The multi-platinum Drake album RZA has “on repeat” in his house
Producer, rapper, filmmaker and actor RZA has an eclectic taste in music and, as the man behind the extraordinary beats of the Wu-Tang Clan, he has done a lot of digging in his career. In the search for samples, the beatmaker has run across a vast range of classics. From jazz to rock and funk, there is no limit to what the musician has heard during his career.
Furthermore, the Staten Island native is the CEO of Soul Temple Records. That said, he is always looking at the current state of hip-hop to see if there are any hidden gems and new artists he can add to the roster. Although RZA is a figure of the 1990s and a pioneer of East Coast boom-bap, he has an appreciation for the new and has never shied away from praising fresh talent.
Behind his sparse productions are samples from The Charmels, Otis Redding, Irene Cara, The JBs, and other musicians stretching far and wide. The tracks RZA has utilised are unique, somewhat obscure, and deep in the crates of music.
Despite the digitalisation of the music industry and the transition from cassettes to CDs and now streaming, RZA has spoken to various publications about his love for the tangible. That said, the producer once told SPIN magazine, “I like to listen to music on vinyl. The slight variation of speed, there’s something about the ebb and flow of it that makes me always feel alive.”
Although he was the driving force of the Wu-Tang Clan, a collective of stars, RZA has shown his appreciation for the luminaries that rule hip-hop today and, in an interview, revealed that he has an appreciation for the Canadian emcee who has dominated the hip-hop charts for the last 15 years—Drake.
Opening up about the $ome $exy $ongs 4 U creator, RZA admitted that his 2016 body of work, Views, is an album that he now can’t live without and unveiled that, as a producer, he loves the instrumentals that appear on the album.
Speaking about the project, RZA revealed, “Drake’s Views is one of the few modern albums that stay on repeat in my house. His lyrical honesty, accompanied with lyrical confidence layered over various emotional beats, was refreshing when I first heard them, and they continue to soundtrack my days.”
Views is undeniably a good album, and many would claim it came out during Drake’s golden years. Alongside Nothing Was The Same, Scorpion and More Life, it is one of Drizzy’s classics from the 2010s. With African and Caribbean influences, it showed the emcee’s versatility and, despite his defeat to Kendrick Lamar in 2024, it is evidence of why he was so revered to begin with.
As a fan of Views, RZA is likely a fan of the album’s biggest single, ‘One Dance’ featuring Tems, a Diamond-certified song with over one billion streams on Spotify and Apple Music.
That said, last year, when addressing Drake in comparison to Kendrick, RZA bluntly stated, “Kendrick is the natural lyricist, and Drake is a trained lyricist. You could train a fighter, and he could be good. Then you got those natural fighters who also then go through training. So that’s a different chamber there. And while Drake got bars forever, Kendrick’s bars’ potency was stronger.” Regardless of this comment, the Wu-Tang Clan legend still seems to have respect for Drizzy.