Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA goes classical with ballet score

Transcript :

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We have some changes in the sound of the founder of the Wu-Tang Clan.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “PROTECT YA NECK”)

WU-TANG CLAN: (Rapping) Feeling mad hostile, ran the apostle. Flowing like Christ when I speaks the gospel.

INSKEEP: This is the RZA from 1992. He was an aspiring New York rapper then, born Robert Diggs.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “SHOGUN ASSASSIN”)

TOMISABURO WAKAYAMA: (As Ogami Itto) Choose the sword, and you will join me.

INSKEEP: Who climbed to fame while working old kung fu film clips into his music. He later worked in Hollywood Scoring films like the 2003 Quentin Tarantino film “Kill Bill.” The multi-talented musician has rapped with the likes of Jay-Z and Ye.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SO APPALLED”)

YE: (Rapping) Cars for the missus and furs for the mistress.

INSKEEP: That’s from 2010. And this is now.

(SOUNDBITE OF RZA’S “AEOLIAN BEAUTY”)

INSKEEP: It’s music for a ballet. The Colorado Symphony performed RZA’s “A Ballet Through Mud” on stage last year. And today, it’s an album. RZA came to the mic to talk about a project inspired by his childhood in New York.

RZA: I went to Curtis High School on Staten Island.

INSKEEP: Carrying a notebook.

RZA: Every day I would go to school I would make sure I write a lyric. It was my way of getting my art out, as well as kind of making a journal. And some of those lyrics, of course, was fantastical. Some of them was dealing with your first experiences with love, alcohol, drugs, etc.

INSKEEP: Were you writing these lyrics when somebody was expecting you to do physics or something?

RZA: Well, both. I actually was blessed with some type of – I don’t know – good academic brain, even though I didn’t have the patience for school or the joy of it at that time. So I’m a kid who’d get to class, finish his work in 10 minutes and then sit there and write a song (laughter)

INSKEEP: Decades later, during the pandemic, he rediscovered that book with its faded denim cover.

RZA: So I find these lyrics and it just brings back a lot of memories. And I was trying to figure out a way to express it. And I’ve thought about music itself. Like, let’s put music to these lyrics.

(SOUNDBITE OF RZA’S “THE LOTUS ARRIVES”)

RZA: I would sit inside, sit in front of the piano, find the emotion that the lyric was invoking and then start talking to it and trying to find a way of where I can actually recite the lyrics. But as I was doing it, it was like, well, actually, it doesn’t need lyrics. And I fought with that for months.

(SOUNDBITE OF RZA’S “THE LOTUS ARRIVES”)

RZA: You know, I would ask my wife over and over, do you think I should, like, spit over this? Spit meaning spit lyrics. And she’s like, you don’t have to (laughter).

(SOUNDBITE OF RZA’S “THE LOTUS ARRIVES”)

INSKEEP: As I was thinking about this project, I was trying to think of what ballet would have in common with hip-hop. And the first thing that occurred to me is maybe in each case, you’re telling a story, but not in a straightforward way.

RZA: Yeah, I think you’ve got something there because you can paraphrase. You know, you think about one of Wu-Tang’s lyrics – I grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side. Staying alive was no jive.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “C.R.E.A.M.”)

WU-TANG CLAN: (Rapping) I grew up on the crime side, the New York Times side. Staying alive was no jive. At second hands, moms bounced on old men, so then we moved to Shaolin land.

RZA: It’s a lot in that (laughter). It’s a lot of lyric – it’s a lot of ideas in that, and it’s a very paraphrase of so many things that’s contained in two bars. I think the analogy is on point because even in the musical movement of a ballet or even in a dance, even in someone who moves their body a certain way to mime or mimic an idea is so much in that movement.

(SOUNDBITE OF RZA’S “A BALLET THROUGH MUD”)

INSKEEP: I want to dwell for just a minute on teenage RZA if I can. What were you like at that time, and what kind of interest did you have in music?

RZA: I always listened to hip-hop. I was able to buy my first pair of turntables by selling newspapers. So by the time I’m 14 years old, me and Ol’ Dirty would actually cut school, go to the kung fu movie theaters and stay there a lot, right? We would actually cut school and went radio stations and try to get on the air. We would go down to 14th Street in Manhattan where they would sell, like, rhythm boxes and things and and echo chambers. And we would just, you know, do anything to make 50 bucks, 60 bucks, a hundred bucks and go and buy equipment. I was just enamored with hip-hop and enamored with the idea of trying to create my own record. Once I heard that a record was on the radio, I was like, I’m going to be on the radio one day.

(SOUNDBITE OF RZA’S “SOFT FOOTSTEPS”)

INSKEEP: That’s the experience that produced the lyrics in the notebook that 40 years later have come out as classical music. What is the story that you’re telling?

RZA: The story is six young people going through youthful exploration find themselves transposed to their higher selves. It’s called “A Ballet Through Mud.” Mud is known to be dirty – right? – and sometimes, yeah, we’ve got to go through the mud to come out pure. And that’s why it’s called “A Ballet Through Mud.”

INSKEEP: What you go through to get the beauty.

RZA: Exactly.

(SOUNDBITE OF RZA’S “THE NIGHT DANCES WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT”)

INSKEEP: RZA, thank you very much. This has been great.

RZA: Thank you, sir. Have a beautiful weekend. Peace.

(SOUNDBITE OF RZA’S “THE NIGHT DANCES WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT”)

INSKEEP: RZA’s album is “A Ballet Through Mud.”

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Steve, you mentioned this was the story you were editing yesterday. You actually got to see the ballet.

INSKEEP: (Laughter).

MARTIN: How was it?

INSKEEP: Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. And I just love this story. I love listening to this guy, thinking about his experience. He’s about my age, and so I think about the different ways we grew up and the way that his growing up became this music that he made.

MARTIN: Well, I also like the fact that it’s “A Ballet Through Mud,” and he talked about his process. You know, mud can be beautiful in its own way.

INSKEEP: Yeah, yeah.

MARTIN: Something to make something out of.

INSKEEP: Get the mud… Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.