The hip-hop pioneers who inspired GZA
The rapping style of GZA is truly one of a kind. Despite dropping out of high school as a teenager, the eloquence of his rapping and the breadth of the subject matter that he deals with in his verses can be genuinely astounding. There’s no one else like him.
Science and philosophy are key touchstones within the GZA’s rapping, and the words that he deploys to express his ideas are carefully crafted. His vocabulary, as a matter of fact, has been found to be among the widest in all of hip-hop. His verses are lessons in the English language.
But like all great artists, the GZA didn’t materialise fully-formed. He worked at his craft, and he looked up to others who came before him. “I was inspired by many,” as he put it during an interview with The Real Hip-Hop in 2019.
When pressed to elaborate on the emcees who inspired him as a younger man, GZA cast his mind back far. “That inspiration goes way back to the early days of hip-hop,” he said. “Some of the greats from back in the day: the Treacherous Three, Fearless Four, Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, Melle Mel, just about all of them.”
These were artists operating right at the beginning of hip-hop’s story, literally beginning their careers in the ’70s. The word “pioneer” can perhaps be overused sometimes, but when it comes to these artists GZA mentioned, it absolutely applies. These people genuinely helped to pioneer hip-hop.
“Spoonie Gee was a favorite of mine at a certain period of time,” GZA noted. “That was the late ’70s. He had this song called ‘Spoonin’ Rap’ off the Love Rap beat.”
GZA was born in 1966, so he happens to be old enough to remember these early hip-hop pioneers. But he wasn’t precious about the genre, and he was a big fan of plenty of artists who later emerged and built upon the legacy of those early acts.
“I was inspired by many,” he reiterated. “Aside from those, even those that came after. I’ve been rapping for years but you go into the golden era with Rakim, Slick Rick, G Rap, Daddy Kane, and so on and so on.”
GZA was cautious about listing off names, because he was bound to forget about some people. “It’s so many that I’m leaving out,” he said. “I don’t even like to start naming because it’s so many that brought and gave inspiration. There were those who I grew up listening to when I first started rapping who I got inspiration from, and there are those where I was already good as an emcee but still got inspiration from them also.”