(Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth) (CD bonus) RZA breaks down martial arts films he’s sampled (YouTube)īuy The Wu-Tang Manual (Amazon affiliate link)ĭiscord & Rhyme’s Liquid Swords playlist (Spotify)ī.I.B.L.E. RZA on growing up in Staten/Shaolin and the island’s geography (Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, from Nonstop Metropolis, via LitHub) Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite interviews GZA (The Guardian)

GZA discusses the making of Liquid Swords, track by track (David Ma, WaxPoetics) Rich actually did make a sourdough starter the week of this recording, but didn’t overfeed it. To hear Mathematics production, check out GZA’s 1999 follow-up album Beneath the Surface, which is solid if not outstanding. Our bad - there are a lot of Wu-Tang affiliates. (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth)” was produced by 4th Disciple, not Mathematics. Featherbottom, always read the label, always read it well. Rich caught most of the label names in “Labels” but missed one of the biggest ones: Capitol! To quote Arrested Development’s Mrs. (By the way, just to be clear, verbiage doesn’t always correlate with quality in hip-hop, and often less is more.) Based on his solo albums, GZA comes in at 6,390 words, just ahead of Wu-Tang in general at 6,196 words. Indie rapper Aesop Rock comes in first place with 7,879 words.

The observation that GZA has one of the largest vocabularies in hip-hop is from this visualization by Matt Daniels of The Pudding, which ranks MCs by the number of unique words used in their lyrics. On this episode Rich leads Mike, Ben, and Phil through RZA’s chaotic sound landscapes and GZA’s murderous rhymes tight with genuine craft, both of which helped him realize that hip-hop is one of the greatest things in the entire world. Between 19, the members of Wu-Tang unleashed a whole volley of classic solo albums, and 1995’s Liquid Swords by the GZA, alias the Genius, might be the greatest of all of them.

The Wu-Tang Clan’s rhymes were clever, aggressive, filled with pop culture references, and came at you from all sides, paired with production from the RZA, who preferred to sample empty space and dissonance over conventional hooks. In the early ‘90s, Bobby Diggs, aka Bobby Digital, aka the RZA, served as de facto leader for a nine-piece Staten Island (or Shaolin) collective that changed the face of hip-hop. This week on Discord & Rhyme: witty, unpredictable talent and natural game.

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