Wu-Tang Clan London, UK Concert Recap

via NME

Wu Tang Clan covered The Beatles classic 'Come Together' as they rounded off their UK tour in London tonight (Wednesday, August 4).

Lead singer RZA rapped over the opener to the Fab Four's 1969 album 'Abbey Road' at the end of their show at Brixton Academy for the band's first show in three years.

The rap collective played a host of tracks from their back catalogue with much of their material leaning towards their 1993 debut album 'Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)'.

Setting out their stall early on, RZA declared: "It is the year 2010 and Wu Tang Clan are on tour. Manchester was off the hook last night (August 3). This is the last night of our tour so we're going to save the best for last."

The tour was their first since 2007 and was meant to include the full line-up. But Method Man pulled out due to filming commitments for an episode of CSI. The rapper previously appeared in The Wire as Calvin 'Cheese' Wagstaff.

RZA acknowledged his absence, apologising to the throng towards the end. "We're sorry Method Man couldn't make it," he said. "He's in Hollywood. We're going to let him know how loud you were though."

RZA also announced his own forthcoming movie project The Man With The Iron Fist to the crowd.

Earlier the band paid tribute to late member Ol' Dirty Bastard, who died of an accidental drug overdose in 2004, by asking the audience to lift up lighters and mobile phones in his honour.

But the biggest cheer of the night was reserved for their only UK hit single 'Gravel Pit', which you can watch below.

Wu Tang Clan played:

'Protect Ya Neck'
'Clan In Da Front'
'Bring Da Ruckus'
'Tearz'
'Triumph'
'Ice Cream'
'Liquid Swords'
'U God'
'Reunited'
'It's Yourz'
'One Blood Under W'
'Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing Ta Fuck Wit'
'Da Mystery of Chessboxin'
'C.R.E.A.M.'
'Baby C'mon'
'Can It All Be So Simple'
'Gravel Pit'
'Come Together'

(video courtesy of kateit17)

Rock The Bells 2010 Guerilla Union Press Conference

This is a portion of Monday's press conference courtesy of Nerdlike. As it was announced, Rock The Bells 2010 will have a 'classic album' format.

Eric B. & Rakim performing Paid In Full
Slick Rick performing The Great Adventures of Slick Rick
KRS-One performing Criminal Minded
Wu-Tang Clan performing Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers

...and for those who are lucky enough to attend this will be a once in a lifetime event for sure.

Artists confirmed for the ROCK THE BELLS 2010 FESTIVAL SERIES as follows:
Wu-Tang Clan
Rakim
KRS-One
Slick Rick
Street Sweeper Social Club
Murs and 9th Wonder
Wiz Khalifa
Clipse
Immortal Technique
Jedi Mind Tricks
Brother Ali
DJ Muggs and Ill Bill
Big Sean
Yelawolf

Hosted by
Supernatural
DJ Rocky Rock

For more info about Rock The Bells 2010:
Rock The Bells 2010

GZA To Release 'Liquid Swords II'

via London UK's The Guardian

One of the most legendary albums in hip-hop is about to get a sequel. Wu-Tang Clan's GZA has announced that he is working on Liquid Swords II, a follow-up to his seminal 1995 solo LP.

Hip-hop fans have reason to get excited. While Wu-Tang members have issued a lot of half-baked releases over the last decade, they have been careful not to besmirch their own legacy. Unlike Jay-Z and his inconsistent Blueprint albums, Ghostface Killah never risked calling a second LP Supreme Clientele, nor did we see an Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) part deux. Arguably the only Wu classic to be revisited was Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx … Pt II, which was released last year. But here's the thing: Raekwon's sequel was outstanding.

Little is known about Liquid Swords II. It's due in the autumn, according to the Wu-Tang member's Twitter. It's a GZA affair (not a group album). It might be called Liquid Sword: the Second Edition, but it's not a reissue. And, most excitingly, it will be produced by the RZA, who recorded the original album.

The last we heard of GZA was that he was working on music with psych-folk singer Devendra Banhart. It's not clear whether those sessions – including collaborations with King Khan, Fucked Up and the Black Lips – will have any bearing on Liquid Swords II. To be perfectly frank: WE BLOODY WELL HOPE NOT.

