Interview RZA

As the mastermind behind Wu-Tang Clan, rapper, producer, director, and actor Robert “RZA” Diggs changed pop music in general and hip-hop in particular with the release of his group’s seminal 1993 debut Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Over the course of a single album, RZA radically reinvented hip-hop with a homemade mythology and defiantly new sound that brilliantly fused black crime fiction, gangsta rap, martial arts, and Nation Of Islam ideology. RZA went on to produce a string of instant-classic solo albums from Wu-Tang Clan brethren like Raekwon (Only Built 4 Cuban Linx), Method Man (Tical), and Ghostface Killah (Ironman). After the 1997 Wu-Tang Clan album Wu-Tang Forever, RZA stepped back from producing every Wu-Tang solo album, and focused on his own solo career and building the Wu-Tang empire. He has continued to produce and rap for the Wu-Tang Clan while branching out into film as a sought-after composer (Kill Bill and Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai) and increasingly as an actor, with attention-grabbing supporting turns in American Gangster, Coffee And Cigarettes, Funny People, and Derailed. In 2005, RZA added “author” to his overflowing résumé with The Wu-Tang Manual. He recently released his second book, The Tao Of Wu, a stream-of-consciousness meditation on spirituality and faith. The A.V. Club recently spoke with the hip-hop legend about his spiritual path, whether homosexuality is genetic, his love of Richard Jeni and the Farrelly brothers, and internal schisms within The Clan.

The A.V. Club: How did the book come about?

RZA: A few years ago, I thought about writing a book such as this, a book based on wisdom and life. I talked with some publishers about it, and Riverhead was a company that wanted to do a book with me. Our plan was to do The Wu-Tang Manual first, then come back with a book that would be based more in wisdom. So we did The Wu-Tang Manual and had some success with it. Now we’re back with the book we always wanted to write. It was my agent’s advice that we start with the Manual first, to get me established as an author and have people understand that I really wanted to write. 

AVC: The Tao Of Wu is a little more esoteric than The Wu-Tang Manual.

RZA: The Wu-Tang Manual was putting together different things, different ideas. It was an entry into this world: the things I think about, the things that got me to be who I am, whatever I am. For the people, for those who look at the path of me and say, “Wow, he went upon a path that is not a path to follow.” So this book really puts you further upon a path. The Wu-Tang Manual introduced you to it, gave you some Wu-Tang folklore, gave you some stuff about the Wu-Tang Clan, for any fan that would enjoy it. But for this, even if you’re not a fan, this is definitely a book of wisdom that’ll get you on your way.

AVC: How did you develop an interest in spirituality?

RZA: It first started from growing up, going to church with my uncle, my mom. But then getting a taste of mathematics really opened up my mind to the world. It gave me the chance to really expand myself. I think mathematics brought me into this. What we call “spirituality.” I like to also use the word “mindfulness.” So it brought me to this mindfulness where I’m looking at life, and then from there, I came across many books of spirituality through the Tao, through Buddhism, through Confucianism, also through reading on Hinduism, and always Christianity. All these different ways of seeing spirituality, I realized, had a common path. And by going through all these different walks, I think it’s really built up a certain kind of intrinsic nature inside myself that allows me to maybe even reflect it back to others, so they can get it without having to go through the same thorn-picking I had to go through.

AVC: You talk about what these major faiths have in common, a core that they share.

RZA: Yeah. I think one thing most of them have in common is, they all realize that everything manifests from one. That’s whether you’re dealing with science, religion, Bible, whatever. They all realize it all came from one, and then from one, you got many. So, for instance, Hindus have many different gods, but it all started from one, and everything was the offspring of the particular entity. The Egyptians got all these different gods. No, there’s still one chief, and all the others are different expressions of the one. Then, if you think about Christianity, you’ve got three gods. You know, the Holy Ghost, Jesus, and God. But you realize that that’s still one, just a different expression of the one. Then in Islam, they say Allah, that’s it, that’s one. But then with the word “Allah” we get “all,” you know what I mean? And then you have the 99 attributes to describe him. So they all get into this same point of, really, there’s a oneness, there’s a father to this creation. And then science says the father is a tadpole microorganism that grew into a man. That’s proven every day with a sperm cell. So even that is one sperm cell, there’s one sperm cell that penetrates the egg. The rest of them don’t, even though millions try. So they all lead to oneness, and I know that there’s many ways of getting that expression. People got their own traditions and languages of it. That’s why you can say “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “God” and be saying the same thing from three different cultures.

