The rap song that made RZA feel like he was “on top of the world”
RZA was the primary producer of the Wu-Tang Clan during their early days. Initially operating from the basement of his mother’s house on Staten Island, his gritty, lo-fi beats counterbalanced Diddy’s refined, commercial production.
Presiding over iconic projects such as Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), GZA’s Liquid Swords and Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… the beatmaker was the mastermind behind several platinum-selling albums.
With pure ingenuity, RZA brought a lo-fi production style that he skillfully fused with a grimy and abrasive edge. This sonic would become the Clan’s calling card. The slightly underproduced grit and imperfection it provided, sonically, reflected the streets in a way the professionally cleaned-up and polished rap albums didn’t.
From the reasonably desolate New York City borough of Staten Island to the top of the charts, RZA’s instrumentals became seminal hits. Whether it’s ‘C.R.E.A.M’ or ‘Protect Ya Neck’, although his production was fresh and new, RZA had a range of influences.
As a New York native, it is fair to assume that the city’s thriving street culture influenced the Wu-Tang Clan beatmaker musically. However, in an interview with Pitchfork about the musical milestones of his life, RZA made it clear that although 1980s rap was always a part of his life, it wasn’t the only genre that inspired him growing up.
Taking readers back to his childhood, RZA traced his musical journey to himself as a five-year-old. However, he admitted that he didn’t know much about different genres at that age. Despite this, retrospectively, he highlighted the 1971 soul single ‘Betcha by Golly, Wow’ by The Stylistics.
Opening up about his musical infancy, RZA explained, “At that time, I didn’t know the name of the song or what music really was. I didn’t really identify who was what or what was what.” He unveiled that a lot of his early musical tastes came from his family, detailing, “It was just whoever was on the radio or whatever my big cousins were playing. But I remember that song as a kid. Something about that song seems to resonate with me. I think it was just the mourning feeling that it brought.”
RZA even recalled his mother’s brother listening to the hit, remembering, “That’s the only song I remember from my childhood. I was down south with my uncles at that time, so my family was separated and all that. I can remember listening to it driving in my uncle’s truck, hearing it on the radio.”
One little-known song that impacted RZA was ‘Adventures of Super Rhyme’ by Jimmy Spicer, an interpolation of ‘Rapper’s Delight’. Expressing his love for the 1980 single, the Staten Island native explained, “Oh, ‘Super Rhymes’ man, that song! Yo, to me, that motherfucker killed it. He went through so many different raps through the whole song. It was an adventure, man!”
Despite the tracks named above, as a 15-year-old New Yorker, there was one trio that simply couldn’t be beaten and took a young RZA to a new level of enjoyment. That group was Run-DMC.
In 1986, for their album Raising Hell, the Queens collective released its lead single ‘My Adidas’ and the Rick Rubin-produced hit had a fan in RZA. Elaborating on his reaction to the track when he first heard it the beatmaker told Pitchfork, “That shit just made me feel like I was on top of the world, made me want to do anything to get a pair of Adidas.”
In fact, he ended up with two, adding, “I finally got a pair, one pair, from my older brother [and] I had a used pair. I did everything the record said, baby. I was definitely a big Run-DMC fan. I felt like I would, one day, be them, or be as big as them. I was writing lyrics since I was nine years old, so by age 15, I was feeling pretty confident about my talent.”
You can hear the 1986 Run-DMC single ‘My Adidas’ below.