Game Lines Up An All-Star Production Cast For 'The R.E.D. Album'

via MTV

Game said he got just about everybody he wanted for his upcoming The R.E.D. Album — he has some of the finest tracks featuring guests from all over the hip-hop hemisphere.

"I feel great about this album," he said recently after going over tracks at Dr. Dre's house. "It's back full-force Aftermath and I'm conjoined with Star Trak." (Pharrell Williams is one of the LP's executive producers.) "I got this colorful movement over here where it's beautiful music on this side [with Star Trak] — then when I need to go dark or super grown and sexy, I got Dre over here. The combination is crazy — mixed in with a Cool & Dre track and RZA track and all the sh-- I been doing. The only person I'm upset I didn't work with on this album is DJ Premier. I feel his sh-- would have been perfect for this all-star producer cast that I have. One Premier track would have did me just fine. I would have murdered that sh--. But we ain't get it in, 'cause he was doing a whole bunch of sh-- for Christina Aguilera. I'm just Game. So I gotta just wait for the next album."

The Compton MC said he lets the fans know from the start of the album that he's not playing.

"They got the intro to the album, which is titled 'Infrared,' " Game said of Cool & Dre. "It's one of them joints that Shaheem (Reid) is gonna love. All the real hip-hop fans, to hear me rap, how I'm rapping on my intro, it's gonna f--- people up. Before you get to #2, you gonna already know I'm serious. I'm spitting. I go in. I done played this for RZA, Dre, Pharrell — all the people who heard this is like, 'N---a, that's crazy!' I haven't spit like I'm spitting on the intro since '300 Bars.' I touched every topic. Everything involving me, I touched."

We'll get a prelude to Game's work with Cool & Dre on a song called "Shake," as it's one of the highlights on his upcoming Gangsta Grillz mixtape with DJ Drama, All Red Everything. Game tells a mayhem-filled story over the beat that incorporates the looped word "shake" throughout.

" 'Shake' is bad, man," Game said. " 'Shake' is crazy. Cool & Dre brought it in and I went through the 'shakes.' I told the story, cutting myself off right before the 'shake' came in [on the track]. I didn't write none of that down. I went in and said the whole sh-- straight through.

"You know what it is about them?" he asked about Cool & Dre. "They are more like my brothers. I can go in with the any moment and make a song. The streets is gonna f--- with it."

More Nas & RZA Live In Hawaii Video Footage

(video courtesy of Light Sleepers, Shinji Designs & juschokum)

Related:
Nas Live In Hawaii & RZA Gets In On The Action To Perform A Wu-Tang Classic

Nas Live In Hawaii & RZA Gets In On The Action To Perform A Wu-Tang Classic

At last night's (Friday March 19) Nas concert at the Aloha Tower Marketplace in Honolulu, Hawaii, RZA came out of nowhere as a special guest to perform the Wu-Tang classic "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nothing to F**k Wit." According to the concert promoter's twitter post Kanye West & DJ Qbert were also in attendance.

Although the flyer below says DJ Green Lantern was DJing during Nas set, Boston native Statik Seletah stepped in for Lantern for this show.

more fan shot footage below.





(video courtesy of InZaneRascaL, juschokum & matt higa)

Raekwon: 'Wu-Massacre' Entertainment Weekly Interview

Entertainment Weekly: Moving on to this album you’re doing with Meth and Ghost, Wu-Massacre, when did you start working on that?

Raekwon: I’d say probably four or five months ago. We just wanted to make another album that really represents our brand, which is the W. When you think of Wu-Tang, we’ve been in the business for damn near almost, what, 17 years? We just want to make sure that people still know that we didn’t go nowhere — musically, passionately about hip-hop. When you get records like this, it helps keep the W flag up high. You know what I mean? Like the American flag. We gotta take care of that flag.

Entertainment Weekly: How did you decide to make an album with those two guys specifically?

Raekwon: It was something that was going to happen sooner or later. Us three, we always work good together throughout the years. On a lot of records, me, Ghost, and Meth was always next to each other. If you look at [the Wu-Tang Clan] as being the Lakers, we are the MVPs of the team. We are the ones that everybody may feel like takes us to the championship. Everybody else is going to play their position, but these three are definitely going to have to control the ball at some point. This is what the fans been wanting, man…You know, I work for the fans.

Entertainment Weekly: From your perspective, what do you three bring to a project? How do you balance each other out?

