During a new interview, RZA shared his thoughts on the death toll in hip-hop.
“We’ve lost more hip-hop artists in recent years than ever before,” the Wu-Tang Clan legend told the FinancialTimes. “Growing up in the golden age of hip-hop, we may have lost a few artists, but not a dozen artists or more.”
RZA highlighted topics that the genre glorifies. “Sometimes hip-hop music glamorizes certain things. It glamorizes prison life, it glamorizes gangsters and thugs. I understand that, because I grew up from that,” he said. But it doesn’t give you the total tragedy of what it can end up being, nor are we represented with many alternatives.”
On the music side, RZA is about to release its new collaborative album with DJ Scratch, Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theater. Expected March 4, the album is available for pre-order here.
“Lyrically, the hip-hop part of me was lucky enough to reappear during quarantine. Giving Scratch the reins as producer and me taking the reins as MC is what frees me up creatively and lets me play more with lyrical gags and lyrical flows because I don’t have to focus on everything,” RZA said of the album. “He delivered tracks that resonated and brought me back to a sound that I missed. For me, it felt really natural for me to sink and write to those songs.
Check out the clip from Saturday Afternoon Kung Fu Theaterbelow.
