Q&A: RZA on the nostalgic origins of his first classical album, 'A Ballet Through Mud'
LOS ANGELES (AP) — RZA’s hoarding habit led to his newest adventure in music: a ballet and surprisingly traditional classical album he calls “A Ballet Through Mud.”Early in the pandemic, the 55-year-old Wu-Tang Clan founder, born Robert Diggs, was rummaging through a bag of old spiral notebooks he found in his library. He pulled out a blue Mead notebook full of rhymes, phone numbers and movie ideas that he’d written as a teenager growing up in Staten Island.Looking through the books, a series of storytelling raps stood out — ones that he’d 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’d 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…
4 Oct 15:50 · iNFOnews.ca