Diagrams Details

After the longish, more exciting news of the past couple days, some small details from an interview between BET & the RZA are revealed.

Initial reports said the Wu-Tang album had more outside production than usual…

The original album, we had a song from Marley, a song from DJ Scratch, a beat that was produced by Q-Tip, Easy Moe Bee. At the end of the day though, we only ended up with the Easy Moe Bee track, a Mathematics produced track and that’s it, mostly because of samples. Marley’s track, the sample wasn’t gon' clear in time. DJ Scratch, who had a crazy ill fucking song, he had a couple of songs he brought in. But the one that we finally got lyrics on, we couldn’t clear the sample. So the sample clearances kinda threw off my rhythm of plannin’ the album. At the end of the day too, the Clan didn’t verbally attack every song. Even the Q-Tip song, which I thought is a unique production, we collaborated on. We kinda wanted Ghost to spit on it, but he didn’t really set it off and shit, so we kinda put it to the side.

What’s going on with your solo joint, The Cure?

To be honest with you, I wrote The Cure. The way this world is, it kinda discouraged me. Even on the new Wu album, I tried to give you a little taste of what my heart be at as far as lyrically. And I’ve had to take some of those songs off, because sometimes the brothers just feel that sometimes the God is going in too deep. The world ain’t with the deep shit. To me, this whole album 8 Diagrams, is vegetable, son. It ain’t hamburger, it ain’t french fries either. You can’t get it at Mickey D’s. You gotta go to the health food store to get this shit. That’s what we need. It’s time for that balance. Even us as an artist, it’s hard to accept balance in my life. I know I love some ghetto, Cuban Linx shit. That’s the epitome of the Wu. At the same time, we got enough niggas, I’ll still kill and all this other shit. Who gives a fuck if you killed, how much money you got and all this other shit, yo? It’s about the heart and the mind.

It's pretty amusing that people are still asking about The Cure at all. Furthermore, I could kick whoever it is (probably Raekwon, judging from past reports) giving the veto to some of RZA's more metaphysical stylizations. After all, his lyrical prime, in some ways, was in '97, with his performances on Forever and the second Gravediggaz album, The Pick, The Sickle & The Shovel. A plethora of RZA verses would do nothing but benefit 8 Diagrams.

These tidbits are also interesting because it shows that RZA is not entirely obstinate in the making of this album, as Rae seemed to indicate in his most recent video interview. Watch Your Mouth will be missed, & I think everyone really wanted to hear the Q-Tip collab. This perhaps indicates that Thug World is also gone, which would be unfortunate.

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The following appears in a new MTV article about the Ghost & Rae situations. For the most part, the article recaps the growing fued between the participants. It ends thus:

In a 2003 reader-generated interview with Blender magazine, Method Man designated RZA's business partner, Divine, as the #1 person on his "shit list" when presented with the question. Meth claimed the Wu-Tang Management associate "took something major from me that he had no intention of giving back."

A representative for the RZA, when reached by MTV News, said the RZA's only comment in regards to the financial dispute Ghostface and Raekwon are claiming was that, "It's all his fault, and he'll take the responsibility."

So RZA continues to play the role of peacemaker while Ghost & Rae rely on complaining publicly. Regardless of the facts of the situation at hand, RZA remains the only participant acting appropriately. If only this were simply for the publicity...