AVC: Different names for the same thing?

RZA: Exactly. In French, look at the number one. You’ve got o-n-e, then you’ve got u-n, then in Spanish it’s u-n-o. And then ichi in Japan, but it’s all about one. When they show you with their finger, it’s still one, but the language is describing it different.

AVC: You talk a lot about the concept of knowledge of self.

RZA: The knowledge of self is the most important thing, because how are you going to know God if you don’t know yourself? How are you going to know anything if you don’t know yourself? The word “knowledge” itself, we like to break it down into two different words, “know” and “ledge.” You’ve got to know the ledge. Know the limitation of things. Know where they go, know where they start from. We say knowledge is the basic foundation of the universe. Everything is first based on something being known. Then, when it’s known, then it can be manifested. They say that the true self is the self, is your soul, and that this soul is basically a water drop from the ocean. So if it’s a water drop from the ocean, the most high is this ocean, and this is one ocean, and we’re all just those drops of water that come from this ocean, that still get drawn up by the sun, and then it’s still back to that same ocean. Therefore, we’re always the same. We are all the same. There’s only one soul. There’s only one ocean. Everything else is a different expression of it. You know, that makes sense in a lot of ways. 

Now, this ain’t obvious, what is your self? Find your true self. The old question, asked in many ages, “Who am I?” Once you figure out who am I, and you know who am I, then you have that knowledge of self. You realize that “Okay, wow, this universe is really built for me, because when I close my eyes and pass away, this universe won’t even exist for me.” If you don’t know yourself, you don’t know your nature. If you don’t know your nature, you don’t know where to exist. Let’s take an example of, if you know your nature, you know that you could live on water, or you could live on land. You could live in the cold, you could live in the warm. By knowing your nature, knowing yourself, you know what to be and how to live. And that only comes from knowledge of self, knowing yourself. A fish has got to know it’s a fish in order to know it can’t survive on dry land. Animals are given instinctive knowledge of themselves, but man loses himself. He doesn’t know. That’s why he’s got the zodiac signs to represent himself. He doesn’t truly know his whole self. Over the years, we lose ourselves over and over and over, either through fabrication, propaganda, or just dismissal. Being asleep, or falling from our grace. But when you don’t even know who you are, what you are, and where you belong, then how are you supposed to do what you’re supposed to do?

AVC: A lot of your teachings seem rooted in Five Percent ideology.

RZA: There is a misconception of what Five Percent means to me: 5 percent of the entire population of the planet, who have knowledge of themselves, and are able to live a righteous life, to live accordingly to their nature. Then you got 10 percent of the people who know this as well, but they use their knowledge to blood-suck the 85 percent. So that’s why I consider myself to be part of the Five Percent. I’m not here to blood-suck the people, because I know what time it is. It’s like a magician knows the magic trick, but the audience doesn’t know, so therefore they’re fooled by his illusion. I’m a person that knows the magician’s trick, and is showing you how it is done, so you don’t get trapped into the illusion. 85 percent of the people would go for the illusion. Five percent would go, “No, the rabbit didn’t come out of his hat. If it did, he put it in the hat.” So that’s what it means by being part of the 5 percent, it means… knowing Islam through the 5 percent. Nation Of Gods And Earths, that’s what they’re actually called. Through that Nation, we were given mathematics, and we were given teachings that were taught by honorable Prophet Elijah Muhammad. It was based on Islam, and it was considered Muslim lessons. And with any Muslim lesson, they had a lot of mentions of different things, different lessons and questions that were to enhance a man, and give a black man knowledge of himself in the world because he had no knowledge of himself. He thought that his own history was going back to slavery, and then from slavery back to a jungle life. He didn’t know that he was the father of civilization, not just this limited mind space that we had, especially growing up in the ’80s. I guess it’s a little different now with the Internet and information being available, but in the ’80s, you would have no clue of nothing but what you saw on 10 channels on TV. 

