RZA feels that New York Hip Hip has lost its originality – but he sees it as a natural progression that was inevitable.
Talking to Complex in an interview published on Wednesday (October 23), the Wu-Tang Clan legend reflected on the state of rap in the region he got his start in.
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“From my seat, since I’ve been here almost from the beginning, the thing that New York may have stepped away from is its own originality, but it’s almost natural that that’s going to happen because before, we didn’t hear nothing else,” he explained.
“There was no other renditions. It’s like when you go back and as a scientist and you study Dr. Dre and you listen to him taking his early production for N.W.A, you still hear that the breakbeats of New York is still the foundation, but eventually as he’s getting better and better and he’s incorporating instrumentation, those instrumentations then come back to us.”
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RZA went on: “And then when you start listening to [The Notorious B.I.G.] and [Diddy’s] productions, you’re hearing instrumentation and people are playing the notes over. So we continue to inspire each other. So then when the South becomes the dominant force of hip-hop and you’re growing up, and then someone like A$AP [Rocky] is able to hear that and love hip-hop, love the cadence of New York, love the swag of New York, but he’s been listening to that musical creation, then he blends that into his creation.
“And then eventually, like Joey Bada$$, he takes it back to what New York was bringing into it. But yet still he’s melodic in his hooks. So it’s an amalgamation of everything now, and New York is in that. Now will New York step out of that and bring something totally new to the table? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s easy now. I think it’s almost like you done seen all the colors of the rainbow and what you going to do?”
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Meanwhile, RZA is very much still challenging himself and in late August, made his orchestral debut, A Ballet Through Mud.
The album features characters named for Greek musical scales and tells the tale of RZA’s life from his childhood to modern day.
“I have been composing my whole life, although I didn’t know initially that was what I was doing,” RZA said regarding the project. “The inspiration for A Ballet Through Mud comes from my earliest creative output as a teenager, but its themes are universal—love, exploration, and adventure.
“I hope people use it to score their own lives, to transform a drive to the grocery store or sharing a meal with loved ones into something magical, to be inspired and let their imaginations take them into a different chamber, if only for a moment.”
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The suite was composed and produced by RZA, performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Christopher Dragon.
