RZA talks John Woo, the Wu-Tang Clan, and his first classical album, A Ballet Through Mud
Wu-Tang Clan rapper RZA’s album A Ballet Through Mud was inspired by rhymes in his old notebooks, and recorded with the Colorado Symphony
Hip-hop artist RZA’s hoarding habit led to his latest adventure in music: a ballet and surprisingly traditional classical album he calls A Ballet Through Mud.
Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the 55-year-old founder of the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, born Robert Diggs, was rummaging through a bag of old spiral notebooks he found in his library.
He pulled out a blue notebook full of rhymes, phone numbers and film ideas that he had written as a teenager growing up in Staten Island, New York.
Looking through the books, a series of storytelling raps stood out – ones that he had deemed too “immature” to use when he started his first group with cousins Russell Jones and Gary Grice, who later took the names Ol’ Dirty Bastard and GZA/Genius.
He had been studying music theory for years and had already composed the scores to 10 films. So, noodling along on the keyboard, he began crafting melodies that matched the emotions of one of his teenage rhyme-stories about six friends, “Joe Is A Nerd”. Was it an opera, potentially?
He kept going, finding further inspiration and building orchestration, until his wife weighed in: no vocals needed.