Now, you know, you’ve got hundreds of channels and more ways of things, but the true image of us was totally lost. And I can speak on that, as a man myself, because I didn’t know of no greatness of myself. So anyway, the lesson is that those teachings gave us that information. Over the years, I’ve checked that information as much as I can, and come to find out that information was actually correct. If it was correct, and scientifically correct, and historically correct, it was good for me. So that was a good foundation for me. But that was only 120 questions and answers. And through those 120 questions and answers, that’s enough to get a man started on the path of wisdom. So I always give respect to it. And I will say the one thing that definitely did calculate properly for me was the mathematics that I learned from the brothers, because it makes sense every day, no matter how I look at it, I can’t get around it. I try to get around it, I keep trying to find one plus one is not two, somehow. I can’t. People can talk about string theory, parallel realities, different dimensions, it’s still one plus one is two, baby. 

AVC: In the book, you talk about discovering mathematics from GZA in 1980, where it seems like folklore, passed from one person to the other. It wasn’t something you could read online.

RZA: Right, it wasn’t online, it was something that was passed. At that time, they weren’t even writing it down like that. The good brother would teach you verbally, like good old kung fu. You have to learn it from a master, you couldn’t get it from a book. But it was written down, though, it popped up through lessons and Xerox copies of it circulating throughout the city, but it was weird. Blood culture, you know? They become Bloods or Crips, and they join gangs. And they all have the same precepts of knowledge that were given back in the ’80s. I think it was a real street thing in the ’70s and ’80s, that brothers were given street knowledge. It was a real great thing. And now we don’t got that. Now, street violence is being more advocated than street knowledge. So it’s been reversed.

AVC: There are a lot of lessons, parables, and messages in the book. Which do you think is most important? 

RZA: Hmm. I don’t know, I think each lesson should resonate with the person who needs it. Each lesson is like medicine. It’s a form of prayer to me, to read, to study. I’ve got a lot of examples of me being up shit creek, and different people may be in different situations where they may be 9 years old and up shit creek, and this information will help. Maybe 20 years old, maybe it’ll help you. So I don’t have a favorite, I think overall I just show many, many different chambers of a struggle, and making it through the struggle. And find a lesson within your struggle. People don’t find lessons in their struggle.

One of the greatest things that ever taught me a super lesson was when I seen a baby come out of my woman’s womb. The head and body—you know, a baby’s born inside a woman’s stomach, you know all that. But to watch this thing come out and fight for life, yo, and to see the woman’s risking her life at the same time this thing is fighting for life, you know what I mean? And to see this war that could end with both lives being lost, or both lives being made. To see it happen, to see the vagina open to the size it does, to see everything that comes out, and all these different things of that moment, it gave me an enlightenment of life itself. It sparked my whole mind to a whole other level of living. And if I never would have seen it, I never would have understood life to this degree. I never would have appreciated life as much as I did from other animals after. I started appreciating other animals’ lives. Because they birth them, too. There’s a war. Even the chickens, who hatch eggs, who walk around with the chicks following them for the first few weeks, it’s like… yo, life is important to life. 

AVC: There are lessons you can only learn from experience. 

RZA: That’s right. From experience, you should be able to learn from anything, because experience is the best teacher. But in our day and time, what we need is wisdom, because wisdom overcomes experience, because experience is wisdom, but there’s a level of wisdom that overcomes the experience, and that’s the experience that’s already lived by others. There’s no need for me to get shot like Malcolm X. He did that for us already. I’m not trying to repeat the histories. I already learned from what they did, whether in college, or through gangster movies and saying, “I’m not going to end up with these same results. I’m going to learn from other men’s experience.” And this is why we’ve got Bibles and Korans, and Bhagavad Gitas, and books like that. Because we’re getting other people’s experiences. So we’re getting access to this mind, so that our bodies can benefit from it.

