How a New York City block party convinced RZA to become a rapper
RZA is one of hip-hop’s legendary figures now, but, like everyone else, he was once just a kid with his life ahead of him. He could have taken so many different paths in life, but, thanks to his big cousin GZA, and their home of New York City, he ended up catching the hip-hop bug.
Speaking to Unkut in 2014, RZA recalled that he first got his taste for rapping as a young child after GZA took him to a block party. “I probably was eight years old, and the DJ was deejaying and somebody had grabbed the microphone and was saying some lyrics like, ‘Dip, dip, dive. So-socialize / Clean out your ears and you open your eyes.’”
This triggered something in the young RZA, and the words stuck with him. He started to repeat it over and over again, helping him to develop a sense of how rhyming works, and, before long, he watched as his big cousin started to experiment with rap in a more sophisticated way.
GZA, who is three years older than RZA, pulled together some friends to start messing around with DJ decks and rhyming. RZA watched the older kids practice and perform, and, after that, a significant moment in music history occurred that reinforced his growing passion for rap.
“At the age of nine,” RZA recalled, “the first rap record comes on the radio — Sugarhill Gang. When that happened I knew that’s what I was gonna do, I knew that I’m gonna have my voice on the radio, because they proved to me that it was possible.”
By this time, with the Sugarhill Gang breaking through and getting played on the airwaves, RZA had already begun putting together his own rhymes. “I would write them every day at school,” he remembered with amusement. He knew he had a knack for it, and it was what he was going to pursue in life.
By the time he was 11 or so, he and his other cousin, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, were making demos of their rapping. Their lyrics were understandably immature, concerned with girls’ boobs and whatnot, but, as they got older, their concerns became a little bit more sophisticated. By the age of 14, the future Wu-Tang legends were playing “rec room” parties in the projects.
“In the projects,” RZA explained of these gigs, “they had these little rec rooms and you go to the building manager and ask can you rent it out for Friday and you maybe give him $30 and you charge all the kids $2 to come in and you get a rec room party going!”
These were formative gigs for the rappers who would later form the Wu-Tang Clan. “We used to DJ and rap there,” RZA recalled fondly. “That was some of the foundation starts for us.”