Fifteen years is an eternity in the hip-hop spotlight. But Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA continues to ignore the heat while walking his own path. The producer, MC and burgeoning actor recently used his alias, Bobby Digital, to drop a fourth solo album, Digi Snacks, and he celebrates the project and a birthday on July 5 at Webster Hall. Despite his many years in the business and more than enough success to coast on, RZA continues to strive for constant growth in both sound and spirit.
“Listen to the song called “Booby Trap” [on Digi Snacks] where it sounds like how a DJ would cut the beat back and forth,” says RZA, as he explains his evolution as a producer. “But it has all the elements of live musicians on top of it. The hip-hop style is more the loop style of it, the musician’s style is when you take the loop to the next four bars and add certain elements. As a musician, what I’ve learned about myself is that I still play my music in loop style, so on the piano I’m playing like it’s a loop instead of how people would play a whole song. I’ve learned to combine the two.”
Expanding concepts as well as beats, RZA’s fiction, true hard past and new big-screen experiences continue to coalesce in the form of his Bobby Digital alter-ego, demonstrated on the visual, alternate reality forged amidst Digi Snacks’ new forays in sound.
“When we first came with Wu-Tang, I skipped some years and kept them private,” he says. “When I reached a level of success, I reflected back and I needed to talk about those years, talk about that mentality, things that I went through even though I wasn’t still going through them. I characterized them as Bobby Digital. But as time went on, the character grew into his own. All of it is still from my life, from my imagination, still using myself a as a backdrop but doing it in a way now that even if I was to remove myself from it someone else could play the character.”
“Doing movies the last few years,” he adds, “that’s what gave me the spirit to keep living the character. I’m watching a movie’s title credits going up and I’m seeing RZA as Winston Boyko [Derailed], RZA as Moses Jones [American Gangster], all these things, and I’m thinking RZA as Bobby Digital.”
On Digi Snacks, RZA gives the pseudonym formerly synonymous with his reckless youth a superhero’s heart and Marvel-style conflicts, saving other’s lives while fighting the evil within himself. This heroic sense of purpose is indeed based on aspects of RZA’s own mission.
“A lot of people tell me you can’t save this world, you gotta save your own babies,” he says. “They’re right, you’ve gotta save your own. But there’s always some men in the world who have the radius about them, they have the power to help and save because of their experiences. If you learn from experience you can teach anybody. So I do feel obligated to speak and teach, especially to the young people who go through the chambers I’ve been through. There’s certain chambers we have to go through, but let me give you a map to guide you.”
In his own life, pragmatic spirituality is the RZA’s compass, which may account for his staying power. The same rapper and producer who’s ready to roll out a corresponding comic book, video game and film with an album called Digi Snacks is grounded in both God and self as he keeps elevating.
“God is not a myth,” he explains, “and you can’t find God nowhere unless you look inside yourself. My prayers are answered through my actions. We got the power in ourselves to make what we want—heaven or hell. When I realized that it helped me become a man, and it reflected in my music.”
“If I find something within myself that’s dissatisfying,” he continues, “I strive to fix it. I don’t need nobody to gratify me, I’m self gratified.”
July 5, Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St. (betw. 3rd & 4th Aves.), 212-353-1600; 6, $25.
“Listen to the song called “Booby Trap” [on Digi Snacks] where it sounds like how a DJ would cut the beat back and forth,” says RZA, as he explains his evolution as a producer. “But it has all the elements of live musicians on top of it. The hip-hop style is more the loop style of it, the musician’s style is when you take the loop to the next four bars and add certain elements. As a musician, what I’ve learned about myself is that I still play my music in loop style, so on the piano I’m playing like it’s a loop instead of how people would play a whole song. I’ve learned to combine the two.”
Expanding concepts as well as beats, RZA’s fiction, true hard past and new big-screen experiences continue to coalesce in the form of his Bobby Digital alter-ego, demonstrated on the visual, alternate reality forged amidst Digi Snacks’ new forays in sound.
“When we first came with Wu-Tang, I skipped some years and kept them private,” he says. “When I reached a level of success, I reflected back and I needed to talk about those years, talk about that mentality, things that I went through even though I wasn’t still going through them. I characterized them as Bobby Digital. But as time went on, the character grew into his own. All of it is still from my life, from my imagination, still using myself a as a backdrop but doing it in a way now that even if I was to remove myself from it someone else could play the character.”
“Doing movies the last few years,” he adds, “that’s what gave me the spirit to keep living the character. I’m watching a movie’s title credits going up and I’m seeing RZA as Winston Boyko [Derailed], RZA as Moses Jones [American Gangster], all these things, and I’m thinking RZA as Bobby Digital.”
On Digi Snacks, RZA gives the pseudonym formerly synonymous with his reckless youth a superhero’s heart and Marvel-style conflicts, saving other’s lives while fighting the evil within himself. This heroic sense of purpose is indeed based on aspects of RZA’s own mission.
“A lot of people tell me you can’t save this world, you gotta save your own babies,” he says. “They’re right, you’ve gotta save your own. But there’s always some men in the world who have the radius about them, they have the power to help and save because of their experiences. If you learn from experience you can teach anybody. So I do feel obligated to speak and teach, especially to the young people who go through the chambers I’ve been through. There’s certain chambers we have to go through, but let me give you a map to guide you.”
In his own life, pragmatic spirituality is the RZA’s compass, which may account for his staying power. The same rapper and producer who’s ready to roll out a corresponding comic book, video game and film with an album called Digi Snacks is grounded in both God and self as he keeps elevating.
“God is not a myth,” he explains, “and you can’t find God nowhere unless you look inside yourself. My prayers are answered through my actions. We got the power in ourselves to make what we want—heaven or hell. When I realized that it helped me become a man, and it reflected in my music.”
“If I find something within myself that’s dissatisfying,” he continues, “I strive to fix it. I don’t need nobody to gratify me, I’m self gratified.”
July 5, Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St. (betw. 3rd & 4th Aves.), 212-353-1600; 6, $25.
