Live a life full of humility, gratitude, intellectual curiosity, and never stop learning.
It's gonna sound so boring to most people. There have been times when I've been told, 'Oh, you're doing an album about physics? I hope it's not boring.' They don't get the idea. Because rappers are so one-dimensional, so narrow-minded, it comes off corny.
I remember the first 45 record I bought. It was called 'A Dog a Donut'; it was a breakbeat. Actually, I think I bought two at one time, and the other one was 'Dance to the Drummer's Beat.' Those are breakbeats. I paid a dollar for it, for each one. Your average producer or DJ would know who came out with those.
Emceeing has always been about making the most intellectual, most creative, wittiest rhyme as possible regardless of any subject. It was always about bringing the best out of yourself.
Our love of kung fu goes back to the Bruce Lee days in the 1970s. Outside the action, we loved the interesting, heartfelt stories and the dialogue. It was RZA's idea to draw all that in there as samples.
There's no set way to do anything. Sometimes you have to go outside the box; sometimes you can do things the standard way. Like, you don't have to have a beat to write a song: sometimes you can write lyrics without the music.
I had a few DJs in my neighbourhood that would play music in the streets. There was no hip-hop yet; there were just DJs that were playing disco, funk, and pop music, and we would gather round, go to the parks, and dance and enjoy ourselves.
It's always been about shelf life. Long-term parking, not short-term. That's why I take the time that I do when I write.
Learn all you can learn. Never stop learning.
One of the basic principles when you dealing with mathematics and Islam: Seek knowledge.
Rap - it's a childhood passion. Writing rhymes, it's something that I was doing before rap records even existed. And I will continue to write until I can't write anymore.
I probably take about a month to write a song, depending on how much time I can dedicate to it, and it depends on how many hours a day there are and how many days in a week and weeks in a month.
Most people associate Wu Tang with Staten Island or Shaolin, but actually, I'm a native of Brooklyn. I was born in Crown Heights, raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brownsville, and Bushwick.
A lot of artists think that to be current, you have to follow what's out there and do something that's so unlike what you normally do. It can work, but it doesn't if you chase it.
There were certain things that grabbed my interest, such as photosynthesis, such as us living off plants and plants living off us. You look at everything in that light - so if I'm looking at ice cubes, I might start thinking about absolute zero, or Fahrenheit and Celsius. There's so much that can make me think about science.
Education is the tool. Even if we haven't directly instructed a session, I think Wu-Tang has been an instructor of education to anyone who has been a fan, anyone who has supported our movement, whether its been from buying a Wu-Tang CD or coming to see a show.
I don't knock material rappers, but let me hear it in a different way. How many songs do I have to hear about rims on a car? It's ridiculous. There's no substance. It's a hollow shell.
When I was growing up, I never really ate vegetables. I was just a hot dog, hamburger, French fry person like most kids.
Before hip-hop existed, we were listening to soul songs from the '70s. I grew up with Motown, Elton John, and the Beatles. To me, that's good music.
I would go to an aunt's house, and she would let me play music, and she had 'The Last Poets' album. At that time, albums didn't have explicit stickers on them, so some of the songs had profanity on them, and I was moved by that. I would listen to those songs, to the flow, and I'd balance it back and forth with the nursery stuff I had.
