RZA was a platinum selling artist without really knowing anything about music.
The de facto leader of the Wu-Tang Clan is a respected musician, working as performer, producer, actor, director and screenwriter.
However when the 45-year-old was starting out, he barely even knew his craft.
“I went platinum without knowing what a C note was," RZA laughed to the American edition of Esquire magazine. "I remember being in Sam Ash [Music Corp.] buying a sampler and a bunch of equipment and a guy said to me, 'You're killing me with all those machines. Every time you use a drum machine you put a drummer out of work. Every time you sample a bass, that's a bass player out of a job.'
“It didn't hit me that day, but it stuck in my mind. So about a year later I bought a book on music theory. And it took me years to really learn it.”
Wu-Tang Clan are gearing up for the release of their sixth studio album, A Better Tomorrow, which hits shelves on December 2.
It comes seven years after their last record, with many believing new music would never happen. However, the Clan couldn’t wait to get back in the studio, with RZA revealing how different their process of making tracks is nowadays.
“But honestly, growing up in the 'hood, the only guy we knew who was a musician was Ol' Dirty [B*****d]'s big brother, who played guitar, and we thought he was the weirdest motherf**ker out. He told us, 'All those songs you sample, those were played by musicians.'
“All those organs and guitars and drums, we were sampling the real thing. Now if I want something to sound like Al Green I go to the source, and record it in the original studio he worked in. Why buy the crate when you can go to the place where the crates were made? So now I consider myself a musician, and I'm proud to be one,” he smiled.