Raekwon: When we get together, it’s a lot of energy in the building, because everybody knows Meth, Rae, and Ghost for being super-lyrical, but still got that great character inside their rhymes. I guess that’s why people really is excited about this record. They’re saying, “Yo, these dudes put the Wu where they need to be at.” I don’t look at it like that. I look at us all as being one, still. I understand some may have a little bit more special gift than others, but it’s still a team effort. I love to get on tracks with brothers like Inspectah Deck, Masta Killa, the GZA. The whole crew is golden, man. When you think of us, you gotta say, “Yo, these are the Jacksons of hip-hop.” But for me to get in a room with Meth and Ghost and do an album, it’s serious to me. I know it’s going to be a lot of lyrics in there, it’s going to be a lot of great energy, stories. We all master these different departments of rhyming. So you’re just going to get a great album.

Which producers did you work with on Wu-Massacre?

Raekwon: Being that everyone was so spread out, we didn’t really get a chance to be hands-on on everything. You’ve got Meth doing a movie, you’ve got Ghost over here super-touring, you’ve got me just dropped an album, having to move around. So we did a lot of phone tag. But we did get [some opportunities] to sit around and vibe out. As far as the producers on the album, they did their thing as well. Shout out Pete Rock. Shout out everybody, man. Cats realize that hip-hop is going back to its beats and rhymes format again. Everybody came in and did their part. It’s just about staying busy. If you look at this as a sport, we gotta stay in practice, man: Stay going to practice, stay looking at the tapes, stay looking at the things that you may have done wrong and learn from them. That’s what we did. We came together to make another great album and keep that flag alive.

Read the full interview here:
Entertainment Weekly - Raekwon: The Music Mix Q&A

RZA Talks Art With Baller Status

BallerStatus.com: Why is ODB and GZA the only members of the Wu featured in the Victory or Death art piece?

RZA: Two reasons. One: the pioneers of the Wu-Tang sound is RZA, GZA and Old Dirty. We started as teenagers, and we were the first foundation of the group, and everyone else was, in one way or another, students of ours. So, we brought the three masters, the three elders together for the piece. Ask the other Wu-Tang members and they'll tell you that RZA, GZA and Old Dirty are the teachers. Ghost said "I learned from the best." That means RZA, GZA and Old Dirty. Everybody will tell you that we are the ones who inspired them. So that's the main reason why we said "let's use them, that'll be enough." We did talk about using the whole Clan at one point because we thought it would make a great album cover, but Wu-Tang is so scattered in ideas and scattered in business right now, we didn't wanna get a business jamboree going on. Even though I do have the rights to do it, I didn't want to go through the headache of arguing over my own rights.

BallerStatus.com: What did you think of the piece once it was finished? Was there anything you would've changed?

RZA: No, I think it came out good. It wasn't a predestined thing to do, so the results are the results. That's one thing about true art. It's something that's spontaneous, that's done, that you can't change. That's what made some of the Wu-Tang stuff so raw too. I didn't fix a lot of sh**. You hear all the "yo's" and the "check one twos." I was like "Let that sh** stay." That's the rawness of it, the realness of it. Now with Pro Tools, we edit everything and we adlib and sh**, but my most successful work has been the spontaneous things that I've done.

BallerStatus.com: Initially, was a project like this something you ever thought about doing?

RZA: I've been to Paris many times in my life. I even had a villa 25 miles outside of Paris. But honestly, I had never really seen the city, paid attention to the city. It wasn't until the spring of 2009 that I had two weeks in Paris and I went to their museums and went to the Eiffel Tower and went more like a tourist and absorbed the city, and that's when I really appreciated Paris and the whole French culture. I also got a great appreciation for art. It's funny how when you're young, you don't see the beauty in things. I remember I was in San Francisco at the Museum of Abstract Art, and I took my son and my wife there, and we were looking around, and I kind of caught the vibe of what they were doing. Two years ago or five years ago, I wouldn't have caught it. I think as we grow and become more refined, more cultured, our tastes become stronger. We have more of an understanding of things. So, if I can inspire somebody to say "let me go over here and check this museum" and see the artistic nature of the mind, the consciousness that art derives from, and how it comes into the consciousness, I think that it'll help people. It's a good thing for culture.

BallerStatus.com: Have you done any art yourself in your spare time?