AVC: In the book, you talk a lot about being a student of life. You’ve been doing a lot of acting lately. What’s the best acting advice you’ve been given?

RZA: Wow. I got some good advice from some actors. You know who actually gave me the best advice? Giancarlo Esposito. I have a problem moving, because I’m hip-hop, so I’ve got to set a rhythm. Even right now, as I’m talking to you, my feet are tapping. It’s just something that, I don’t know, it’s a habit. It’s part of me being a musician, right? And I told him about it and shit, and I went to a few casting calls, and they told me to be still. I said “When I be still, I’ll still be moving my toes, but you just can’t see it.” He said, “Well, look. If you’re going to move something in acting, move your eyes. When you feel that motion, make it your eyes that make the motion, and tell it with your eyes.” And the movie I did with him, called Gospel Hill, I think is one of my better things, actually. It wasn’t a big, popular movie, but in two of my scenes in that movie, I really felt confident as an actor, and in a character that actually wasn’t me, even though you’re supposed to always draw from yourself. That’s another good advice they told me, that when you’re acting, no matter what situation you are in, you must always draw from your own emotion. It could be an emotion you’ve never had before, though, so how are you going to draw from it? But with the other advice that he gave me, which was let the eyes tell it, whether they’re telling the truth or not, try to let the eyes tell the story or make the motion. That added a lot to me.

AVC: You were great in Funny People.

RZA: Well, by the time I got to Funny People, I already had a few experiences, so I knew I could turn it on and turn it off, so I was kind of confident. But I was definitely under a lot of pressure, because of the comedians that were around, and hoping I could be funny in a movie called Funny People. And not even knowing the whole result of the movie. I didn’t know exactly how it was going to turn out, I didn’t go all the way through the whole script. I never read the end of stories or movies that I’m in, because I want to see it. I want to be surprised. I never even saw the end of Kill Bill. I was working on Kill Bill for months, and never knew the ending until I saw the ending. I didn’t ever tell Quentin. I told him after, “You know I never read the ending, right?”

Anyway, it was a good experience on Funny People. I learned a lot. I had a real fun time working with Seth [Rogen] and Judd [Apatow] and them. And it was just another great lesson for me, actually, to pick up another piece of knowledge, and to have myself actually associated with some great people like that. 

AVC: It seems like most of your movies are dramas or action. 

RZA: Right. Well, they’ve got me doing another small scene now in the new Todd Phillips film, called Due Date. And so I’m going to do that, too, and maybe put another comedy scene… try to pull another joke off this.

AVC: You’re a big fan of comedy. What’s making you laugh these days?

RZA: Oh, I love comedy. There’s so much funny shit, depending on where you at. In a hotel room, like I was last week, me and my wife, I was dying laughing at fucking Heartbreak Kid. It was stupid. That movie is funny as shit. But the Farrellys are always funny. There’s Something About Mary was a masterpiece, and we discovered that movie in a hotel room as well. I remember Ghostface called my room, “Yo, you gotta see this movie, There’s Something About Mary, this is funny as shit, I know you love comedy.” I watched it, and he was right, it was funny as shit. Most of my 20s, I would say, where the Improv was on TV, before Comedy Network took off, all these things would have improv on. I’m a fiend for improv. I still buy all the comedy DVDs and watch all the stand-ups. Earthquake and Aries Spears are good out there. Richard Jeni’s one of my favorites. He’s a funny motherfucker, yo. He’s the first one that said, “Did you ever watch The Jetsons late at night and look at Judy and go, ‘Man, Judy Jetson’s kind of hot’?” [Laughs.] “What about Wilma Flintstone? Would you fuck her?” It’s like, these are fucking cartoon characters, but there hasn’t been a day that you haven’t looked at one of these motherfuckers and thought about what you could fucking do to her. He’s a funny dude.

AVC: What’s your upcoming film The Man With The Iron Fist like? 

