"Liquid Swords" by the GZA,
even "Ironman" by Ghostface Killah,
and maybe the Gravediggaz,
so all these records that came out,
all was platinum or gold, and critically acclaimed
and it was like the Wu-movement
felt like it was really firmly established in hip-hop.
So after all these solo albums,
it's now time to regroup and go back in the studio
and try to recapture that team of energy
that we did on "36 Chambers".
I was probably at my best creative self.
I had gained some knowledge on music theory.
My music equipment was advanced at that stage as well.
It wasn't the same as when we was doing the first album
where we all was in the studio,
you know, sharing a big [indistinct],
sharing a sandwich.
It was like, now success was tasted by everyone.
It wasn't egos,
it was more like everyone now wanted to come back together
and prove that Wu-Tang could be number one.
I asked these guys to give me five years
and I promised we would be number one,
so now it was time to live up to that promise.
We actually all headed to California,
and we had what they called the Oakwood apartments.
And we rented out fifteen apartments.
We rented out two studios
and these studios was going 24 hours a day.
It was really like the studio was kinda like a barbecue,
you know what I mean?
Because there was so many of us there
and so much talent being recorded.
We rocked that place.
It came out and it was number one on the Billboards.
We shipped two million records in the first couple of weeks.
And it was a double album.
And so that means it ended up grossing the industry
about 40 million dollars, yo.
And that's, like, Hollywood numbers,
you know what I mean?
We felt like Hollywood stars.
We definitely felt like we were sittin' on top of the world.
I felt it, as a producer, as a MC,
but more importantly for me,
I think I felt that what I considered the nine greatest MCs
in the world had arrived to their destiny
to show the world that they was number one.
It was our triumph.
[melodic hip-hop beat]
- Ghost Dog, Power Equality.
- Always see everything, my brother
- So after "Wu-Tang Forever",
if any fans of Wu-Tang would listen to the album,
you would know the songs like "Reunited"
and you would hear loud violins being played
and you would hear that certain melodies
and certain chord progresses are starting to grow.
It's starting to become more classical in production style.
So music theory is evolving more and more inside of me.
And then, having a chance to be friends with Quincy Jones
and have a lot of conversations with him
about jazz theory and what music should be,
and then one day in my office,
a guy named Dreddy Kruger shows up at my office
with Jim Jarmusch.
And Jim Jarmusch, I think they met each other,
they had the same weed dealer.
He shows up and he says that he has a film
he's working on called "Ghost Dog"
and he want me to be the composer.
And it clicked for me,
it's like "wow, I was headed to be a composer".
And it all just fell in place.
I had conversation with Quincy Jones,
he composed his first movie at the age of thirty,
and I think I had just turned twenty eight
and I was like "well? If I start now, maybe I can catch up
and be, you know, as great as you one day".
When you want to go from hip-hop music to scoring,
it's not an easy transition.
In fact, if you hear Jim tell you the story,
I could've been, up to that day,
the toughest composer he worked with
because I didn't understand the technical,
logistical side of what composing was.
Jim, he tells the story and we laugh about it,
that I would show up to the scoring session
with a deck full of music,
but not placed properly in the movie
and I would show up at eleven pm at night,
me and O.D.B. with a couple of 40s.
It was like "here's the next few pieces
of music that I wrote for the movie",
and he has to go and figure out like "wait what do I do?".
I said "well that's for that scene",
but you can't do like "but that's for that scene".
It has to be like "there's an in; there's an out".
There's a queue sheet.
There was no queue sheet for "Ghost Dog".
[intense beat]
"Kill Bill", I think was one of the coolest things
that happened to my career, to that date.
I mean, having number one albums
and going to platinum records, of course, is great
but a movie score on such a big film.
I think we got nominated for BAFTAs and Oscars.
It was just a different, a different experience for me.
And working with a great mind like Quentin Tarantino,
a great creative mind,
a music lover,
and eventually a mentor of mine.
When he had the script of "Kill Bill",
he put it in my hands,
said "I want you to read this".
And I read it and I was just amazed by it.
I think it was 200 pages
but in the original draft of the script
he had, like, the sound effects written in it,
'cause you know, I make my music like that,
so I'm like "this guy is in the same mind frame".
I actually realized that I wanted to learn
about film directing,
and he was interested in learning about music production.
We said we would exchange ideas
and that led to me going to China,
on-set with my composition notebook and writing,
and taking in lessons about film directing.
From angles, to what a DP does,
what the production designer does.
I just spent time studying
and Quentin was a gracious teacher.
It may be around the final week of shooting in Mexico,
a few of the producers was saying
"RZA's been here for a while - what is he doing?
Like, what part of the movie is he?
You know, what is he doing?".
'Cause mostly everybody in the movie set
is part of the movie set,
you know what I mean?
And Quentin's like "well I haven't decided
what Bobby's gonna do for the film.
