RZA and actor Russell Crowe rocked the house last week when the pair hit the stage at an Australian pub to surprise the crowd with a live performance.
On Friday (May 19), the Wu-Tang Clan leader joined the seasoned actor and his band The Gentlemen Barbers for a jam session at The Bridge Hotel in Sydney. The show was a part of Crowe’s ongoing Australian pub concert series, the Indoor Garden Party.
The pair performed The Gentlemen Barbers’ new song “Let Your Light Shine” that the band released earlier this month, but this rendition featured an added verse from RZA.
Check out the special moment below:
RZA and Russell Crowe’s friendship goes back nearly two decades, first working together on 2007’s American Gangster and then again on 2010’s The Next Three Days. In 2012, the Australian actor co-starred in RZA directorial debut, The Man With the Iron Fists, and in 2022, they both starred in Poker Face – which Crowe wrote and directed.
In other RZA news, the New York native recently claimed that Wu-Tang “pioneered” Hip Hop TV shows thanks to the success of Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga.
“[Wu Tang: An American Saga] is what Wu-Tang really represents, which is always moving something forward,” he said in an interview with Consequence in April. “This is why you see 30 hours of TV from us, instead of two hours of a movie.”
“We got a great movie from N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton. That was a beautiful movie. They pioneered the Hip Hop biopic, and we got to thank them for that, but we pioneered the Hip Hop series, a new chapter — the same way, when Wu-Tang came in 1993 into the industry, we pioneered a new wave, a new sound, and a new part of the culture that was unseen.”
Wu-Tang: An American Saga debuted in September 2019, followed by Season 2 in September 2021. The acclaimed series has won a pair of Golden Reel Awards, while RZA notched a nomination for a Primetime Emmy in the Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music category.
Remember Protect Ya Neck? RZA simply is unrecognizable from what he used to be. Sellout ditched his whole legacy went Hollywood.
Don’t hate on rza changed the whole shit. Older gods for real.
Yes I do remember it. It was 30 years ago. The Rza and frankly the whole Clan has evolved and adapted that’s to be applauded. They all can still rhyme and are just the older gods forever can’t hate on that. The legacy is cement.
Raekwon met with DiCaprio to get funding for a Wu-tang film, RZA convinced him that a tv show would do great. I cannot hate on RZA for having this vision of TV, Wu has lead with many “firsts” and I feel like to tell 9 stories would’ve been overkill in a 2-3 hour film, you just can’t put all that legacy into a film, it wouldn’t do them justice. Granted, the show was not perfect, it absolutely redeems itself in other parts where it falls. Some of the story lines are made up for tv some episodes deviated from the main storyline to tell part of their legacy in an allegorical way (the ODB FBI agent episode was hilarious and over the top). RZA as a person is always moving forward, everything he puts out is not perfect by any means, he has some hits and some misses, but the man looks like he’s having fun doing what he wants, and that to me is a winner. Then again, he is moving 8 other dudes to his direction, and I’m still waiting on that Ghostface lead produced Wu-tang album.