RZA: I’m just going to say that I’m looking to make a real good movie for us, yo. I want to make something that… They said the album, 36 Chambers, by Wu-Tang, was new, different, and they said it helped propel the hip-hop community. I would love to do that somehow on film. I would love to make the same mark or impact, and I’m striving to do it with this film as my first serious directorial debut. And I’m going to tell you that we put a lot of time into the script, a lot of energy into it, a lot of people were supporting me on it, and if the energy comes out right, it should be a classic film to have in your library.

AVC: When did you start working on it?

RZA: I started writing it a few years ago. Right before Quentin did Grindhouse, I started writing it. And I was talking to Eli Roth about it. We all took a vacation to Iceland for New Year’s and shit. That’s some boys-being-boys shit. So we’re on our way to Iceland, and I just start talking about the film and shit, about the idea of it before it was fully written, and everybody kind of dug it, thought it was fun, thought it’d be real nice and shit. And I wrote a few scripts since then, but then Eli Roth came back to me after I had a few films under my belt, to say “I graduated from the school and I’m going to make my own movie now.” Eli came to me and was like, “Yo, I would love to help you make this Iron Fist movie. I just love it, I think the story is unique. I think it’ll be great for the genre.” So he re-inspired me to go back to it, and then I rewrote it again and showed it to a few people, other partners, and they all loved it, and they said, “Let’s polish it a little bit.” Then Eli personally helped me polish it up, which really helped me a lot, because he’s a smart guy, smart writer, and boom, there we are. We got it done, complete, circulating through the system, and it should be all cracking up pretty soon. 

AVC: What’s the premise?

RZA: I don’t think I want to really describe it, I think I just want to say that we’re striving to do what I did in hip-hop for film. It’s striving to bring the originality and excitement that I brought to hip-hop to the silver screen. I don’t want to give the movie away. You know, it’s action, it’s a certain genre, but I think I’ve got a certain twist of originality and a certain way of filming, a certain way of seeing scenes, that only a few people in Hollywood see. And definitely only a few people of my generation see. So I don’t know if that gives you any information or not.

AVC: You’re also involved in the upcoming remake of The Last Dragon.

RZA: Yeah, Sony owns the rights to it, and we—me, Sam Jackson—both signed on as producers and potential actors in it, so that’s something that we’re waiting for them to get together. We got [original Last Dragon producer] Berry Gordy, his family’s involved with it as well. There’s been a new script out already, but to me, they didn’t nail it, so I sent the writer some books he should read, and I gave him a few pages. I’m not the writer, but I helped him out, gave him five pages of information, sent him some books so he could really make a story that’d resonate with today’s times for The Last Dragon. But I want to keep the martial-art integrity, parts that the first one may have lost, because the other guy was in love with Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee is still the master, still the greatest, but maybe his popularity in cinema is not the same as it was in the ’80s, because in the ’80s, you were still getting Bruce Lee releases. They Call Me Bruce?, Bruce Lee Fights Back From The Grave, and all these movies. Every year, a Bruce Lee movie would come out. There hasn’t been nothing about Bruce Lee in years. But The Last Dragon lives on as a cult classic, as an urban movie now, so we’ve got to find a way to incorporate martial arts in a way that still has a strong integrity, because The Last Dragon, Bruce Lee brought the integrity to it. So what can we bring to it in our day? I sent the writer a lot of books on things that are happening now in the martial-art world, a few true stories that he may not have known about that happened in the 1940s and ’50s, right before Bruce Lee migrated to America and brought some secrets through some other people that were doing a few secret things in the martial-art world, and their books have been published in the last 20 years. So I just gave him a lot of advice like that.

AVC: You don’t think Bruce Lee is timeless?

RZA: Bruce Lee is definitely timeless, but at the same time, the integrity of his martial art may not be as widely known now as it was then. Because Bruce Lee wasn’t only a good martial artist, he’s a good actor. Someone might say he’s a good-looking guy as well. He looks good on the screen, he’s great on the screen. So that’s one thing about him. To me, I consider Bruce Lee what the Koran would call a “minor prophet.” I think he’s a prophet, actually, because his wisdom, and the things he said, if you ever hear interviews or read some of his books, you could see that he really was on a special level.