Right now he's just shadowing me basically.
You know, doing the knowledge."
But I remember maybe four nights later,
at the same dinner moment,
he makes an announcement
"I decided what I want Bobby to do for my film.
He's gonna be my composer."
And up to that date,
Quentin Tarantino never used a composer
for any of his films.
And he said "I want you to do for my film,
the same way you produce your music.
I want that same type of energy.
The same way the sound effects, the vibes,
the different, the stings,
a lot of different things that he found in Wu-Tang music,
he wanted "Kill Bill" to encompass
into his soundscape as well."
It not only enhanced me, in the sense of my musicality,
and composing, and the process of doing something.
and also led on to a six year mentorship,
led me to become a movie director.
So, "Kill Bill" is always gonna be one
of those great markers in my career line.
- They made me a cripple,
but if you help me,
I'll forge my greatest weapon ever.
- I met Russell Crowe in "American Gangster".
We kicked it off, you know?
Became friends and just had this broham energy about us.
He was on another film called "The Next Three Days"
and Paul Haggis thought it'd be funny
if I came and played a character
that beats him up with a stick.
Because he knew our relationship,
he thought that would be funny.
I though it'd be funny.
I don't know, maybe it was a three week, four week shoot,
but my schedule of working was, you know,
a day here, a day there,
so I had a lot of time
and walking through all the steel mills
and I just really went back to -
Pittsburgh is a town that I spent some time in,
in my youth,
so now I really had a chance to go back
and study it more.
And I was studying the foundation of steel
and all the things about it.
After studying with Quentin for six years,
he explained the best thing I could do now is write.
You know?
I could go out and look for a job as a director,
maybe do this or do that,
but he told me that he writes his own material.
And he thought that would be the best direction for me.
And it sunk into me.
And I started writing "The Man with the Iron Fist"
and I didn't finish it,
really, until I was in Pittsburgh with Russell.
I was in this whole steel valley mold
and the blacksmith being that character,
I fully developed it.
Then around the time, when we almost finished the film,
I had draft of the script ready.
And I gave it to Russell, just to read.
A few months later, he enjoyed it
and said he's interested in helping me get it made.
The cool thing about that film,
first of all, it had a lot of good buddies help me out,
you know, Eli Roth co-writing it with me.
I consider Eli Roth my classmate
because when I was doing my mentorship with Quentin,
Eli was always around, always there,
watching movies with Quentin and taking knowledge.
Eli was already up the bat with "Hostel"
and a few other things,
and now it was my time up to bat.
"Man with the Iron Fist" was my debut,
taking on directing, lighting, and acting,
I think I was too much Clint Eastwood on that, yo.
I think, it was like, a brain surgeon course
in creativity.
Because, you talking about 18 hour days, easy.
You know what I mean?
And you talking about every piston of my brain
had to be sparked because at the end of the day,
I gotta worry about what is in front of the camera,
what's behind the camera,
what's the colors on the clothing,
so many things, yo.
I would think it was the final molding of me as an artist.
And I would also say was, potentially, the forging
of RZA as a man.
You know, we spent 9 months in China away from my family.
You know, the only time I had joy
was when the other actors were comin' to town, you know?
Other then the talent, I was just there.
And that's it for 9 months,
but it really forged me.
- They ain't pushin' us out.
This happened just how they want it.
- [Kid] Why don't we talk to your cousin?
- [Andre] That dude a gangsta. He make me nervous.
- Then what the hell are we?
- We ain't no gangsters.
- After being a director for "Man with the Iron Fist"
and getting my PhD in artistic expression,
I fell in love with the whole process.
You know, I moved to Hollywood,
and had a new son named Rakeem,
and bought a nice home,
and I decided this would be where I spend most of my time.
I spend 70% of my time right in Hollywood, California.
I started pursuing more expressions in the field of film.
Getting a chance to get a script called "Cut Throat City",
when I read it,
I felt like it was meant for me to tell this story.
Even though I didn't grow up in New Orleans
and Hurricane Katrina,
the story of four men who have a lot of aspirations,
and those aspirations turn into desperation?
I was like "that sounds like Wu-Tang to me."
You know what I mean?
That sounds like my life.
And we go out to New Orleans and we get a great cast.
You know, from Shameik Moore, to Demetrius Shipp Jr.,
Wesley Snipes, Terrence Howard, Ethan Hawke,
Eiza González, to name a few, T.I..
That energy of bringing people together,
I realized is my natural ability.
One thing about creativity in me,
as an architect, they say, of the Wu-Tang,
I look to find the proper elements and ingredients
to make my painting.
"Cut Throat City" is my latest painting.
I always say that even the greatest master
always remains a student.
Life teaches us everyday.
For me, as an artist, I'm always striving
to gain more knowledge
because the more knowledge that I have,
the more way I can express myself.