RZA OUTTAKES…
On Films…
Hip-Hop sometimes has kept me limited to a lot of ideas. I did an album for Ghostface called Iron Man. At the end of the album is a song called “Soul Controller” and “Marvel.” That’s me showing my early composing ideas. I brought in a few players for that. I wrote the melody down and had a flute player come in and play it. The guy who put that together was the orchestrator for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. When I worked with Bjork, I hired a string section and brought them into my studio. There was a few things that were done over the years that just was always composing music. It wasn’t until years later as to where I could express myself. As far as Hip-Hop, those songs weren’t singles. The fans enjoyed it but it didn’t get that exposure and recognition that it should have got for the things I was doing as a Hip-Hop producer. There weren’t any other Hip-Hop producers bringing in those type of sounds. But now as a composer, I could go from flute to bassoon to trombone, all kinds of sections. And that’s me giving my musical creativity a great expansion. On the song, “Baby Boy” from Unleashed, it doesn’t sound like anything RZA.
His Influence…
You know Pete Rock for his horns. Dre is known for the bass and moods. Nobody really brought the strings in as much as me. I was heavy in strings in the first hundred songs.
Premier did a lot of strings.
He started doing strings after Wu-Tang. Think of some Premier beats with strings.
“Code of the Streets”
“Code of the Streets” came after Wu-Tang. (Laughs) Premier is my man, my nigga but I know when his music changed. I used to always come up to Premier. Premier was killing niggas but no one was chopping the way I was chopping son. Nobody was able to make three notes make the whole beat, like “Clan in Da Front.” I remember when Premier first heard that he was like, Yo man, son. He was in shock. He started chopping more. He was good for a good loop and a good scratch on top of the loop. Then it was a-boom, ching, jigga-jong. He never did that before. I introduced that mentality to people, to basically chop something beyond sample clearance. (Laughs) Chop it beyond compare. To me, sample clearance is already an illegal business. Because when you make a new derivative of a song then it’s called a new derivative. It should be a new copyright for it. Take the Method Man song, ‘All I Need.” The version I made for the video, it sounds nothing like Marvin Gaye’s song. The only part is when Mary Blige sings. It’s a whole different mentality. They claimed 90% of that song, as if they wrote it. It’s a criminal activity business going on with that. I think there should be some kind of statutory to it. I as chopping music down to the inch.
[Ed Note: DJ Premier’s “Soliloquy of Chaos” from 1992’s Daily Operation and “Check The Technique” from 1991’s Step In The Arena both made use of strings in the beat. What do you all think?]