How RZA got inspiration for hhis rap name
RZA has been a household name in hip-hop for over three decades and came to prominence as part of the Wu-Tang Clan. The Staten Island group exploded in the early 1990s and became an integral part of East Coast hip-hop. However, one thing that made the collective unique were their stage names. With monikers like RZA, GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Raekwon, and Capadonna, the members’ names were undoubtedly different.
Furthermore, their aesthetic was most definitely new and unusual, with a focus on martial arts and East Asian culture instead of the gangsta image many crews at the time presented. With each member having their own lyrical style, it is unsurprising that they received critical acclaim and commercial success into the 2000s.
RZA was not only one of the group’s founding members but also the collective’s primary beatmaker. As such, whether it’s ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ or ‘Protect Ya Neck’, many of the Wu-Tang Clan’s early successes can be attributed to his talent as a producer. Still, he was also an emcee and the man who held the crew together during tough times.
The Wu-Tang Clan was founded in the late 1980s when RZA lived in Brooklyn with his mother. This is where the producer lived there before moving to Staten Island at age fourteen. The rapper and director often stayed with his grandmother on Staten Island, and in an interview with Unkut magazine, he unveiled this is where he first heard rap music, stating, “The first time I heard hip-hop was on Staten Island at my grandmother’s house. I lived in Brooklyn with my moms, but we’d come to grandma’s for the summer.”
He also began to form the Wu-Tang Clan at his grandmother’s house. However, he wasn’t known as RZA from the start and he actually changed his name a number of times before he landed on what we know him as today.
So, how did RZA get his name?
Speaking about the different names he chose when he first began rapping, RZA told Unkut, “I had so many names, man. I started off as Baby D ’cause my last name is Diggs.” He then named another pseudonym he went by, adding, “Another time I became Prince Dynamite because I thought I was dynamite cos I watched Good Times too much!”
However, it was during his teenage years that he started going through many more, unveiling, “Around fourteen, fifteen, we were studying Mathematics, I had a great memory – I would remember most of the Bible – anything from science, the periodical tables, and they started calling me The Scientist. That was my name before I chose the name of Prince Rakeem as my hip-hop name.”
RZA actually released the song ‘Ooh I Love You Rakeem’ via Tommy Boy Records as Prince Rakeem. However, that relationship didn’t last long, and neither did the name. In 2014, RZA explained to Genius that his name is an acronym, detailing, “Before my name was RZA, my name was Rakeem. The RZA is an acronym — R is for Rakeem; Z is for Zigzag because I was on the right path, went the wrong way when I was doing negative shit, but then got back on the right path towards God; the A is for Allah, which is an Arabic word that they translate as God.”
He concluded, “So the RZA means I went this way, I went that way, I came back. And that contains all my attributes, all my names — whether it is Prince Rakeem, the Scientist, Bobby Digital — the RZA is that entity. I will write a book about it one day.”