RZA: I'm an artist, so my life is art. Most of my artistic nature has been given over to my daughter, who draws something every day. She has hundreds of drawings that one day I may use for some kind of comic book line or art direction for a movie or something.

Wu-Tang Clan: Return of the Wu & Friends With DJ Mathematics

On Return of the Wu & Friends, Wu-Tang producer and DJ Mathematics collects exclusive tracks, lost gems and old time favorites featuring all nine emcees from the mighty Wu.

Mathematics Presents Return Of The Wu And Friends on Gold Dust Media/Nature Sounds in-stores and online February 16th.

RZA: New iPhone App iDrum

via the Wall Street Journal

RZA has brought his beats to the iPhone App Store. The famed hip-hop producer and rapper from the Wu-Tang Clan has released a branded edition of iZotope’s popular iDrum application.

The iDrum app is a consumer version iZotope’s professional grade software. The application allows users to combine pre-recorded beats and loops to compose original music with much more control than was possible in previous music making programs. For CEO Mark Ethier, the iPhone edition of the software is meant to fill a niche between games like Guitar Hero and high-end audio-engineering programs, like ProTools.

Previous versions of the app allowed users to produce music in genres like rock or club music. iZotope also began partnering with established musicians, such as Depeche Mode and Ministry of Sound to use elements from their music. The RZA edition includes a mix of 17 new and classic beats that users can use as a foundation for their own creations.

For artists, the chance to release elements of music through iDrum presents an opportunity to promote their music in a new format and to increase sales at a time music business is struggling. Depeche Mode took advantage of the opportunity by releasing their version of iDrum along with their latest album.

RZA says that the benefits of releasing original loops to the public doesn’t have any obvious economic benefit for him, besides the contract he has with iZotope. He doesn’t have a new album out and isn’t putting together a concert tour. But he thinks that, “eventually it will all come back around” by introducing new people to his back catalog. RZA said that it took him and his engineer eight days to dig through old digital audio tapes and floppy disks and to create new sounds in his studio.

The app, which costs $4.99, was released in late November. Though iZotope wouldn’t say how many times it has been downloaded, the company says the RZA edition is its popular iDrum yet and is planning to partner with more artists in the future.

RZA On Bonnie Hunt Daytime Talk Show

Blakroc: RZA & Pharoahe Monch "Dollars & Sense"

Blakroc - in stores November 27.

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Dame Dash Presents The Blakroc Project
Blakroc "Ain't Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo)"

RZA Shows Us The Wu Wisdom With 'The Tao of Wu'

RZA's new book 'The Tao Of Wu'

via Time Magazine

Time: In The Tao of Wu, you lay out your very unique worldview. I lost track of all the elements involved, which include traditional Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, chess and numerology. If you only had a minute to tell someone about your beliefs, what would you say?

RZA: First of all, the tao means the way. And there are many ways to get to a place as long as you stay on the path. So if you want to travel the way of Jesus, the way of the Prophet Mohammed, if you want to travel the way of Buddha or Bodhi Dama, if you want to travel the way of a great chess master like Kasparov or Fisher —any way you can reach self-enlightenment or self-worth works. Many great men have left paths for us. In the end, we are all searching for the same thing. We're just taking different routes to the same location.

Read more of RZA's Time Magazine interview here:
Time - The RZA on The Tao of Wu

bonus RZA on Colbert:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The RZA
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

RZA Ghetto Fab At Movie Premiere

Regular folk just don't understand RZA's ghetto styling.

via Showbiz 411

Clive Owen celebrated the opening of his heart-warming new film for families, called “The Boys are Back” with a good pal last night: RZA (pronounced “Rizza”).

RZA, who’s with the Wu Tang Clan, cut quite an appearance at the “Boys Are Back” dinner at the Bon Appetit Supper Club. He came dressed in head-to-toe camouflage gear. He was the only one. If he was hoping to blend in and really be camouflaged, a suit might have been a better choice. He did not bring GZA (prononced “Gizza”) with him. But he seemed to have a good time.

Read More Here:
Showbiz 411

Photos from the movie premiere:
Getty Images
Film Magic

Wu-Tang Clan: RZA talks Chamber Music with French TV

Le Wu-Tang Clan, Le RZA, Oui, oui!



(video courtesy of kazados.tv)