The Genius, GZA, spoke at the ReThink Music conference hosted by Berklee College on the topic of adaptation--how he has managed to stay relevant in hip hop for a full two decades of Wu Tang and solo efforts, even as internet marketing has replaced "1000 miles per week on a street team van." We sat down with GZA after his speech, and wanted to know a little more about his recent speaking engagements.
Ian Doreian for melophobe:
Impressive touring schedule in Boston: Harvard, MIT, and now with Berklee. What kind of shift is there in preparing for an academic, rather than a music audience?
GZA:
It's quite different, a whole different arena. It's quiet; you can hear a pin drop, no music playing. No alcohol; no smoke. No kids surfing the crowd.
melophobe:
It must be tough to pick up on the energy of the crowd; do you know how to shift what you're going to say?
GZA:
Sometimes it is, but you just have to go for it. You got to look at it like this: with shows, there can be a person who's looking at me like they don't like me. They might be my biggest fan, but the way they are staring doesn't fit. That also happens with the academic crowd. You just have to be in your own element, and do you.
melophobe:
In your speech earlier, you mentioned a strong showing at SXSW with Grupo Fantasma, and I wanted to know if you felt the need to bounce back after the disappointment of 2011?
GZA:
You remember that? It was horrible. I don't mind speaking about it; it was horrible. Actually, I had a show earlier in the day and I forgot about the second show. And I was drinking shots with Bill Murray.
melophobe:
That's true? I thought it was some "Coffee and Cigarettes" rumor.
GZA:
That was so true; I was drinking shots with Bill Murray. He was on the side of the stage, and we went to have shots of tequila or whatever. He was actually getting behind the bar and serving them. All of a sudden I felt so messed up. Killah Priest had a van outside, so I went to the van and laid down. Someone started to shake me, talking about another show. Are you kidding? It was a mess; I let down the fans, and lots of people tweeted about it. But, I can accept all of that. I have to take responsibility for my own actions. This year, I owed SXSW a good show.
melophobe:
The theme of your speech was remaining relevant, and you have a revamped website soon to be released, but I wonder the web relevance of Wu Tang when their "official" page hasn't seen an update in over four months.
GZA:
Wu Tang Corp? I don't respect that; the website isn't even in the hands of Wu Tang.
melophobe:
Who's running it?
GZA:
People in Europe, people loosely connected, people saying all kinds of stupid shit even about us, about the Clan. On our "own" site? Fuck Wu Tang Corp; I'm just going to say that.
melophobe:
Is your site an invitation to the rest of the Clan to join up with what you are doing online?
GZA:
There's always an invitation, but it's also a way of leading by example.
melophobe:
Last thing. Anything good you've been reading?
GZA:
Well, I'm a lazy reader. Back in the hotel I have this book Programing the Universe; a professor at MIT sent it to me. I've only gotten through the first few pages, though.
Play videoEditor's Note: in response to GZA's comments regarding Wu Tang Corp, Cilvaringz (Tarik Azzougarh) offered his thoughts. Read the entire post here.
"GZA knows very well that this is a site I'm associated with, not own, because it is owned by RZA, lets clear the rumors, but I do believe that that was a shot at me."
"I was allowed to promote for free, for one single reason only... which was that I was not going to get paid for any work I would do for this site. As we went on, the site got bigger and bigger and was becoming extremely popular with at one point 47000 active forum members, one million hits a day and ranked at #374 in the world. You can imagine that the costs for running this site exceeded RZA's funding. At that point we did not have advertisement yet and so we asked RZA for more funding to pay for a stronger hosting service as we now exceeded 1200 GB bandwidth per day. RZA either did not understand what we meant or simply declined, but in the end we did not get more funding and the site kept crashing."
"However, over the years and still I have been getting blamed for all the criticism/trash talk the Clan gets on this site. And it now seems that no matter how many times I explain that this is an open forum where people post their opinion, and that people have a freedom of speech and that even I get trashed as a RZA dickrider, wack rapper or whatever, the Clan will continue to believe that I am the one posting all the negativity about them and/or allow people to be negative towards them. Not everybody in the Wu, but I would say at least half of them."
"So this is the friction between myself and a bunch of Clan members over the past few years and every now and then I will be referred to as a 'loosely connected guy' or a terrorist as not too long ago I was referred to by GZA after he saw a video on YouTube for 'In The Name Of Allah' thinking it was my official video. So how do you handle something like this?"
"But I think I'm getting to a stage in my career where I just wanna do whatever's necessary to release Wu music the fans deserve. I have always been loyal to the Clan and will remain so to the best of my ability. But loyalty to the fans is equally important."
"Loyalty is, in the end...royalty."